Anyone used AMD's direct RMA??

[TheMadScot]

My Athlon 4000+ socket 939 processor seems to have died, since my system will no longer go through POST - my motherboard's diagnostics LED's indicate failure during processor initialisation.

Anyways, on account of a change of address and credit card (no longer have the old one to verify), I can't RMA back to the outlet I purchased from, so I'm using AMD's direct RMA service.

Has anyone else here ever RMA'd a processor direct to AMD and, if so, how rapidly was it dealt with? Thanks in advance.

 

[mercyless]

it takes roughly 2-3 weeks, u got receipt for cpu ?, its needed for AMD rma.

 

[TheMadScot]

Yeah, I've got proof of purchase in the form of the original email receipt from the vendor... although the AMD's online RMA process didn't ask for this and neither is it referenced in the shipping/packaging instructions email

I'll get it couriered to the Netherlands on Thursday and hopefully it won't take too long for them to replace it... I'm not even sure if the 4000+ models are still available, so it will be interesting to see what they replace it with.

 

[PaulProteus]

Yeah, I've got proof of purchase in the form of the original email receipt from the vendor... although the AMD's online RMA process didn't ask for this and neither is it referenced in the shipping/packaging instructions email

This is interesting because iirc Intel will not RMA unless you have the original invoice.

There has been a case recently when someone bought C2D 6600 from the bay and could not RMA it as a result of that.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

I'd be interested in this as my chip is giving up the ghost too

I've bought a cheap X2 3800+ as a replacement so I'm not overly concerned if it takes a few weeks (although obviously the faster the better!)

If you have to send it to the Netherlands then surely that's a pain? Maybe I'll look at sending it back to the original retailer (OCUK in fact!)

Can you confirm if this is the only option (to send it to the Netherlands), thanks

 

[TheMadScot]

Sending the processor to the Netherlands is not the only option; it's just the only avenue available to me since I've changed address since the time of purchase AND no longer have the credit card I used to by the processor - this makes returning to the vendor I bought from impossible.

Either way, returning to the point of purchase means that they'll handle the shipping to AMD, which adds a little time to the turnaround but obviously at lower cost to you.

Anyways: it seems that my PSU is dead too as it's now refusing to power up my back-up system, and I'm beginning to suspect that certain portions of the motherboard may have been fried.

I've got professional insurance for this sort of thing so am probably just going to claim for a replacement PC rather than go to all the hassle of RMA'ing different components all over the place - assuming my claim gets processed as expected, I'll have somewhere in the region of £1300 to spend as per the listed value of my current kit.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Ah - thanks for the reply

Thankfully the card I used is still in use and I sent it to the cardholder's address where I still live so it's simpler for me

Sad news about your system though - hopefully the insurance will be able to sort it out fairly quickly

 

[TheMadScot]

Sad news about your system though - hopefully the insurance will be able to sort it out fairly quickly

I've put together a bunch of older components as a back-up system (P4 2.4GHz, 1GB DDR Ram, 128MB FX5700LE AGP, MSI 848P motherboard, WD 40GB ATA-HDD, Antec 480W PSU) so I've got something to be working with - albeit a lot slower than I'm used to

I always tend to keep components after an upgrade just in case this sort of thing were to happen. What concerns me more is the integrity of the data on the HDD's I've not yet checked.

I had two SATA 200GB drives in a RAID array which I can't check (the 848P doesn't support RAID on the motherboard) and one 750GB SATA drive which housed my entire photo collection of some 20,000 images.

Along with that there's an 80GB P-ATA drive that's partitioned, containing a boatload of PSD files and other work-in-progress images. I'll check and back up the P-ATA drive first (12GB of PSD's) and then check the 750GB S-ATA drive... backing up nealy 400GB of dSLR images is going to take some time

 

[ajgoodfellow]

That's always an idea - I must confess that I've always sold my old components to help pay for the upgrade!

I don't envy you having to back that much up. If only Bluray was a little cheaper then it might be more manageable!

 

[TheMadScot]

I don't envy you having to back that much up. If only Bluray was a little cheaper then it might be more manageable!

I'm waiting for the price to come down on BluRay or HD-DVD writers and for media to become widely available... from a photographers point of view it makes sense to have large volume backup, especially since I could shoot anything up to 24GB worth of data (around 1200 ~ 2400 images) at a wedding or special event

For now, a single sided DVD-R disc perfectly matches each 4GB memory card that I use.. though what annoys me is that oftentimes I don't fill a card since I use two cameras at once: one with a wide-to-mid zoom, the other with a mid-to-telephoto zoom. I switch from one camera to the other depending on subject distance, framing and so on.

This means I might end up with a shoot folder on HDD that is just over 4GB or much, much larger - and sometimes a shoot comes in at way less than 4GB. You never can tell how it's going to end up

Anyways, enough of my grousing... I've got software I need to install on this backup machine before I kick into the rest of the working week!

 

[giblet]

My Athlon 4000+ socket 939 processor seems to have died, since my system will no longer go through POST - my motherboard's diagnostics LED's indicate failure during processor initialisation.

Anyways, on account of a change of address and credit card (no longer have the old one to verify), I can't RMA back to the outlet I purchased from, so I'm using AMD's direct RMA service.

Has anyone else here ever RMA'd a processor direct to AMD and, if so, how rapidly was it dealt with? Thanks in advance.

I got exact same chip delivered on 25th January and mines died too. Didnt abuse it whatsoever. OcUK gonna replace it for me. Seems there could be a batch of dodgy chips kicking about!

 

[TheMadScot]

My 4000+ was bought in February 2005, so I doubt it's from the same batch