This video kind of misses the mark on delivering the points of the title, but these are the simplest boiled down points of the community gripes:
- ASUS is having quality control issues, or deliberately skimping to pad profits
- They are rebranding lesser quality components with the higher quality ROG brand, and pricing it as such
- They are unilaterally voiding warranties when users try to RMA or return said hardware
Gigabyte (remember them?) did this same slow slide of enshittification about 10 years ago. The issue pretty much boils down to a company producing too many different types of things, instead of staying good at the things they do well, and the community has noticed and is calling for boycotts. This will no doubt put them on the defensive for years to come, and affect their overall standing in the larger community until they correct course.
Gigabyte (remember them?)
Sure do! Both my board and the board in my wife’s computer are Gigabyte. So’s my video card. The only issue I’ve ever had with their stuff has been a bad stick of ram a few years ago, which they exchanged without argument.
Brands in this sphere I definitely have had trouble with: MSI, Razer – so many problems with Razer – and ASUS.
Yeah so the thing with PC parts suppliers is that every brand is going to have people who have experienced problems with their stuff.
Gigabyte I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah during the pandemic their power supplies were fucking exploding so yeah that’s a problem.
Asus I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah their boards on both sides have been setting voltages and power limits very aggressively, killing AM5 CPUs catastrophically, potentially causing instability on higher end Intel chips as well it seems. That’s a problem.
Etc etc etc
What are the problems with Razer? I’ve only used their mice, so I honestly don’t even know what else they make
Keyboards, headphones, laptops, a handheld Steam Deck imitator, and various other RGB gamer shit. All of it is trash. Their business model nowadays seems to revolve entirely around upselling Aliexpress quality Chinese garbage at premium prices and then methodically denying every single warranty claim for defective and DOA product using spurious excuses. Oh, and their driver software is crap. And their products are consistently behind even Logitech on the features you get for the price.
Through no particular intentional means, I am now a Logitech convert. For mice and keyboards, their stuff has always been consistently reliable for me, their “G” series driver software is significantly less irritating than Razer Synapse, and most of their stuff is cheaper as well.
I think in my lifetime I’ve trashed four Razer keyboards, at least as many mice, and two pairs of headphones. All of these died early deaths – within weeks, sometimes a couple of months at the outside. Every time I tell myself this time will be different. It never is. I don’t buy their shit anymore, and I don’t recommend anyone else do, either.
I don’t remember Razer ever not being like that. Was it?
I dunno, the Boomslang was pretty rad back in the day. But it was so old it was a ball mouse.
I bought the $120 Razer Wolverine V2 Xbox controller after MS shrunk the official controller for the Series S/X and it was a piece of shit. Replaced it with a $45 gamesir (Chinese brand) with hall effect triggers and sticks that I’ve had for two years now with no issues and no drift, a first for any xbox controller I’ve ever had. Razer sucks.
Tried to RMA a motherboard with Gigabyte and they will find any excuse to void the warranty.
I’ve had good luck recently with Gigabyte. I know it’s circumstantial but my hope is that they are recovering.
Anecdotal like the rest of the posts here, but I recently built a new rig for gaming/lab testing and used a Gigabyte board for the first time in a decade after seeing good reviews and a solid sale price.
About 3 weeks after setting everything up it just crapped out. Would reboot seconds after you pressed power. Checked and verified absolutely every other part, no luck. Tried to contact support, got the runaround for a few days until I was directed to a site to submit an RMA request.
That was a month ago, zero movement still. About 4 days into it I bought an identical part of Amazon and “traded” em. I’m usually pretty ethical about that kind of thing but this was ridiculous and I needed the PC working ASAP.
Who’s decent anymore? I always used to go with MSI.
They seem to be, but it’s been for a short time. Let’s see if they keep it going.
- They are rebranding lesser quality components with the higher quality ROG brand, and pricing it as such
Meaning you could sue them as fraudulent?
No. The ROG brand is ASUS’s brand in the first place.
Like, anyone could be like “this is my normal quiche, and this one here is my MuMu quiche.”
Then, once everybody’s buying MuMu, start using the normal recipe for MuMu. It’s not illegal, but at first people think they just got an Ok MuMu, then they start realizing it just sucks now. Hard for the company to recover from that.
But voiding and not honoring warranties?
Yeah.
That’s when you introduce the PuPu quiche that uses the original MuMu recipe and start the process all over.
Yeah. Companies like that are bridges I burn and never look back to.
Looks like big companies buying everything has unexpected downsides too (aside the known downsides).
Who ever saw this ever in history before now, or ever predicted it?
Take your crazy thoughts and wants for things to be good for consumers SOMEWHERE ELSE!
Videos are a terrible way to communicate small amounts of information and these comments aren’t super insightful so I guess I’ll just move on.
A 10-12 minute video is always a huge red flag for me. Either the info is stretched out or over compresses.
I hate ASUS. Used to be way in on them – well not way but relatively. I had the ASUS ROG Phone. The screen unfortunately broke and needed to be sent into service. More unfortunate, it was just about 1 month out of warranty.
So I get it set up to send it. ASUS charges me $300 for the phone screen replacement. It took over 8 months for them to get it back to me. When the phone finally did arrive, the RGB lighting didn’t work, the NFC didn’t work, and the screen itself had an orange hue in the upper right corner. To boot, it would only connect to AES Wi-Fi networks, so I can’t even use it without a SIM card because who the fuck uses AES. They didn’t even fucking fix it properly. I never got responses, sending e-mails for months after it was finally returned to me.
Now, in this time I was really patient. I was using a temporary phone. Around month 5, I just needed a new phone and was looking into the newly released ROG Phone 2. I figured the ROG 1 would still get plenty of usage as a spare device. Well I had the ROG 2 until AT&T decided that the phone didn’t have the supported bands anymore, so my >1 year old phone is now as effective as an iPod 3g. Just 6 months later, screen itself just died, no fall, no nothing. I can use SCRCPY to use it, the screen just doesn’t work. I really, really tried to give them a shot and the benefit of the doubt.
Now, in between these ~2 years I’d accumulated a few accessories for the phones, keycaps and backpacks. Just little things – ngl, the bag and the keycaps are still really good quality. I also decided to upgrade my PC, and was looking at a nice new motherboard to rebuild my existing PC with.
So I get the ASUS B550 or something like that. Stupidly bought it from Newegg, first time. The motherboard arrives and upon building the computer I just cannot get it to POST. I reach out to the 2 likely culprits, the PSU and the MoBo. EVGA sends me an entirely new PSU, free of charge, and tells me not to bother shipping it back. ASUS on the other hand would not accept that the motherboard could have been the point of failure! And when I FINALLY was able to fully prove that every single component in the board works EXCEPT the MoBo, they told me to take it up with where I purchased it from, Newegg. So I would get to pay some ~20% restocking fee on a broken motherboard, instead of the manufacturr just replacing a defective board. Oh, the best part? The motherboards USB-3.0 header was broken, came right off when trying to plug it in. No wonder it wouldn’t POST.
Fuck you, ASUS. Fuck your shitty warranty, your awful customer support, your horrible treatment of customers who put their trust into you. I will never support ASUS again and I will always vehemently suggest anyone else. It’s really, really simple to be a good OEM, all it takes is replacing things that break. ASUS treats every single customer like a scammer who is trying to get free stuff out of them, which IMO just goes to show that’s exactly the mindset ASUS has as well.
I still have the motherboard btw. If anyone knows how to repair a USB-3.0 header I’ll either be glad to be guided through a repair or I’ll just send it to you for cost of shipping. It’s just going to sit in my garage otherwise.
Going to corroborate this with that I had a really similar experience with my old Sabertooth 990FX board. Was supposed to support Bulldozer, and they put out a BIOS update the night before Bulldozer launched. I grabbed the update, put it on a flash drive, and updated the board. It would never post after that. RAM, CPU (FX6100), graphics card were all reseated multiple times. Never even gave post beeps, so there wasn’t even a hint as to what was going on. Even tried a different PSU just to be safe.
ASUS told me to get shafted because they couldn’t guarantee I updated the BIOS safely.
CompUSA exchanged it with a pre-updated board, no questions asked.
I fucking miss. That. Store.
I’m still so bummed about EVGA leaving the graphics card market! My 2070 super still runs fine, thankfully, but it’s getting a bit long in the tooth.
Yeah EVGA were my go-to. I have a 1660, 2070s, and 3080 all from them.
In fact they have been my only GPU manufacturer. I don’t know what I’ll do for the future.
the RGB lighting
Wait… what?
Lol, yeah. The ROG line of phone has an RGB backlight with the ROG logo.
Honestly, I liked it. Could be configured to per-app notifications, and could be synced to other phones that had it. Not that I ever got to use this feature, it was returned to me BROKEN! lol
Reattaching the connector is relatively easy. But unless the pcb itself is really mangled, a missing connector won’t affect the computer POSTing. Can you send a closeup of where the connector should be?
It’s in my garage at the moment, but from memory (it’s been a year or two now) the USB-3.0 header straight up fell off. The PCB should be fine, which is why I have a feeling that I could likely just resolder it, so long as the pads themselves on the PCB were ok.
I’ll see if I can find some time this week to dig it out and share a photo, thank you for the offer!
This is a terrible video. 20 minutes just to say “bad customer support”. But then, who does nowadays?
On a sidenote, the pearl, the jewel I got from their CS is “WeLL I gUeSs tHiS LaPtOP oNlY sUpPoRtS ThReE ScReEnS iN tOtAl”. Bitch! This laptop has 3 separate video outputs! And 2 screens built-in! The fuck is 3 total? Besides, it totally worked until some botched update on their side…
I miss the activeness of the r/saveAClick community.
The closest lemme alternative is https://lemmy.nrd.li/c/savedyouaclick
We need that here for these click bait posts
You can have more video outputs than your machine can actually use simultaneously, that’s a fairly normal characteristic. It allows you to have a greater variety of output port types without needing more framebuffers inside the GPU. If an update bricked it then it’s not that specific characteristic obviously. Probably it’s the fault of the GPU manufacturer issuing a bad update that they then repackaged.
Maybe you’re right, but I haven’t seen a GPU that doesn’t have at least 4 distinct outputs in a while, not that I’d expect one in a machine of this class either. The problem, if I were to guess, is that this machine has AMD iGPU with Nvidia dGPU and a switchable MUX on top of that so it could boot with(or without) either as primary. That’s like three points of failure already. On top of that, I had the main panel cracked and badly malfunctioning, so I’ve removed it, just in case, for about a month while I waited for replacement. I guess some firmware update did not expect the main panel to be missing(or to have different s/n) during update and did something stupid to the mux setting that made it so that two outputs can’t be active simultaneously. I’ve tried to reach someone half-competent at ASUS for like a couple months, then just said “fuck it” and installed linux. Now living happily with 6 displays up and running, theoretically up to 9 if I do some output splitting shenanigans. Someday I’ll actually build that setup just to dunk on that rep who told me it could only handle 3.
It’s fairly common for iGPUs to have less outputs. Apple M1 was especially bad as it only had 2, and the internal screen on the laptops couldn’t even be disabled if I remember correctly. I think many Intel (or maybe AMD) iGPUs only have three outputs.
Yeah it definitely sounds like a driver issue. I have had issues with dual GPU systems like that on Linux, not had any on Windows yet. It would be interesting to see to be honest. I’ve had laptops before where the video ports would only connect to the dGPU, and the internal screen used Optimus (display output from the iGPU with graphics acceleration from the dGPU on demand). Lots of dual GPU laptops are MUXless like that in fact.
It would be interesting to see to be honest
I still have the video I’ve sent to them at some point, it describes it in all detail, if you can bear my accent..
I’ve had laptops before where the video ports would only connect to the dGPU, and the internal screen used Optimus (display output from the iGPU with graphics acceleration from the dGPU on demand). Lots of dual GPU laptops are MUXless like that in fact.
Yeah, I’ve had some of those. Actually owned one of the first generation optimus laptops and it was horrible, most of the time it did not pick up the heavy load and stayed on iGPU even when playing games. Seems to be much improved a lot in win10-11, but I still prefer the kill-switch.
This one kind of works like that too, though. The MUX only controls which GPU the main panel is connected to (and with it, the framebuffer). The modes basically are:
- “Eco” where only iGPU is enabled
- “Hybrid” where iGPU is main and maintains framebuffer while offloading work to dGPU when needed just as you’ve described
- “Ultimate” with Nvidia as main, which apparently gives much better framerate and latency because it does not require overhead of workload offloading and framebuffer shuffling, but the dGPU is by far the most power hungry device at 150W TDP which drains the battery in mere minutes, even on idle
I have had issues with dual GPU systems like that on Linux
I feel you. My previous setup was a desktop with both AMD and Nvidia cards, which I juggled between the host and VM. It was pain, mostly because Nvidia did not want to play nicely. Also because most utilities assumed I had Intel APU — I didn’t, but it was fair assumption at a time. Nowadays, it seems like everything’s sorted out, even VFIO was a breeze to set up (though what for, most games now play on linux nowadays thanks to steamdeck)
I’ve been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.
I’m very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.
I saw this headline and immediately thought “ArmouryCrate is the reason”
I certainly avoid ASUS stuff after discovering that piece of nonsense on my new install.
The rootkit is easy enough to turn off in the BIOS but I highly, highly recommend G-Helper instead of Armoury Crate.
Moving to it from AC is like leaving a prison cell full of screaming children and entering a calm beach.
Wtf?
What about MSI? Do they do this shit too?
I had an msi board in my father’s build, and as I was eyeing hardware upgrades I decided to get some more life out of it by adding some memory and updating the bios, as it was quite old. After the bios update, it never booted again. The upgrade tool said it was the correct file, that it was installed successfully, and that I just needed to reboot. Their flashback system? Didn’t work. Researching, it was apparently a KNOWN PROBLEM that msi just shrugged off, and several boards from that era would die after an update. No apology, no resolution, not even an admission of guilt. Because of that fuck up, proprietary software that my father used for business finances, wouldn’t activate on a new machine - the company shutdown the activation servers, and it required hardware checks, and there was no work around. The new program? Unable to read the old file format. We lost access to 20 years of tax/receipt records.
MSI is blacklisted for me, my family, friends, and anyone who I perform IT services for. I don’t give 2 fucks if the hardware is 80% cheaper and 200% better. Fuck you, they fucked perfectly good hardware, my reputation, and if we ever get audited we’re fucked. Eat shit and die, MSI.
It’s not all of the sudden Gamer Nexus dropped them as a sponsor and tore them a new one months ago.
They don’t care about their customers. They just want your money.
Why people are writing statements as questions?
why don’t you tell me?
No, why don’t you tell me?
we are doing this, now?
Yes?
Statement! One-love.
The video linked is not the original.
This is the original - https://youtu.be/oHH9_CDHz94
So OP is a thief even!
This is troubling. I’ve been using ASUS motherboards for a very long time. I haven’t noticed any problems in the last 3 systems I built, but I also usually go for the workstation type motherboards instead of gaming motherboards, so I can use ECC RAM and dispense with the LED bling I don’t need or want. I wonder if they are still putting enough effort into the business/workstation stuff that it’s not having too many quality issues yet. I hope they can turn this around, because the list of quality PC parts manufacturers is growing smaller all the time.
Years ago I happily used some Razer mice and keyboards, even a headset, so in the not too far past I told people around me that Razer was fairly good, quality wise, but alas, I think each and every one I recommended Razer products to had them break and or die well within warranty, and they always had to start a stupid discussion to get the warranty/RMA accepted, a few times even replacements denied outright by Razer.
For me this stands in sharp contrast with Logitech whom has never denied me a warranty, even for products a few weeks beyond the date, and they generally just send out a new item. That is, for me it is rare for a Logitech product to actually require replacement to begin with, I have a few mice, keyboards and headsets far older than 5 years and they work fine plus are still supported in the drivers.
Speaking of drivers, Razer at one point also made the decision to have their drivers require an account login to function properly (multi-button mice would only have 2 functional buttons if not logged in etc). But after some flak from its users it slightly changed that to the login being optional, but profiles would still be hampered without a continuous online presence.
Coming back to Asus, for a few years now I hear of people having quality issues and grumpy asus service desks, but for me their videocards ways ran fine (even without coil whine, unlike some MSI cards). I am quite hesitant to buy an Asus monitor or motherboard though.
I finally bought a Razer mouse just a couple years ago since it was one of the few I could find that was a USB receiver + Bluetooth wireless gaming mouse I could use with my desktop and steam deck. Still works great, thankfully. But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Logitech product actually die on me; I just eventually replace them with a newer Logitech product.
But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year.
Seems to be a problem in general. I’ve been using Elecom trackballs for years, first one I bought still works. Ones I’ve bought in the last year all started wigging out on left click within a couple months. I took one apart recently to swap the mouse switch with a quick solder job and it’s good as new. Seems like the newer ones are using really cheap Chinese Omron switches that die quickly. IIRC the older one uses a Japanese Omron switch. The new one I soldered in is a Kailh GM2.0.
Modern Logitech mice are the same. The cheap Chinese Omron switches in the same mouse look like they’re from different factories.
I have two G604 mice that I bought within a couple of months of each other and one of them started double clicking. So I did a button switch just like you but with Kailh reds. Each mouse had old looking Omron switches.
Seconded for difficulty with Razer products. 15+ years ago they were pretty good. But since then I’ve had 2 headsets crap out right after warranty, one in warranty failed, mice quit working and a keyboard fail. They only replaced the one headset. Plus, their gaming software for their upper tier headsets is unbelievably bloated and awful. I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall it several times to get it working when some update f’s it up.
So far, my Logitech gear is still trucking along, even my cheap $14 travel mouse.
I’ve had the opposite experience between Logitech and Razer, at least when it comes to mice. Every modern Logitech mouse I’ve had (3) has had the right and left click switches replaced as they started double clicking right after the warranty expired.
Logitech are actually using the wrong switches as they’re running them below their design voltage and is causing premature failure. I swapped them out with appropriately rated switches and they are still in service, now for much longer than the original switches.
When the failure started though I switched my main mouse to a Razer with optical switches and have had zero problems with the hardware. Software wise, Polychromatic + OpenRazer on Linux works better than Razer’s software on Windows. Razer’s software leaves a lot to be desired, but Logitech’s software is only marginally better.
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I have always had issues with ASUS. Their parts have never really worked well for me, and if they did they only lasted a year or two before shitting out. Everyone else seemed to swear by them and I could never even get a part that worked.
I had a $1,300 gaming laptop from Asus from way back in 2013. The hinge for the screen was designed in such a way that it applied pressure against the very thing plastic screen bezel when opening the laptop, so in a very short amount of time the bezel just snapped in front of each hinge. Absolutely brain dead design.
The only non-Apple laptop that has lasted me for years was an asus from 2013. Probably cost me $1900. Luck of the draw for me, I guess. I always thought highly of the company because my HP and Dell laptops fell apart so fast (even the ones that cost close to $1900). I know Lenovo always had issues with back doors. I guess there aren’t a lot of options these days.
That’s my experience with Asus going back over 25 years now. To me, Asus has always been substandard products sold at premium prices. If I wanted a substandard motherboard, I’d buy ECS and save a bunch of money. And to be fair to ECS, I’ve had some of their boards that have worked just fine, which is more than I can say about the Asus stuff.
I’ve had two ASUS gaming laptops, and both of them began having issues within a year, and the second didnt last more than a couple years total.
The first laptop was one of their enormous ROG 17 inch gaming laptops that looked like it had jet engine exhaust. The hard drive died and the power port broke within the first year, and I had to send it in under warranty. The power brick also died, and I ended up having to replace it myself around the 3 year mark.
Thinking it was a fluke, I ended up buying a smaller, more portable ASUS gaming laptop next which had more of a standard form factor. Maybe six or eight months later, that one suffered some issue that required being sent in for service as well. It began experiencing the same issue about four months later, I’d sent it in for repair a second time for the same issue, and they apparently fixed it.
I got to use that laptop for maybe 1.5 years total before it was completely unusable, in spite of two RMAs.
My current gaming laptop is an HP Omen 17 from 2017, and has been completely stable and reliable up to this day. I love to hate on HP because of their dumb printers, but I’m pretty impressed. I’ll probably end up buying another one, because I will literally never own another ASUS product ever in my life, and there are only so many manufacturers out there who I’d consider for a laptop purchase.
I’d personally look into Dell and Lenovo enterprise workstation laptops; same tech, but designed to be used instead of just looking flashy on a shelf.
Dude has 35 subs, is this your own account?
Here we are, spam has finally arrived on the fediverse
I ordered a board from Asus last year. FedEx delivered it to the wrong place. Delivery picture was at some apartment somewhere. They gave me so much shit. I had to go to my bank to help me get my money back. Took over a month.
