Warning on Motherboard Warranties

gordan

gordan

gordan

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I'm not sure how many people here are aware of this matter, but it turns out that motherboard warranties are not as comprehensive as one might reasonably expect.

Specifically, motherboards that are burn-damaged beyond repair by components failing (exploding/melting/catching fire) are excluded from warranties by at least two major manufacturers. I've stumbled on this matter on a thread on the DFI support forum, and I thought it might influence some people's choice of motherboard (it certainly influences mine, even though I've never actually had a motherboard fail in such a spectacular way), so figured it could be of interest.

After all, knowing what the score is will hopefully save some long-term aggravation for both customers and the proprietors of this forum.

Here is a link.

Summary: Both DFI and Asus exclude such secondary burn damage on the motherboard from warranties, even if it was caused by failure of a component that would in itself otherwise be covered by the warranty.

(Note: No plugs to retailers, only component manufacturers.)
 
I wouldn't touch Asus or DFI boards again anyway, how well to Gigabyte fare (they offer 10 year warranty on some boards)?

EDIT: I haven't read the entire thread, was he overclocking?
 
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No mention of overclocking. Sounds like standard run-of-the-mill component failure burning a hole in the MoBo PCB. Gigabyte don't seem to list any such restrictions, if you look at the thread you'll see I linked some motherboard manufacturers' warranty terms there - but since it looks like I missed Asus' exclusions the first time around, more digging is advised.
 
Chris basing your mobo purchase on how the companys choose to advertise their products which was the root of all this is not really as important as how the boards perform or how well the maker covers their warranty surely. I can confirm that Asus don't consider burn outs of their boards as covered by their warranty as that happened with my first A8N sli premium i had for one year and one week and never oc'd. Thankfully the reatailor did see it as a fault with the board replaced it and i didn't lose any money. It was one of the reasons why i went looking for a different maker this time around.
 
So gigabyte are ok with their waranties then? Buying a new motherboard today and it's between ASUS and Gigabyte, i'm leaning more towards gigabyte just because of their layout on the board. other than that they're nearly the same boards, lol.
 
RizlaKing said:
Chris basing your mobo purchase on how the companys choose to advertise their products which was the root of all this is not really as important as how the boards perform or how well the maker covers their warranty surely. I can confirm that Asus don't consider burn outs of their boards as covered by their warranty as that happened with my first A8N sli premium i had for one year and one week and never oc'd. Thankfully the reatailor did see it as a fault with the board replaced it and i didn't lose any money. It was one of the reasons why i went looking for a different maker this time around.
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Hi, you have me wrong, it's nothing whatsoever to do with their advertising. They released a press statement that was full of lies about Asus and used a picture of a non-Asus card to illustrate it.
You can buy what you like but I will not consider a purchase from a company that makes things up so its own product looks better then, quite clearly, gets caught with its pants down. If your Asus motherboard burned out that is not good, however one example doesn't make them any more unreliable then any other.
At the end of the day it's up to the individual, however, for the record, I don't think that any one is any more, or less, reliable than another....
Chris
 
Chris the whole row kicked off because of adverts that both companys put out regarding new power saving features that their new boards contained and it all spiralled to a silly amount with both companys making false claims but yes gigabyte did make bigger false claims. But that is no reason to disregard a maker as that is all guff that most off us don't pay any attention to in the first place.

I buy on the basis of layout, features and customer service. My experience of Asus customer service wasn't good so i judged them by that and also on the features from as they A8N sli had the nvidia firewall thing that was far more troulbe then it was worth it looked good on paper as Asus always do but i found problems with some of the features that made them a downside on use where as they were a plus point on paper.
 
gordan said:
No mention of overclocking. Sounds like standard run-of-the-mill component failure burning a hole in the MoBo PCB. Gigabyte don't seem to list any such restrictions, if you look at the thread you'll see I linked some motherboard manufacturers' warranty terms there - but since it looks like I missed Asus' exclusions the first time around, more digging is advised.
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I only asked about overclocking as if you run higher voltages then it can stress the voltage regulators more, but even so, the chip shouldn't burn out like that! I still think it's shocking how manufacturers are allowed to get away with this and I feel it will probably take something pretty dramatic (an office fire caused by faulty motherboard?) before things change...
chriscatt said:
Hi, I wouldn't trust Gigabyte at all, recently they published total and outright lies about Asus and then had to pubish a apology and retract them http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90635 . Sorry but if that's the way they do their business then I'm sticking with Asus...
Chris
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Fair enough, if your happy with Asus then that's up to you. I mainly choose Gigabyte boards now as I've had unreliable boards in the past by DFI, Asus and A-bit.

I had yet to have a Gigabyte board fail on me (touch wood!), so I'm going to go with their boards despite their stupid bickering with Asus...
 
Wow, thats news to me,

I have sent back 2 Asus boards with burn damage over the last 12 months. Got replacement boards on both occasions
 
As just a normal person reading this news it seems pretty unfair that a part/component can fail, and not be covered by warranty.

God forbid if some person who did not have any knowledge about computers bought a PC in a shop. If their PC happened to fail on them after never been opened or tampered with, they would bring it back to the shop they purchased it in to have it fixed. Can you imagine their disappointment after the machine/part has come back from the supplier and being told that their PC died due to component failure (which is in no way due to the end-user but the components of the supplied hardware) but hey it's not covered by the warranty which is supposed to cover hardware in the event of failure as long as it hasn't been caused by the end user.

If this is not the case, this should be clearly identified in the little warranty booklet that nobody pays attention to or else it seems like a false advertisement of warranty?

I'm no expert or knowledgeable with laws but would this be a consumer right as they did not damage the component. Unless specified in the warranty booklet that this is not covered by warranty.

All the above is really me thinking out loud.
 
RizlaKing said:
Chris the whole row kicked off because of adverts that both companys put out regarding new power saving features that their new boards contained and it all spiralled to a silly amount with both companys making false claims but yes gigabyte did make bigger false claims. But that is no reason to disregard a maker as that is all guff that most off us don't pay any attention to in the first place.
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Hi, I'm sorry but Gigabytes lies amounted to more than just false claims, look at what's just happened to Apple and their iphone if you want to see false claims. No these were direct allegations made about Asus products:
1) Asus claimed their capacitors were of high quality, gigabye claimed they were not. Gigabyte went further and published photos it claimed were of Asus capacitors. These 'photos' were proved to be of a different manufacturer card than Asus, Asus threatened court litigation, Gigabyte was forced to climb down and make a public apology.

2) Gigabyte claimed that Asus's EPU was software based and not as good as their hardware version. Again this resulted in Asus threatening court action and again, as this was proved not to be true, gigabyte had to publish a humilating public apology.

Now I don't have any problem with what choices you all make, however I would not purchase any item when the company has to resort to such, so-called, 'marketing tricks', after all, if their product are so good, ask yourself, why bother? Personally I would not touch them with a barge pole, oh, and all my Asus boards have been fine too, for the last six years.
Chris
 
Skyline said:
So they can build a board that over time causes a fault or burn/damage to the PCB and its YOUR fault??? WTF???
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It's actually worse than that. If you read the thread all the way through, apparently they can void your warranty at their discretion. And when I asked for them to point out where they list their warranty policy because nothing of the sort they described is listed on the box, in the instruction manual or on their web site, the guy said he wasn't sure it was listed in any publicly available document (that bit may have been in a private message, not sure). So it's actually more of a WTF than it even looks at a glance.
 
Before anyone works themselves up into a lather . . . I just have to say I've been through many many motherboards and none of them have burned up/exploded! :D

And from personal experience I find ASUS make fantastic motherboards, never had a problem which is why I guess I've used so many of their products, can't bash ASUS for their mobos, you can bash them for their 3rd party CPU heatsink though, they are baddddddddd! :p
 
Hi, I guess there are many out there who have had one bad experience with a bad board or rma, whatever manufacturer they are. We also don't actually know how thejwt has treated his motherboard, we only have one side of the argument to deal with...
Chris
 
All valid points just found it funny that what he describes i encountered would be nice to know it's not a common thing and despite the A8N i mentioned have never had anything like it before or since.
 
From the pics that have been posted you can't really see the damage and I personally can't see how DFI can say that if a component on their board fails in such a way that it makes the board unrepairable then the RMA is void, seems a tad ridiculous to me.
 
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