Beware of Asus and ROG Maximus XIII APEX

[grazianognoll]

Hi All, so I wanted to warn you about Asus RMA and in particular this motherboard.

I had a I9-10900K running on a ROG Maximux XII and the maximum temperature of the CPU was around 50 celsius.

I bought a ROG Maximus XIII APEX and mounted the I9-10900K in it with an EK Delta Tec with full custom water cooling, and as soon as I turned the system on the temperature spiked up to over 90 degrees (at idle!).

As I thought there was something wrong, I thought to reseat the cooler and CPU so I disassembled them, and as soon as I removed the CPU from the socket (really carefully I would add), one of the LGA pins on the socket simply jumped out

Where you can see that black dot in the green circle is where the pin was.

I really hoped this was not a required pin (ground? PCI-e?) and tried to remount the CPU anyway, which resulted in no boot at all.
In the hope, I tried a few additional CPUs and I slightly bent one top pin, which has nothing to do with the pin that jumped out and could be safely re-bent into place.


Given the situation, I thought to sent the motherboard to RMA, after all, I hoped Asus may understand that a slightly bent pin has nothing to do with the fact that one of their pins simply jumped out (which again, it's not supposed to happen and it's definitely a manufacturing error).

After a few weeks of wait, Asus refused the RMA with reasons:
* PCIe lock broken
* CPU pins bent
* PCB Damage

With the following pictures

I have no problem with the bent pin on the cpu socket, that was there, but anything else is damage that was simply not there when the item was sent to RMA, I'm not sure if they mistreated the item or intentionally did it, but it definitely wasn't in this condition when I sent it.

This is a picture that I took immediately before removing the CPU/ram and returning the item, and you can clearly see that the damage they highlighted is not there:

In addition, from their picture, I still can't see the damage they claim on the PCI-e lock, as it doesn't seem broken to me.


Overall, I bought a £ 450 motherboard that showed up with a manufacturer defect (pin jumped out), and upon sending it to RMA they refused the RMA and damaged it even more, and now I am left with an even more damaged motherboard and £ 450 out of pocket.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Do you have house insurance that you could claim on?

 

[[HB]Rugrat]

Oof... it's not good when you get to the point that you're having to take similar precautions to selling on eBay when dealing with the manufacturer. I'd take it to trading standards... If they're willing to just flat out lie it seems unlikely you're going to get a fair response without some third party intervention.

 

[mickyflinn]

I'd take it to trading standards... If they're willing to just flat out lie it seems unlikely you're going to get a fair response without some third party intervention.

Still wont matter as ths pins were bent which is enough in its self for rejection, unfortunately its a tuff situation.

 

[dave28]

wow, i always use Asus and thought they were the best company overall but i never had any issues.

you would think they would just send you another one if only to keep you as a high end buyer.

looks like they threw the kitchen sink at doing nothing

 

[[HB]Rugrat]

Still wont matter as ths pins were bent which is enough in its self for rejection, unfortunately its a tuff situation.

Yep it is a tough situation but the item supplied was inherently defective at the point of sale - the bent pin wouldn't have been bent had the item worked as advertised. Proving that however, particularly after OP admitted bending a pin, is nigh-on impossible without video evidence BUT he could equally claim that the pin in question bent due to the same inherent defect that caused the other pin to fall out, rather than negligence on his part.

Personally I'd see them in small claims court for something like this - partially because, as a large corporation, there's a good chance that a bean-counter somewhere will do a calculation that says it's cheaper to just replace the item than get legal advice and partially because if they're going to weasel out of selling me dodgy goods like this I'm going to be the biggest pain in the bum I can possibly be. I'd get my money back even if it's in the form of staff time spent dealing with me. I have been accused of being slightly mental when it comes to these matters