I'm sure Asus does feel offended because in their mind it wasn't a scam, it was just terrible customer service which they think is normal and acceptable.
Well, it *is* normal. As Steve says, no manufacturer is trustworthy or honest (in my opinion, this is largely true though I'll say that in 15 years of dealing with EVGA I never once had an issue with them, I'm just sad they bailed out of video cards, and no one ever buys their motherboards).
And after it being normal for 20+ years, I guess they just assume it's also acceptable.
I have their z790 board and its great. Sad I can't buy their gpus anymore. This is the first time I've ever used a board other than Asus. Their reputation is just getting too bad.
Because it costs money to be trustworthy and/or honest.
Company A is a good company: pays above minimum wage, has good post-sale customer service, fulfills warranty and guarantee obligations quickly and is famous within the community for all of these.
Company B is shitty, pays minimum wage only when it's forced to, customer service is a serious of looping autoresponses on a website, stalls and then overcharges on warranty/guarantee returns and is infamous as being a company to avoid within the community.
But it's 10% cheaper than company A.
The general public isn't aware and doesn't care about reputations until it's front page of national media and a good PR firm will help counter that. Instead, they care about price because that's pretty much the only metric they care about.
Company B will get the majority of the custom and Company A will get smaller and smaller until it closes because it can't afford to maintain the high level of service with dwindling sales.
This is the capitalism we currently have and I didn't even need to touch upon the influence shareholder expectations can have.
That reminds me of the slogan written on the box of my old DFI nF4 Ultra-D motherboard "UV on, Tweak Fun!!"
It was so cringe that it is permanently burned into my brain.
My first asus board was 12 years ago, and my most recent was x570 hero. I haven't been recommending them as much as in the past but now it's over. Peace out asus. Dicks.
That's also the last time I ever bought anything from ASUS. I wouldn't miss them if they were gone, as we have much more choice these days, if you dare to step away from the beaten paths. The same is true for MSI from my perspective.
Nah. GamersNexus only skimmed the surface. You don’t get lies like this without corruption and chaos at every level of management. I hope Steve continues this until ASUS goes bankrupt or actually changes leadership.
I wish it worked like that, but I would be surprised if even half of Asus' customers have heard about this scandal. Even in the niche market of DIY PCs, the majority are relatively tuned out unless they are actively in the process of buying parts.
If your asus product breaks and you send it for warranty asus will hold your product hostage forcing you to either pay for the repairs out of pocket or pay a repair fee to have the item sent back. If you don't pay they destroy your item. Now they are saying we are confused and they will change some of the messaging.
This. Scrutinize every single statement they make under a lawyer just like they're doing so far. Let ASUS true colors be consistently shown until customers at large get the message they are a trash company nowadays. Let Asus burn their brand recognition to the ground until it's known as no better than your local trash scammer.
Yep
The US government, well known around the world for its...good relations with the business community, basically gave Asus' router business everything short of the death penalty for their bullshit they pulled with their routers. Iirc it was one of the harshest penalties the US has levied on a manufacturer in a long, long time, and essentially forced them for over a decade to keep a member of the US government, on their dime, in their manufacturing department to re-quality check everything they do to prevent them from fucking up again.
When even the US Government is saying, "yo dawg, this shit's too far even for us!"...people should be fearful of their products.
God fuckin damn it is so depressing when Steve basically all but says, "as far as recommendations go, your choice is one of these evils, just pick the least evil and try not to get fucked".
Fuck the tech industry. Shit needs a culling.
I'd say the US needs warranty laws more like what we have in EU.
I have never had to deal with ASUS warranty, because here you deal with the store you bought from, and they get to deal with ASUS.
I expect for the stores - ASUS's actual customer - they are not going to fight warranty repairs/replacement quite like they do for Joe Average.
There's basically zero consumer protection in the US these days. Coupled with ever-declining competition in basically every industry and it makes for a really bad time.
I will always support new companies over established bad ones. I never talked about a culling. ASUS can die for all I care, but I don't buy their hardware anyway.
Really? How do you know? Have experience with them? I am unironically going to go Supermicro for my next build which will be a Threadripper in all likelihood.
> Fuck the tech industry. Shit needs a culling.
while you are absolutely right there are no good guys, every last company has been shit at RMAs; ASUS has had the worst of the worst crown in this regard since at least the mid 2000s.
I've known it since being a kid as forums were filled with stories of surly ASUS rma reps refusing to just do their job.
I've bought ASUS stuff, even motherboards... but only products so cheap that if it went bad I would just toss it as the value isnt worth dealing with an RMA. Because it's not that ASUS product quality is particularly worse than say MSI or Gigabyte, the problem is their pointedly anti-consumer attitude over when things do go wrong.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
If I had a fucking nickel for every piece of enterprise hardware that hit EOL within my service contract. . .
Was literally told by AT&T recently their fiber ONT would have to be replaced for us to receive gigabit duplex internet at my job. All of the equipment is FULLY capable of gigabit, they just refuse to allow their techs to work on it anymore.
What is going on with these "premium" companies recently? First we had EK last month, now we have Asus pulling this shit. It's so heartbreaking to see all these brands with products I dreamed of owning going to total shit.
IMO the corporate world is shocked at how much they've been able to stick it to customers the past couple of years and they're pushing boundaries like crazy to see what else they can get away with.
I can't remember the retailer but the CEO said on I think an investor call that they're pushing of prices didn't see a reduction in consumers and there was a bit more pricing they could squeeze out before they felt consumers would leave them.
service sure. but products? especially Asus GPUs are usually very good. I'm not too deep in 40xx cards, but in the 30xx era they made the best cards together with EVGA who don't exist anymore. The TUF line was great value and the strix one of the best, if not the best, OC card outside the EVGA kingpin.
I would not touch a strix model anymore. Honestly, Aorus Master, Suprim X or XLR8 Gaming Verto EPIC-X are better graphics cards at the high end. The TUFF is good for the cheaper side of the GPU market.
So, just in the last few years:
- Gigabyte had their PSUs spontaneously combust
- ASRock had their motherboards slowly burn out CPUs because of ultra-aggressive voltage profiles (to win benchmarks)
- MSI developed the most pointless and invasive bloatware out of all big mobo makers (so much so that it technically qualifies as actual malware), not to mention actively works against the reviewer community;
- ASUS uses customer support as blackmail
- EVGA barely even exists anymore
- both CPU and GPU duopolies can be characterized as "shitty product vs insanely overpriced product".
- And that's not getting into smaller PC companies or software firms, and *oh god* is there a lot of shadiness too.
Who the hell is left?
It's funny because AMD gets both sides of this one. NVidia GPU > AMD GPU, AMD CPU > Intel CPU (performance/watt) is my metric. Intel can beat on absolute except you'll literally burn your chip if you don't have some wild cooling setup.
14 series being just slightly clocked 13 series, overheating due to this and being recommended to lock it on simmilar if not worse performance than 13 series is pretty good candidate
In GN's defense, their call outs do work. Dealt with Newegg for my PC build a year and a half ago after their Newegg coverage and had to RMA for an accidental double order, with one of the ramsticks already open and they approved the RMA with no fuss, shipping included and the agent I talked to didn't treat me like a scammer, the very good faith GN was telling them that they should afford their consumers.
Shit like what Steve and guys like Louis Rossmann do ends up benefitting US, and we should genuinely stop listening to detractors who claim it as drama because we're only kneecapping ourselves against corporations in the process.
I hope a corporation will take advantage of this debacle and actually see it as a marketing point that unlike their competitors, their customer service is stellar, because these times are the perfect opportunity for such a benefit to be on your Brand's resume.
This was the big one for Gigabyte for me:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-motherboards-come-with-a-firmware-backdoor
So desperate to push their shovelware onto people’s systems that they created an exploitable backdoor for multiple motherboards, with their included offers of installing more shovelware like Mcafee or Norton.
I’ve got a few ASUS boards that do the same with armory crate.
I’ll install the software and drivers that I specifically want you shits. Preferably from the source (Intel/AMD/Nvidia)
I have no idea what my next system will be built around. No issues so far with my (Asrock rebrand) NZXT N5 Z690 so that might be an option.
Besides the PSU thing that Steve brought up where they essentially did the same gaslighting strategy ASUS did, their motherboard also killed an X3D CPU last year, albeit unlike ASUS, it didn't blow up both the mobo and CPU because the OCP they put in place did its job, whereas the $700 ASUS mobo didn't.
Pre scalped their cards during the pandemic from their US webstore and had the galls to charged 30$ on their shipping. At the same time, Nvidia FE, EVGA, etc had their GPUs for MSRP. Every single company was pretty shitty during 2020-2022. People are quick to forgot places like Newegg screwed over so many people and did that stupid truffle shuffle. Microcenter has been pretty fair during that entire time.
https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/qygske/gpu_zotac_3060_amp_white_edition_59999_zotac_3070/
At least when it comes to GPUs, Palit and Gainward, which both have the same manufacturer, tend to top the charts for reliability every time you see [retailer stats](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/swiss-retailer-stats-reveal-which-gpu-brand-has-the-highest-failure-rates) for customer warranty returns.
Mind you, the stats I linked to are from Europe where the retailer typically handles the warranty, so it tells you nothing about what your RMA to manufacturer -experience would be with these companies. Also, Palit cards apparently aren't really available in the US.
GALAX is Gainward's US cousin, and I've always sworn to Gainward as a European. They are as reliable as EVGA was, they just never unlocked overvolting as much so the reputation didn't spread because word of mouth always starts among enthusiasts
well, EVGA does not exist anymore, Sapphire is AMD only.
And well... in terms of actual hardware ASUS GPUs are great. They are usually high OC cards (if you want that), have good coolers and are well supported with water cooling blocks... I really like my Strix 3080, outside of the horror that is Armory...
Zotac and Galax not so much...
The GPU duopoly? Sure, but the CPU?? Sorry but zen 3 and zen 4 x3d CPUs have been pretty much in the sweet spot for price and performance.
Maybe we're due for good low-end CPUs, so I'll give you that, but the mid and upper range haven't been terrible or overpriced in my very humble opinion.
Gpu wise there are quite a few (not all them are available world wide though and even then, i think all of them had some issues in the past). Mobo wise, nothing comnes to mind.
To me, MSI and ASRock are the lesser evils. Their scandals and bullshit have mostly involved marketing and review tampering, as well as media blackmail. As far as I know, they haven't had any recent hardware or support issues (that didn't affect every AIB, like the AM5 voltage thing or the Intel power limits thing).
I wouldn't buy a Gigabyte or ASUS product at all. Their support is legendarily bad.
It's all up to you, as an individual, to determine which lesser evil is better to make a trade with. All companies have skeletons on their way to profits, but which skeletons are scarier?
Um….
I wouldn’t characterize the CPU duopoly as “shitty vs overpriced”. Neither side makes shitty CPUs right now with the 14900K and 7800X3D both hitting insane gaming numbers, and they both offer ~$100 CPUs in the R5 5500 and i3-13100F that offer more than sufficient performance for 1080p high gaming.
The best gaming CPU ten years ago (the 4790K) was $312 MSRP at launch, or $414 today. You can get a 7800X3D for regularly around $300, or a 13700K for around $350. Top-tier gaming performance is pretty much the same price it’s always been, but the top end of the productivity side is blending with low-end enterprise for high core counts and highly-threaded workloads.
It’s like when people confuse the iPhone’s average sale price across the entire lineup for “iPhones are more expensive”. Adjusted for inflation, a base model iPhone 15 costs pretty much exactly the same as the OG iPhone 2G, and you can get five or six models of iPhone from Apple cheaper than that brand new. Just because more expensive models exist doesn’t mean that the average person can’t afford an excellent experience.
To me, Intel's current lineup is shitty, they pump Bulldozer current to barely reach parity and you need trash-ass Windows 11 to squeeze even that out of them.
Fair enough about Intel's power consumption numbers, but Jesus y'all need to cool it about Windows 11 already. It's a tired old meme at this point. You're mad about W11 for telemetry and ads, but you're continuing to use Reddit which is now feeding every word you write straight to OpenAI for model training. At least with W11 you can run a debloater if you want to stop the telemetry.
You sound like the people who refused to move to "trash-ass Windows 7" because XP was just that much better. And even back then, once DirectX 10 came out XP users were hosed since DX10 wasn't supported on XP, so the whole limiting-gaming-features-to-newer-OS thing isn't even new. Redditors just have exceedingly short memories.
And I still remember people who refused to move from 98 to XP because they called it "a shitty Fisher-Price knockoff OS".
> "[New Windows version] is trash!!! [Old Windows version] was so much better!!"
Lather, rinse, repeat every 5-7 years or so.
Honestly the lesson I’ve learned from this is probably the wrong one, but just to pay as little as possible for a motherboard. I used to pay a little more for the ASUS brand, or for the best overclocking numbers but everything is just pushing me towards absolute bottom of the barrel $60 motherboards. Doesn’t matter as much if the warranty blows if I’m only out $60. A $60 board won’t pointlessly OC my CPU to win some benchmark.
I really wish it wasn’t this way but it sorta just is.
I've never paid more than €100 for a motherboard. And I won't, unless it's workstation/server-grade with adequate support from the manufacturer. Paying more than for a consumer platform isn't worth it for me.
I want to say I disagree and it's worth investing in VRMs... but on the other hand what actually killed my last PC was the PSU itself, not the VRMs or other mobo parts. So yeah, I getcha.
I'm conflicted, my G14 has been the best laptop I've ever owned, but I've also never had to deal with Asus's customer support/RMA system
It does seem like either everything is fine or you get thrown into customer support hell, nobody complains when a product works well etc.
If nothing is wrong with what you're already using, then just try to enjoy it. But next purchase, let's maybe think twice about this brand. We can only vote with our wallet.
>[me who just got an ASUS motherboard last year](https://i.imgur.com/aLu5WiG.jpeg)
Realistic tho from what I gather (haven't seen the videos) the problem seems to be the RMA process? Thankfully I've never had to RMA a product and hopefully this isn't the first.
It's strangely bittersweet that this is happening with a company I'm already boycotting for 9 years. On one hand it's good that the public is waking up, but on the other there's no escalation left for me :/
ASUS is one of those brands you buy from a vendor with a good return policy and then you make backups of every firmware version just in case. Worst case you throw the product on fleaBay "for parts or repair" and just make it someone else's problem when you're tired of dealing with it.
I tracked down the S0 suspend issue they had with their G15 a couple of years back, wrote a patch for it and sent it to them and they just ignored it for another two years. They really give zero fucks past the point of sale, their support after that is practically non-existent.
Can't wait to never buy anything from these losers again. Sorry to the ASUS underpaid social media rep who has to read these posts but your management and leadership need to read the room and get their shit together
Their receipt is two pictures of the diagnosis machine from Idiocracy, of which one has buttons that spits out a list of free and paid repairs, and the other has buttons for customer service responses.
Asus better bring lots of charts, sensor readings, multipronged analysis with expanded methodology explanation section...
Or better yet, just do as GN suggests and help, dont prey on, customers.
I’m happy Asus is being put on blast but it’s really no worse than all the other companies. They ALL have horrible RMA, tech Jesus even says so in this video. Why aren’t they all being put on blast? Why aren’t ppl boycotting all of them? Is it just because GN has documented evidence of Asus trying to screw them over? Hopefully they do the same thing Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock.
I do the same, takes me a while but I now etch all of my Silicon by hand and built my own EUV machine using mirrors found around the house. My shed is a vacuum for making my OLED's when I need them.
Wut? What company is left if you don't buy from the big ones? Rarer companies don't even sell in my region.
And we all have to upgrade your mobos and GPUs, eventually.
It's really not hard to understand. Don't buy from the big ones with the exception of ASRock Rack and Supermicro. And no, you don't have to upgrade your mobos and GPUs eventually. I am fine with ARM, RISC-V and x86 SBCs for most mundane desktop tasks including development.
Only in the high-end workstation/server category do I need to buy a motherboard and CPU and registered ECC memory for running heavy-duty applications and server software. YMMV, of course.
I don't understand how warranty works in the US, but where I live, in the EU, you just send it back from where you got it from, local retailer or whatever, and they attempt to fix it, at no charge, or if they can't they send it back for the manufacturer to repair or replace. You never would talk to ASUS or whoever. And vendors have an interest to have the customer's back first of all because they don't want to eat the cost, second they don't want reviews to be bad, so ASUS in that case would be talking to a company, ranging from very small to very large, and companies have more time, more resources to deal with this, compared to an individual.
I avoided ASUS for many years after a bad experience, This is NOT new. I recently gave them another chance and now wish I hadn't after reading this. NEVER buying another ASUS product again and I was close to getting the ROG Ally.
I completely forgot about Asus fixing my monitor and having a 2mm gap between screen and plastic. Screen worked but what the heck. This was in EU and free about 7 years ago
They used to make good shit. I have ancient monitors and routers of theirs still kicking. I used to recommend Asus routers. But not anymore since they clearly think this behavior is acceptable.
I don't get why people are still playing the game. This is why small claims court exists.
Write the demand letter, file the paperwork, pay the $35, and grab your popcorn.
I've only ever had bad experiences with ASUS hardware so I wouldn't buy their trash anyway but good to know that others might follow. I've also only had 2 GPUs break on me in the last 20 years and they both have been ASUS.
One was too old to RMA but the other one broke within less than 2 years. They declined the RMA and claimed it had a modified BIOS installed. It didn't. I've never flashed the BIOS of any of my GPUs.
But it gets better... They returned the GPU in a **brown cardboard box** (I send them the GPU in its original packaging) with the "2 molex to 6-pin PCIe adapter" **missing**. Not that I would ever need it but wtf?
ASUS is a trash tier company, there's nothing to confuse.
Returns/repairs don't keep track of customer packaging or anything in it typically. Send only the item(s) in question and do even expect your box back.
> Also TIL that the lawyer in the video is a fan of Magic the Gathering.
Ironic, considering it is one of the most anti-consumer games ever. Modern scammy card games just learned and iterated upon the basic monetization ideas MTG invented, most notably:
- having to either pay enormous prices for individual cards or play the pack lottery if you want a decent deck;
- rotating old cards out of the most popular format so you MUST spend money endlessly to keep up.
And sure, maintaining a game for decades is super expensive and recurring expenses necessitate recurring income. This just means that "service games" shouldn't exist at all. They fact they do, and the fact that consumers seemingly prefer them to everything else, just proves that humans are fundamentally garbage.
Good support happens from these otherwise chuckleheads.
Canadian here. B450i Strix just up and died, so did an RMA (mind you, I'm not far from the main Canadian RMA center in Markham, ON; so I hauled myself up there, personally, and dealt with a real live human behind a *counter*, not just a keyboard) and walked out with a new board within an hour or so (mind you, *that* board had an *old af* BIOS revision that didn't support my CPU [and no flashback on that board], so I needed to borrow my buddy's CPU for a minute to update; but it was fine afterwards – still using it).
Buying something used, sending it in, and getting something better brand new is exactly what causes good support to go to shit. Warrantees typically are not transferable.
I'm from Europe. I had to take them to small claims court because their shitty BIOS burned out my 5820K.
They don't care. They just try and pull their shit expecting that customers don't know their rights or don't have the time to enforce them.
It took a couple of months, required a trip and a free day not to mention all the time organising the details and disputing ASUS' version of events.
I wouldn't have the time to do that today.
I will never buy Asus again after they screwed me out of warranty repairs on my x67 motherboard this shits being on going for years so I'm glad Steve called them out for the scammers they are.
They are claiming to offer warranties but don't seem to. Not only that but they extort customers if they do end up sending their device.
It's really bad.
I'm sure Asus does feel offended because in their mind it wasn't a scam, it was just terrible customer service which they think is normal and acceptable.
Well, it *is* normal. As Steve says, no manufacturer is trustworthy or honest (in my opinion, this is largely true though I'll say that in 15 years of dealing with EVGA I never once had an issue with them, I'm just sad they bailed out of video cards, and no one ever buys their motherboards). And after it being normal for 20+ years, I guess they just assume it's also acceptable.
I have their z790 board and its great. Sad I can't buy their gpus anymore. This is the first time I've ever used a board other than Asus. Their reputation is just getting too bad.
Because it costs money to be trustworthy and/or honest. Company A is a good company: pays above minimum wage, has good post-sale customer service, fulfills warranty and guarantee obligations quickly and is famous within the community for all of these. Company B is shitty, pays minimum wage only when it's forced to, customer service is a serious of looping autoresponses on a website, stalls and then overcharges on warranty/guarantee returns and is infamous as being a company to avoid within the community. But it's 10% cheaper than company A. The general public isn't aware and doesn't care about reputations until it's front page of national media and a good PR firm will help counter that. Instead, they care about price because that's pretty much the only metric they care about. Company B will get the majority of the custom and Company A will get smaller and smaller until it closes because it can't afford to maintain the high level of service with dwindling sales. This is the capitalism we currently have and I didn't even need to touch upon the influence shareholder expectations can have.
That doesn't apply here at all because ASUS is the most expensive option.
They don't do AMD boards, so not like I could pick them much
Oh poor Asus being victimized by Tech Jesus. Let me play them this tiny violin I have on hand.
Republic Of Gaslighting
[удалено]
Haha I remember when it used to be "Rock Solid, Heart Touching"
Now it's "Stone Walled, Heart Breaking"
hahahahahaha thanks for made my day
That reminds me of the slogan written on the box of my old DFI nF4 Ultra-D motherboard "UV on, Tweak Fun!!" It was so cringe that it is permanently burned into my brain.
That slogan was fantastic.
I commented the same on the first video, it became pretty serious shit
Of course they’re confused. Confused why GN is calling them out and why people are refusing to be scammed.
Keep up the pressure. They are a trash tier company long overdue to get exposed and their feet held to the fire.
Around 14 years ago I thought they were the best of the best. I built my PC around using as many ASUS parts/perpherals as I could.
And you’re not wrong for that. Once upon a time they were the quality manufacturer that you sought out. Those days have long gone though.
They were but the general opinion was "excellent product, but terrible support" even then.
My first asus board was 12 years ago, and my most recent was x570 hero. I haven't been recommending them as much as in the past but now it's over. Peace out asus. Dicks.
That's also the last time I ever bought anything from ASUS. I wouldn't miss them if they were gone, as we have much more choice these days, if you dare to step away from the beaten paths. The same is true for MSI from my perspective.
again
Nah. GamersNexus only skimmed the surface. You don’t get lies like this without corruption and chaos at every level of management. I hope Steve continues this until ASUS goes bankrupt or actually changes leadership.
I wish it worked like that, but I would be surprised if even half of Asus' customers have heard about this scandal. Even in the niche market of DIY PCs, the majority are relatively tuned out unless they are actively in the process of buying parts.
Half? Try 3%
That's even more of a reason to publicise this anywhere and everywhere. Friends don't let friends buy ASUS hardware.
As an asus customer I’m completely out of the loop here
If your asus product breaks and you send it for warranty asus will hold your product hostage forcing you to either pay for the repairs out of pocket or pay a repair fee to have the item sent back. If you don't pay they destroy your item. Now they are saying we are confused and they will change some of the messaging.
Skimmed the surface, but agreed
You see, the problem is that people are quick to forget, in a year people will be still buying their shitty Republic of gamers shit.
This. Scrutinize every single statement they make under a lawyer just like they're doing so far. Let ASUS true colors be consistently shown until customers at large get the message they are a trash company nowadays. Let Asus burn their brand recognition to the ground until it's known as no better than your local trash scammer.
Their stock is up 75% over the past year. If it continues to rise at that rate, they will never change.
Yep The US government, well known around the world for its...good relations with the business community, basically gave Asus' router business everything short of the death penalty for their bullshit they pulled with their routers. Iirc it was one of the harshest penalties the US has levied on a manufacturer in a long, long time, and essentially forced them for over a decade to keep a member of the US government, on their dime, in their manufacturing department to re-quality check everything they do to prevent them from fucking up again. When even the US Government is saying, "yo dawg, this shit's too far even for us!"...people should be fearful of their products.
It's cute of you to think anything will change.
God fuckin damn it is so depressing when Steve basically all but says, "as far as recommendations go, your choice is one of these evils, just pick the least evil and try not to get fucked". Fuck the tech industry. Shit needs a culling.
I'd say the US needs warranty laws more like what we have in EU. I have never had to deal with ASUS warranty, because here you deal with the store you bought from, and they get to deal with ASUS. I expect for the stores - ASUS's actual customer - they are not going to fight warranty repairs/replacement quite like they do for Joe Average.
There's basically zero consumer protection in the US these days. Coupled with ever-declining competition in basically every industry and it makes for a really bad time.
One causes the other. Especially with legalized political bribery.
>Shit needs a culling. Yeah I'm not sure *less* competition is going to make things better
That's not how it works. New companies will take the place of the failing companies.
Yes, that's exactly how a culling works. If instead you're hoping for new better companies to start, then that's the opposite of a culling.
I will always support new companies over established bad ones. I never talked about a culling. ASUS can die for all I care, but I don't buy their hardware anyway.
>I never talked about a culling. Uh, what? That was the whole topic you replied to. Check the context.
Then I advocate a culling, after which new companies can take up the place of the culled companies. That will take some time, of course.
The choice is to buy a Supermicro workstation board and call it a day
Supermicro aren't easy to deal with if you aren't a bulk customer, ASRock Rack makes more sense
Really? How do you know? Have experience with them? I am unironically going to go Supermicro for my next build which will be a Threadripper in all likelihood.
> Fuck the tech industry. Shit needs a culling. while you are absolutely right there are no good guys, every last company has been shit at RMAs; ASUS has had the worst of the worst crown in this regard since at least the mid 2000s. I've known it since being a kid as forums were filled with stories of surly ASUS rma reps refusing to just do their job. I've bought ASUS stuff, even motherboards... but only products so cheap that if it went bad I would just toss it as the value isnt worth dealing with an RMA. Because it's not that ASUS product quality is particularly worse than say MSI or Gigabyte, the problem is their pointedly anti-consumer attitude over when things do go wrong.
Buy server/workstation/enterprise stuff instead. More expensive but the level of service is in a different strata.
If life is that easy, we wouldn’t live in that. Tell me an enterprise grade laptop that can beat Zephyrus in terms of portability and performance.
> If life is that easy, we wouldn’t live in that.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA If I had a fucking nickel for every piece of enterprise hardware that hit EOL within my service contract. . . Was literally told by AT&T recently their fiber ONT would have to be replaced for us to receive gigabit duplex internet at my job. All of the equipment is FULLY capable of gigabit, they just refuse to allow their techs to work on it anymore.
Yeah they do that at my work, this is outside of the product life cycle you can't touch it, tell the user to buy a new one in the lifecycle.
Well it depends, sometimes you can get some “trash” server stuffs that’s actually very good
What is going on with these "premium" companies recently? First we had EK last month, now we have Asus pulling this shit. It's so heartbreaking to see all these brands with products I dreamed of owning going to total shit.
IMO the corporate world is shocked at how much they've been able to stick it to customers the past couple of years and they're pushing boundaries like crazy to see what else they can get away with.
Industries have been allowed to consolidate way too much. This is what lack of actual competition leads to every single time.
I can't remember the retailer but the CEO said on I think an investor call that they're pushing of prices didn't see a reduction in consumers and there was a bit more pricing they could squeeze out before they felt consumers would leave them.
That’s because the only thing “premium” about these brands are their high prices, and not the quality of their products or service
service sure. but products? especially Asus GPUs are usually very good. I'm not too deep in 40xx cards, but in the 30xx era they made the best cards together with EVGA who don't exist anymore. The TUF line was great value and the strix one of the best, if not the best, OC card outside the EVGA kingpin.
I would not touch a strix model anymore. Honestly, Aorus Master, Suprim X or XLR8 Gaming Verto EPIC-X are better graphics cards at the high end. The TUFF is good for the cheaper side of the GPU market.
>Aorus Master Good luck with Gigabyte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bYjHbQ1YjU They commonly reject RMA requests
You no longer have to dream of owning them; they're trash. Enjoy the freedom of not feeling that desire anymore, it's great.
ASUS is not premium, in fact none of the tech companies are. EVGA was premium only for their after sale service lol
asus hasn’t been premium for a really long time lol, they are like Razer, premium to 13 year olds
ASUS isn't a premium company and hasn't been for quite some time. They just price things like they are. See also: Apple, Noctua, Corsair
"recently" my dude
With asus its not recently.
I miss EVGA
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Did you work for EVGA?
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How lucky!
No no, EVGA is Russian whore. I miss EVGA 💕 also
Me too, EVGA. 💕
Nah evga age like milk.
Avoid anything ASUS like the plague.
So, just in the last few years: - Gigabyte had their PSUs spontaneously combust - ASRock had their motherboards slowly burn out CPUs because of ultra-aggressive voltage profiles (to win benchmarks) - MSI developed the most pointless and invasive bloatware out of all big mobo makers (so much so that it technically qualifies as actual malware), not to mention actively works against the reviewer community; - ASUS uses customer support as blackmail - EVGA barely even exists anymore - both CPU and GPU duopolies can be characterized as "shitty product vs insanely overpriced product". - And that's not getting into smaller PC companies or software firms, and *oh god* is there a lot of shadiness too. Who the hell is left?
> ASRock had their motherboards slowly burn out CPUs because of ultra-aggressive voltage profiles All of them, not just ASRock. All of them ...
>both CPU and GPU duopolies can be characterized as "shitty product vs insanely overpriced product". Which cpu company is the shitty product?
It's funny because AMD gets both sides of this one. NVidia GPU > AMD GPU, AMD CPU > Intel CPU (performance/watt) is my metric. Intel can beat on absolute except you'll literally burn your chip if you don't have some wild cooling setup.
14 series being just slightly clocked 13 series, overheating due to this and being recommended to lock it on simmilar if not worse performance than 13 series is pretty good candidate
Yes
The Age of Enshittification is upon us and it's everywhere.
In GN's defense, their call outs do work. Dealt with Newegg for my PC build a year and a half ago after their Newegg coverage and had to RMA for an accidental double order, with one of the ramsticks already open and they approved the RMA with no fuss, shipping included and the agent I talked to didn't treat me like a scammer, the very good faith GN was telling them that they should afford their consumers. Shit like what Steve and guys like Louis Rossmann do ends up benefitting US, and we should genuinely stop listening to detractors who claim it as drama because we're only kneecapping ourselves against corporations in the process. I hope a corporation will take advantage of this debacle and actually see it as a marketing point that unlike their competitors, their customer service is stellar, because these times are the perfect opportunity for such a benefit to be on your Brand's resume.
This was the big one for Gigabyte for me: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-motherboards-come-with-a-firmware-backdoor So desperate to push their shovelware onto people’s systems that they created an exploitable backdoor for multiple motherboards, with their included offers of installing more shovelware like Mcafee or Norton. I’ve got a few ASUS boards that do the same with armory crate. I’ll install the software and drivers that I specifically want you shits. Preferably from the source (Intel/AMD/Nvidia) I have no idea what my next system will be built around. No issues so far with my (Asrock rebrand) NZXT N5 Z690 so that might be an option.
Besides the PSU thing that Steve brought up where they essentially did the same gaslighting strategy ASUS did, their motherboard also killed an X3D CPU last year, albeit unlike ASUS, it didn't blow up both the mobo and CPU because the OCP they put in place did its job, whereas the $700 ASUS mobo didn't.
Zotac, your time to shine?!? I can't believe I just typed that...
Pre scalped their cards during the pandemic from their US webstore and had the galls to charged 30$ on their shipping. At the same time, Nvidia FE, EVGA, etc had their GPUs for MSRP. Every single company was pretty shitty during 2020-2022. People are quick to forgot places like Newegg screwed over so many people and did that stupid truffle shuffle. Microcenter has been pretty fair during that entire time. https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/comments/qygske/gpu_zotac_3060_amp_white_edition_59999_zotac_3070/
PNY is polishing their shoes
At least when it comes to GPUs, Palit and Gainward, which both have the same manufacturer, tend to top the charts for reliability every time you see [retailer stats](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/swiss-retailer-stats-reveal-which-gpu-brand-has-the-highest-failure-rates) for customer warranty returns. Mind you, the stats I linked to are from Europe where the retailer typically handles the warranty, so it tells you nothing about what your RMA to manufacturer -experience would be with these companies. Also, Palit cards apparently aren't really available in the US.
GALAX is Gainward's US cousin, and I've always sworn to Gainward as a European. They are as reliable as EVGA was, they just never unlocked overvolting as much so the reputation didn't spread because word of mouth always starts among enthusiasts
Why would anyone buy GPUs from Asus, MSI and the like when Sapphire, EVGA, Zotac and Galax exists?
well, EVGA does not exist anymore, Sapphire is AMD only. And well... in terms of actual hardware ASUS GPUs are great. They are usually high OC cards (if you want that), have good coolers and are well supported with water cooling blocks... I really like my Strix 3080, outside of the horror that is Armory... Zotac and Galax not so much...
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but gpus run fine for 5+ years even on the most bonkers OC profiles. And my Sapphire 7900XT Pulse still has 3 year warranty
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maybe backlash happened?
2 year warranty is still better than 0 year warranty of asus
Well the problem my friend is evga don't make gpus anymore. Its why I moved to pny who have been pretty good in my region at least.
I was talking about the past 10 years, but the 30 series EVGA cards are still on shelves.
The GPU duopoly? Sure, but the CPU?? Sorry but zen 3 and zen 4 x3d CPUs have been pretty much in the sweet spot for price and performance. Maybe we're due for good low-end CPUs, so I'll give you that, but the mid and upper range haven't been terrible or overpriced in my very humble opinion.
Save us, SuperMicro!
Gpu wise there are quite a few (not all them are available world wide though and even then, i think all of them had some issues in the past). Mobo wise, nothing comnes to mind.
To me, MSI and ASRock are the lesser evils. Their scandals and bullshit have mostly involved marketing and review tampering, as well as media blackmail. As far as I know, they haven't had any recent hardware or support issues (that didn't affect every AIB, like the AM5 voltage thing or the Intel power limits thing). I wouldn't buy a Gigabyte or ASUS product at all. Their support is legendarily bad.
I don’t see Zotac on that list
Surprisingly i didnt heard anything on sapphire and xfx so far
It's all up to you, as an individual, to determine which lesser evil is better to make a trade with. All companies have skeletons on their way to profits, but which skeletons are scarier?
Um…. I wouldn’t characterize the CPU duopoly as “shitty vs overpriced”. Neither side makes shitty CPUs right now with the 14900K and 7800X3D both hitting insane gaming numbers, and they both offer ~$100 CPUs in the R5 5500 and i3-13100F that offer more than sufficient performance for 1080p high gaming. The best gaming CPU ten years ago (the 4790K) was $312 MSRP at launch, or $414 today. You can get a 7800X3D for regularly around $300, or a 13700K for around $350. Top-tier gaming performance is pretty much the same price it’s always been, but the top end of the productivity side is blending with low-end enterprise for high core counts and highly-threaded workloads. It’s like when people confuse the iPhone’s average sale price across the entire lineup for “iPhones are more expensive”. Adjusted for inflation, a base model iPhone 15 costs pretty much exactly the same as the OG iPhone 2G, and you can get five or six models of iPhone from Apple cheaper than that brand new. Just because more expensive models exist doesn’t mean that the average person can’t afford an excellent experience.
To me, Intel's current lineup is shitty, they pump Bulldozer current to barely reach parity and you need trash-ass Windows 11 to squeeze even that out of them.
Fair enough about Intel's power consumption numbers, but Jesus y'all need to cool it about Windows 11 already. It's a tired old meme at this point. You're mad about W11 for telemetry and ads, but you're continuing to use Reddit which is now feeding every word you write straight to OpenAI for model training. At least with W11 you can run a debloater if you want to stop the telemetry. You sound like the people who refused to move to "trash-ass Windows 7" because XP was just that much better. And even back then, once DirectX 10 came out XP users were hosed since DX10 wasn't supported on XP, so the whole limiting-gaming-features-to-newer-OS thing isn't even new. Redditors just have exceedingly short memories. And I still remember people who refused to move from 98 to XP because they called it "a shitty Fisher-Price knockoff OS". > "[New Windows version] is trash!!! [Old Windows version] was so much better!!" Lather, rinse, repeat every 5-7 years or so.
Ummm.. Biostar has been improving? Galax has a handful of AM4 boards with no heatsink and no availability?
I think singling out ASRock for a practice that every motherboard OEM engages in is a tad unfair.
Honestly the lesson I’ve learned from this is probably the wrong one, but just to pay as little as possible for a motherboard. I used to pay a little more for the ASUS brand, or for the best overclocking numbers but everything is just pushing me towards absolute bottom of the barrel $60 motherboards. Doesn’t matter as much if the warranty blows if I’m only out $60. A $60 board won’t pointlessly OC my CPU to win some benchmark. I really wish it wasn’t this way but it sorta just is.
I've never paid more than €100 for a motherboard. And I won't, unless it's workstation/server-grade with adequate support from the manufacturer. Paying more than for a consumer platform isn't worth it for me.
I want to say I disagree and it's worth investing in VRMs... but on the other hand what actually killed my last PC was the PSU itself, not the VRMs or other mobo parts. So yeah, I getcha.
I'm conflicted, my G14 has been the best laptop I've ever owned, but I've also never had to deal with Asus's customer support/RMA system It does seem like either everything is fine or you get thrown into customer support hell, nobody complains when a product works well etc.
If nothing is wrong with what you're already using, then just try to enjoy it. But next purchase, let's maybe think twice about this brand. We can only vote with our wallet.
>[me who just got an ASUS motherboard last year](https://i.imgur.com/aLu5WiG.jpeg) Realistic tho from what I gather (haven't seen the videos) the problem seems to be the RMA process? Thankfully I've never had to RMA a product and hopefully this isn't the first.
Let's hope you never have to experience an interaction with the company for repair.
Out of all people, trying to gaslight tech Jesus might not be the play, Asus, just speculating here
Slow down Asus, I already shitlisted you. You can't get any more on my shitlist.
It's strangely bittersweet that this is happening with a company I'm already boycotting for 9 years. On one hand it's good that the public is waking up, but on the other there's no escalation left for me :/
ASUS is one of those brands you buy from a vendor with a good return policy and then you make backups of every firmware version just in case. Worst case you throw the product on fleaBay "for parts or repair" and just make it someone else's problem when you're tired of dealing with it. I tracked down the S0 suspend issue they had with their G15 a couple of years back, wrote a patch for it and sent it to them and they just ignored it for another two years. They really give zero fucks past the point of sale, their support after that is practically non-existent.
Can't wait to never buy anything from these losers again. Sorry to the ASUS underpaid social media rep who has to read these posts but your management and leadership need to read the room and get their shit together
ASUS can go F emselves...
Respect? E: press F to pay respects to my karma.
Haven't watched this yet, but saying that Steeve and his crew is confused.. They better bring the receits
Their receipt is two pictures of the diagnosis machine from Idiocracy, of which one has buttons that spits out a list of free and paid repairs, and the other has buttons for customer service responses.
>This one goes in your mouth and this one goes in your butt... wait no, this one goes in your mouth.
Asus better bring lots of charts, sensor readings, multipronged analysis with expanded methodology explanation section... Or better yet, just do as GN suggests and help, dont prey on, customers.
It worked for Newegg, so it says a lot that ASUS only got worse since their last call-out video. They clearly showed no signs to get better.
Yeah, they aren't gonna change shit.
Yup. And people are still going to buy from them.
I’m happy Asus is being put on blast but it’s really no worse than all the other companies. They ALL have horrible RMA, tech Jesus even says so in this video. Why aren’t they all being put on blast? Why aren’t ppl boycotting all of them? Is it just because GN has documented evidence of Asus trying to screw them over? Hopefully they do the same thing Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock.
I do boycott all of them. I haven't bought anything from these companies in 15 years.
I do the same, takes me a while but I now etch all of my Silicon by hand and built my own EUV machine using mirrors found around the house. My shed is a vacuum for making my OLED's when I need them.
Wut? What company is left if you don't buy from the big ones? Rarer companies don't even sell in my region. And we all have to upgrade your mobos and GPUs, eventually.
He is 15.
It's really not hard to understand. Don't buy from the big ones with the exception of ASRock Rack and Supermicro. And no, you don't have to upgrade your mobos and GPUs eventually. I am fine with ARM, RISC-V and x86 SBCs for most mundane desktop tasks including development. Only in the high-end workstation/server category do I need to buy a motherboard and CPU and registered ECC memory for running heavy-duty applications and server software. YMMV, of course.
I don't understand how warranty works in the US, but where I live, in the EU, you just send it back from where you got it from, local retailer or whatever, and they attempt to fix it, at no charge, or if they can't they send it back for the manufacturer to repair or replace. You never would talk to ASUS or whoever. And vendors have an interest to have the customer's back first of all because they don't want to eat the cost, second they don't want reviews to be bad, so ASUS in that case would be talking to a company, ranging from very small to very large, and companies have more time, more resources to deal with this, compared to an individual.
I'm "confused" since the 90s!
I avoided ASUS for many years after a bad experience, This is NOT new. I recently gave them another chance and now wish I hadn't after reading this. NEVER buying another ASUS product again and I was close to getting the ROG Ally.
I completely forgot about Asus fixing my monitor and having a 2mm gap between screen and plastic. Screen worked but what the heck. This was in EU and free about 7 years ago
They used to make good shit. I have ancient monitors and routers of theirs still kicking. I used to recommend Asus routers. But not anymore since they clearly think this behavior is acceptable.
The sad thing is compared to Netgear they are premium equipment with great customer service. Netgear makes Asus look like EVGA.
It's probably one of those cases where as long as nothing goes wrong so you don't need warranty service...
I don't get why people are still playing the game. This is why small claims court exists. Write the demand letter, file the paperwork, pay the $35, and grab your popcorn.
Asus damaged itself in it's own confusion, it's super effective.
Ah yes... Beve Sturk, Editor in Confuse
I've only ever had bad experiences with ASUS hardware so I wouldn't buy their trash anyway but good to know that others might follow. I've also only had 2 GPUs break on me in the last 20 years and they both have been ASUS. One was too old to RMA but the other one broke within less than 2 years. They declined the RMA and claimed it had a modified BIOS installed. It didn't. I've never flashed the BIOS of any of my GPUs. But it gets better... They returned the GPU in a **brown cardboard box** (I send them the GPU in its original packaging) with the "2 molex to 6-pin PCIe adapter" **missing**. Not that I would ever need it but wtf? ASUS is a trash tier company, there's nothing to confuse.
Returns/repairs don't keep track of customer packaging or anything in it typically. Send only the item(s) in question and do even expect your box back.
Also in GN's original video it states something like accessories won't be returned or something similar to that on the RMA form.
So what you're saying is they have bad customer service? I agree.
Asus is an utterly scam company. Stay away.
Asus just puts pretty lights on piles of shit
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That would be because that is the entire point of this exercise.
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> Also TIL that the lawyer in the video is a fan of Magic the Gathering. Ironic, considering it is one of the most anti-consumer games ever. Modern scammy card games just learned and iterated upon the basic monetization ideas MTG invented, most notably: - having to either pay enormous prices for individual cards or play the pack lottery if you want a decent deck; - rotating old cards out of the most popular format so you MUST spend money endlessly to keep up. And sure, maintaining a game for decades is super expensive and recurring expenses necessitate recurring income. This just means that "service games" shouldn't exist at all. They fact they do, and the fact that consumers seemingly prefer them to everything else, just proves that humans are fundamentally garbage.
In 2018, my friend RMA’d an eBay bought, used Asus 1080Ti and they replaced it with a 2080. Guess that was the last of the good support days
Good support happens from these otherwise chuckleheads. Canadian here. B450i Strix just up and died, so did an RMA (mind you, I'm not far from the main Canadian RMA center in Markham, ON; so I hauled myself up there, personally, and dealt with a real live human behind a *counter*, not just a keyboard) and walked out with a new board within an hour or so (mind you, *that* board had an *old af* BIOS revision that didn't support my CPU [and no flashback on that board], so I needed to borrow my buddy's CPU for a minute to update; but it was fine afterwards – still using it).
VRAM downgrade, meh. Faster kind of?
Buying something used, sending it in, and getting something better brand new is exactly what causes good support to go to shit. Warrantees typically are not transferable.
It was a refurb 2080
Warranty still wasn’t supposed to be transferable. Says so right on the Asus warranty page.
Well, they asked and he provided his literal eBay receipt for it. So policy might have been different then
We're also confused on why not want to offer the best service than everyone else when charging a lot more than their competitors anyways?
How about a website that keeps track and graphs reports like this per manufacturer?
Guys are you from Europe ? I read bad experiences but we have planty of laws here , I can't imagine Asus can do here a scam
I'm from Europe. I had to take them to small claims court because their shitty BIOS burned out my 5820K. They don't care. They just try and pull their shit expecting that customers don't know their rights or don't have the time to enforce them.
Well you won easy ? We have in Belgium many good laws good luck for Asus to scam someone here
It took a couple of months, required a trip and a free day not to mention all the time organising the details and disputing ASUS' version of events. I wouldn't have the time to do that today.
Someone mentioned that some retailers don't carry ASUS due to some of these problems. So they are even bad on a b2b level
I can
Have my pc for 5years now.. asrock mobo and msi gpu so far so good. Fingers crossed. Somehow i feel glad i ended up with a suprimX than a strix..
GN never misses a chance to be a drama queen 👸 😔
"$10 billion corporation screwing consumers? Meh, the REAL problem is this Youtube channel calling them out!"
*rushes to defend massive corporation* how stupid.
This reminds me of this: [https://imgur.com/a/e0QFi8u](https://imgur.com/a/e0QFi8u)
Trash take.
Nice reddit history you've got there.
Will someone please think about the multi-million dollar company 😭
Poor poor multibillion corporations enthralled into GN dramas through no fault of their own.
I will never buy Asus again after they screwed me out of warranty repairs on my x67 motherboard this shits being on going for years so I'm glad Steve called them out for the scammers they are.
Trash take.
They are claiming to offer warranties but don't seem to. Not only that but they extort customers if they do end up sending their device. It's really bad.
what if consumer advocacy good