Stuff ASUS : Enough is enough

[TheMrWibble]

Just fixed a p5ne-sli last week , i bricked the bios over a year ago and finally got around to buying a new chip and soldering on.
No problems with the board at stock speeds but forget overclocking with it. (tried with my q6600 when i ran it)
Got a p4 extreme 3.7ghz thing in it at the mo with 4 x ram sticks and no problems at all.
I agree with the nvidia chipset thing thou they really are poo my previous board to it was a AMD nforce board which strangly just died one day (first mobo ive had die in over 15yrs of messing with putas)

 

[Muel]

I'm on my first Asus board, it's OK but I feel the quality is a bit lacking. It's just little things that put me off, like when you pump the voltage up to 1.55v, it can be drastically out, and then I hear stories about the LLC feature being needed to stop the CPU voltage spiking and drooping...

Also I just specced my mate the same setup as mine, same board, CPU and ram, but his refuses to run the ram at 1600mhz, it just crashes. He's having to run it at 1333mhz.

My next build won't be for a few years at least, I want at least 8 cores and DDR4 by then, but I'm pretty sure I'll be using Gigabyte unless the quality stakes shift drastically by then.

 

[gurusan]

you realize ddr3 speeds on AM3 have very little to do with the mobo and pretty much everything to do with the IMC? ...and that anything over 1333MHz is an overclock on AM3...many chips won't do 1600MHz stable

 

[Muel]

Nope, no idea. I don't even know what IMC is. But it strikes me as something wrong when you can't plug a 955BE into a M4A79XTD EVO with 4gb of G.Skill ram and it won't run at 1600mhz.

It's actually not the same setup as mine, I have a 965 C2 and his is a 955.

 

[gurusan]

The IMC is the memory controller on the chip. If you check out the Phenom 2 clocking thread you'll find not many people have had luck getting 1600MHz stable.

 

[Vince]

You not the only one with a problem with Asus, generally I find their entire product range sub standard and their support abysmal.

A year and a half ago I purchased several laptops. F3k machines at £750 a pop, after less than a month they all developed cracks in the same places on the palm rest. Asus informed me that this would be classed as out of warranty repair as they felt all of the machines had been poorly treated. The business fronted the cost of the machines and we purchased new ones.

Rewind a further few months, socket 775 board for a completely unknown reason one ram slot develops a fault and any ram I put in it causes it to refuse to post.

Rewind even further to the release of the 9700pro, I purchase an Asus A7v333r. The board was the most problematic board I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with. Apparently it was a conflict with the chipset and gfx card causing blue screens and poor audio performance, after almost a year of it being unstable and no real sign of an update or support. I removed the board, snapped it in half, and replaced it with an abit nf7-s.

On top of that their website is dire slow and customer service completely sub standard.

 

[Muel]

The IMC is the memory controller on the chip. If you check out the Phenom 2 clocking thread you'll find not many people have had luck getting 1600MHz stable.

I should have clicked lol, I've just never heard it reffered to as the IMC.

Aye I heard about that, I got mine stable at 3.8GHz with 1600MHz RAM, took 1.525V vcore though (C2 stepping, now back at stock). He's not very computer savvy really so I told him to enter the bios and just set the ram to 1333mhz at 1.64v and see how it goes.

Is there any advantage really to running 1600 over 1333? These days I only use this computer for work, and when I used to game a fair bit there was no point in running an overclock anyway really because I never saw the CPU go over 35% load. I'm just if it'd be more stable at 1333mhz, I might as well set it to that.

 

[Dave****]

Gigabyte for the win, never liked ASUS myself either.

 

[-VK-]

Rewind a further few months, socket 775 board for a completely unknown reason one ram slot develops a fault and any ram I put in it causes it to refuse to post.

Without all the details of the which board, memory and the full facts of the situation it's hard to diagnose why it would have developed a fault, but it could have been any number of things and not strictly down to the board itself.

Rewind even further to the release of the 9700pro, I purchase an Asus A7v333r. The board was the most problematic board I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with. Apparently it was a conflict with the chipset and gfx card causing blue screens and poor audio performance, after almost a year of it being unstable and no real sign of an update or support. I removed the board, snapped it in half, and replaced it with an abit nf7-s.

Judging products of 2010 against such old products really isn't representative of today's situation. It's bad that you had such a bad experience with a product back then, but a lot of things have changed in the manufacturing and technologies involved.

Rewind a further few months, socket 775 board for a completely unknown reason one ram slot develops a fault and any ram I put in it causes it to refuse to post.

Without all the details of the which board, memory and the full facts of the situation it's hard to diagnose why it would have developed a fault, but it could have been any number of things and not strictly down to the board itself.

On top of that their website is dire slow and customer service completely sub standard.

I'm guessing you haven't visited the website since the end of 2008 then, as it's been distinctly upgraded. You may be referring to the support site, however even then the download speeds are fair. (Though I do agree, it could use a facelift for usability).

 

[Vince]

Without all the details of the which board, memory and the full facts of the situation it's hard to diagnose why it would have developed a fault, but it could have been any number of things and not strictly down to the board itself.

I can’t remember the exacts of the board but did purchase it from MM as needed a quick 775 fix, it worked fine for about a month then developed the fault. Having about 20 spare sticks of ram tested in there, I felt no need to have to prove further that it was the slot.

Judging products of 2010 against such old products really isn't representative of today's situation. It's bad that you had such a bad experience with a product back then, but a lot of things have changed in the manufacturing and technologies involved.

Seen as 12 Months isn't exactly a lifetime, and since they are still selling very similar chassis I have every right to judge them on whatever aspects I see fit, it’s my opinion and therefore completely valid. (Edit: My bad I thought we were talking about the laptops, but then realised that we are on the old board, granted this was old kit but again you remember these things and they certainly don't warm you to a manufacturer.)

Without all the details of the which board, memory and the full facts of the situation it's hard to diagnose why it would have developed a fault, but it could have been any number of things and not strictly down to the board itself.

With all due respect, it seems to me that you are fighting a corner for no apparent reason. I’ve owned enough hardware over the years to diagnose a fault and quite frankly, feel no need to go further into the ins and outs of past hardware.

Each person’s experiences may vary and my experiences are just that.

 

[bledd]

On the flipside, I do have 3x asus motherboards here, two are identical P43 chipsets, flawless..

The other is in my mum's machine, also flawless

I only use intel chipsets nowadays

 

[-VK-]

With all due respect, it seems to me that you are fighting a corner for no apparent reason. I’ve owned enough hardware over the years to diagnose a fault and quite frankly, feel no need to go further into the ins and outs of past hardware.

Each person’s experiences may vary and my experiences are just that.

I have reasons to fight the ASUS corner, but I'm really not trying to sway your opinion - More suggest that there may be more to it than just "ASUS Suck".

I can't comment on the laptop side of things as my knowledge is somewhat sparse.

It's a shame that you've had such experiences and I totally respect your opinions - Just remember that over time things do change and maybe in future you'd consider an ASUS product again.

 

[Vince]

I must admit I wouldn't not buy another Asus product down to past experiences, but am very careful to not buy anything Asus without doing enough research beforehand. If I feel its something I may need telephone support for then I try and steer clear.


I just feel that if I really need telephone support, then I am better off with MSI who have performed solidly for me in the past - Fred in the Netherlands is a legend for fixing whatever problem you may have, getting out replacements and generally doing a pretty damn good job.


On the board front, for me DFI have to take the top spot, all the DFI boards I have had, have been rock solid.

 

[FatRakoon]

I can see that Both Gigabyte and Asus have good support and that many have opinions in both directions.

There seems to be a lot of hatred towards nVidia chipsets, but can I ask why, and get a reply other than "They suck"

I am looking at my nVidia Mobos and here is what I have right now on my LAN

DFI LanParty 250UT ( S754 )
MSI Neo2 Platinum NF3
MSI Neo4 F
Foxconn NF4K8AA
Asus A8N-SLI

Only one that I have issues with is the foxconn and even then its only because it does not like loads of RAM, so its being kept at 1GB - plenty for the games it plays. and all NV Chipsets and all are clearly an age now.

My only other Asus is the A8R-MVP, and this is ATI Chipset and its bloody awful. It has a constant dislike for me tampering in any way in the BIOS. Any adjustments in the BIOS and it fails thinking the CPU is overclocked??? - I have to reset the BIOS and the Time & Date must be done when in Windows because if I go into the BIOS to do it, I get failure to overclock CPU again??? - WTF?

Cannot blame the nVidia chipset there, only ASUS

As for Gigabyte, my main PCs are all runnning Gigabyte right now.

DS4 965P - this is what I am on right now as my main PC

I seem to have some sort of weird fetish with the DS3 too?

I bought the DS3 965P some years ago, not long after it was first out I think, and the only issue I had with it, was that it hated my GEIL RAM and I had to put in my Corsair just to set the RAM VOLTS in the BIOS and flick them over, but I think F6 or F7 cured that and since then, I have never had an issue.

I currently own 3 of that very same board today.

In fact, not long ago, I did a trade... one of my Intel Q6600 CPUs and a DS3 Mobo for an AMD Q9550 & DS3 Mobo - this was purely because I also have a Q9550 Intel and, well I just had to.

Either way, I love that AMD Board too... Gigabyte again.

Meanwhile, my ****** ASUS boards are the only ones that have failed me.
The catch 22 or me there is that they are both NVidia Chipsets, so whats the blame there, the Maker of the chipset?

 

[Glaucus]

Another asus fan, with no problems. Been using multiple assu boards since 2001. Only problem I've had is duff usb ports and pretty sure that was to do with a psu going pop.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

I've never had a single problem with any Asus boards.
Only ever been AMD boards I've owned though, 754, couple of AM2 boards, still an A8N32 in operation and currently use an M3A32.
I'd not touch a recent Nvidia chipset board but the higher end boards, imo, are excellent.

 

[Energize]

Latest in the long line of failures is the P5NE-SLI

This mobo is why I'm not buying Asus again either, voltage options are totally useless. Asrock mobos were better at overclocking than this pos.

when you pump the voltage up to 1.55v, it can be drastically out,
.

Why am I not surprised?

 

[Muel]

It's mad really, apparantly it can deliver up to 1.8v, but it can't do 1.55v accurately, it can be anything upto 0.1v out.

That's the main reason I don't run it overclocked any more, I just don't trust to board to keep my chip alive.

 

[james.miller]

what was left of my p5w dh after i finished with it. I thought 'hell, one of the sata ports just fell off and and getting constant bsods and problems....i might as well finish it off'. so i did. And bought an ip35 pro. And never looked back.

buuut now i own a new asus board. If this one falls apart im going to mail it back to asus. Strapped to a nuke. Before anybody says anything, let me say it was a culmination of months of torment. I could hear that board laughing at me when it when belly up, over and over

 

[-VK-]

If you're sending it with a bomb, please don't send it to the UK office...