Which company has the best support?

jimmy_lazers · 17 Oct 2009 at 21:00

Prefrably forum based.

Having problems with my 939 GA-K8N-SLI so I did a search on the gigabyte forum and the only posts mentioning my board are mine. Either no other K8N-SLI owner has had a problem or they've deleted posts that mention problems. So I'm now suspicious of them.

MikeHunt79 · 17 Oct 2009 at 21:02

Gigabyte are fine, when you RMA a board to them everything goes smoothly,

Just google Asus RMA if you want to know who to avoid!

DFI made nice boards that seemed to become unstable, it's a shame they did not make a reliable board....

A-bit are/were pretty good tho.

Parsley · 17 Oct 2009 at 21:06

Am I the only person who had a good quality of service when RMAing a board to Asus?

jimmy_lazers · 17 Oct 2009 at 21:12

But if your warranty has expired then the RMA process is irrelevant. The problem I have is no one I know has socket 939. I'm planning to upgrade to i5 if I can't economically repair my PC, but then I'd be in the same boat. How can I test and diagnose [sp?] a problem if no one I know is on the i5 socket? I need a good forum thats how!

Hades · 17 Oct 2009 at 21:52

jimmy_lazers said:
Prefrably forum based.

Having problems with my 939 GA-K8N-SLI so I did a search on the gigabyte forum and the only posts mentioning my board are mine. Either no other K8N-SLI owner has had a problem or they've deleted posts that mention problems. So I'm now suspicious of them.

I've got that motherboard in a spare PC. What problems are you having?

Cheapest upgrade would be to replace the mobo with another s939 one. I may have two for sale (including the K8N-SLI) shortly. But they can be had quite cheaply second hand.

PermaBanned · 17 Oct 2009 at 21:58

MikeHunt79 said:
Gigabyte are fine, when you RMA a board to them everything goes smoothly,

Just google Asus RMA if you want to know who to avoid!

DFI made nice boards that seemed to become unstable, it's a shame they did not make a reliable board....

A-bit are/were pretty good tho.

You do realise Asus just pretty much sorted out their RMA system? It now takes no more than 5 days for 95% of cases.

DFI make very stable boards.

There aren't really any big no's on the motherboard front.

MikeHunt79 · 17 Oct 2009 at 22:04

Superewza said:
You do realise Asus just pretty much sorted out their RMA system? It now takes no more than 5 days for 95% of cases.

DFI make very stable boards.

There aren't really any big no's on the motherboard front.

Well, I'm glad they've sorted out thier RMA system, after my P5B bit the dust it took them around 2 months until I got a replacement!

I also have 3 DFI boards that no longer work today, despite being great back in the day... Shame they skimped on thier caps.

I guess a good motherboard is a motherboard that works.

jimmy_lazers · 17 Oct 2009 at 22:51

Hades said:
I've got that motherboard in a spare PC. What problems are you having?
Cheapest upgrade would be to replace the mobo with another s939 one. I may have two for sale (including the K8N-SLI) shortly. But they can be had quite cheaply second hand.

It wont POST except very ocassionaly, as in years, I've only just narrowed it down to the mobo.

I just got hold of a dfi lanparty ultra-d. Which are apparently unstable. I just remember the massive thread here on overclockers back in 2006 when I bought my original mobo and thought i'd go for it. For £34 it's worth the risk.

I only really want to play oblivion and left4dead2. Crysis can bite me, far cry was boring.

Hades · 17 Oct 2009 at 23:30

jimmy_lazers said:
It wont POST except very ocassionaly, as in years, I've only just narrowed it down to the mobo.

I just got hold of a dfi lanparty ultra-d. Which are apparently unstable. I just remember the massive thread here on overclockers back in 2006 when I bought my original mobo and thought i'd go for it. For £34 it's worth the risk.

I only really want to play oblivion and left4dead2. Crysis can bite me, far cry was boring.

Sorry probably can't help with that but one thing to check is that the motherboard standoffs (the things the screws screw into) are correctly positioned. I replaced my mobo and forgot to check the placing. I later found the instability was due to occasional shorting on the incorrectly placed standoff.

jimmy_lazers · 18 Oct 2009 at 00:33

Hades said:
Sorry probably can't help with that but one thing to check is that the motherboard standoffs (the things the screws screw into) are correctly positioned. I replaced my mobo and forgot to check the placing. I later found the instability was due to occasional shorting on the incorrectly placed standoff.

Yep. I took it out of the case and everything.

beefybarn · 18 Oct 2009 at 22:30

I also have 3 DFI boards that no longer work today, despite being great back in the day... Shame they skimped on thier caps.

I guess a good motherboard is a motherboard that works.

[/quote]

Well been using a DFI in one of my systems for over 2 years no problems, other system has had 3 replacement gigabyte boards in that time, just goes to show all board manufacturers can produce working and duff boards.

JonJ678 · 18 Oct 2009 at 23:13

Corran said:
Am I the only person who had a good quality of service when RMAing a board to Asus?

I certainly haven't. Now with Gigabyte, at least their depot is in England.

Superewza said:
You do realise Asus just pretty much sorted out their RMA system? It now takes no more than 5 days for 95% of cases.

So the Asus rep said on here. I haven't seen any evidence for this yet, do you have any examples? I'm also suspicious that the 5 days may not be door to door, but 5 days while in tai wan, excluding shipping.

WJA96 · 19 Oct 2009 at 00:05

Superewza said:
You do realise Asus just pretty much sorted out their RMA system? It now takes no more than 5 days for 95% of cases.

Do you have personal experience of this? My experience of the ASUS RMA process was dire. It had to go through a reseller, and it took roughly three months. Now I'll do almost anything to not buy an ASUS board. And they're pricey too.

Superewza said:
DFI make very stable boards.

In my experience they make fast, garishly coloured, motherboards that usually have 'issues'. Oskar Wu is fairly well known for letting his customers do his testing for him. You either like being at the bleeding edge or you don't. DFI are so near the cutting edge that the blood generally hasn't started flowing yet...

Superewza said:
There aren't really any big no's on the motherboard front.

I would tend to agree, some are better than others though. I actually find ASRock incredibly stable.

Indy500 · 19 Oct 2009 at 00:13

WJA96 said:
I would tend to agree, some are better than others though. I actually find ASRock incredibly stable.

Normally I'd agree they're good for basic budget PCs. Unfortunately my K8Upgrade-VM800 board decided to lose its audio capabilities (including PCI cards) and the onboard graphics crashed to a blank screen frequently. No amount of fiddling with drivers and BIOSes was fixing it, so I ditched it.

However, the ASRock motherboard I got to replace it (different socket\model) seems to be working fine. Perhaps the chipset has something to do with it...

unknownsock · 19 Oct 2009 at 09:18

Superewza said:
You do realise Asus just pretty much sorted out their RMA system? It now takes no more than 5 days for 95% of cases

No they havn't i waited 6 weeks recently for a new Mobo.

SfnX · 19 Oct 2009 at 09:25

OVERCLOCKERS!
the only company ive called is BFGTech and theyre gr8 people!

-VK- · 19 Oct 2009 at 13:44

The ASUS RMA procedure for motherboards in warranty, should take no more than 5 days from return.

If you buy your ASUS motherboard from Overclockers and it goes wrong, your RMA will get sorted within an estimated 5 days.

WJA96 · 19 Oct 2009 at 21:42

-VK- said:
The ASUS RMA procedure for motherboards in warranty, should take no more than 5 days from return.

If you buy your ASUS motherboard from Overclockers and it goes wrong, your RMA will get sorted within an estimated 5 days.

OK, I'll believe you, but all previous experience says not.

Axil · 19 Oct 2009 at 21:53

ABit used to be really good back in the day - boards were reliable but if one went wrong they were fast to sort if

Worst - in my experience (and I've never used ASUS boards) - DFI by a mile -as WJA96 says - the boards are cutting edge to the point of having sharp corners and numerous issues. Worst experience was the botch up that was the S939 CFX3200 board - not stable and a botched RAID controller implementation . Tried to RMA and just gave up in the end

hyperst · 19 Oct 2009 at 21:53

MSI has been very good, has a good support forum, regular bios updates, they even do custom bios for specific user problems, thats why i went from msi p45 to my current msi gd80, very pleased with them as a whole