The ASUS Dumpster Fire

Ice Tea

Ice Tea

Ice Tea

Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2004
Posts
5,327

ASUS' decisions to force unwanted software onto users has put them at risk, like with Armoury Crate, MyASUS and DriverHub, and even its "AI" security features in its routers. We sought peer review from a security researcher, Paul (aka "Mr Bruh"), to dig into the topics of ASUS' vulnerabilities and exploits. If you have ASUS software installed, you should think about removing it -- and you should minimally update it. Likewise, be careful of what data you feed into ASUS' RMA and warranty system.
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I wasn't sure which thread or section would be most appropriate for this, as their problems go beyond just routers.
 
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Armoury Crate is the most hideous piece of software I have ever had the misfortune of using. Currently my PC thinks its installed but it isn't! I cant install it again because its already installed and I cant remove it using their removal software as its not installed. From what I can see no services running for it, add remove programs has no trace of it, task manager has nothing running for it and installation location has no trace of it. Probably something in the registry preventing it from installing again but at this point I don't need it so don't care.

The mess was caused when I installed some new ASUS fans connected to a ASUS hub which connected to an ASUS motherboard (all inside an ASUS case) and armoury crate couldn't recognise the hub with the ASUS website offering the advice of remove armoury crate using their tool and install an older version. Which also didn't pick up the hub. After I removed the older version the new version wouldn't install and neither would the old one, so just bypassed the hub and use SignalRGB now to manage the RGB and fan speeds
 
lol @ armoury crate, the that thing was on a par with the trojan viruses myself and my friends were installing on each others PCs back in the ICQ days to troll one another.

I was always wondering why the Armoury crate software was the literal worst, it can't hard for Asus to do any better surely? :D
 
I watched the GN video yesterday; things are rather worse than I was expecting. They're right that all manufacturers have potentially exploitable vulnerabilities, but Asus seem hellbent on including them on purpose.
 
I haven't bought a motherboard in a really long time - my last was an X470 Asus board, funnily enough. Who are the front-runners these days?
 
Avalon said:
Hey @SpellowHouse you have a new thread to shill in :cry:

Same old, same old for ASUS sadly, I keep calling them the P Diddy of the industry, sadly more proof that they are awful.
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It's all just lies. Asus are brilliant.

Jesus, I sound like a Trump supporter.

Yeah, I must admit, it's getting more and more difficult to justify any sort of Asus purchase.
 
Sadly none of the other vendors are much better, maybe a bit less potential security issues but Gigabyte Control Center is buggy, very bloated, slapped together and loaded with telemetry and useless AI features, causing some minor performance issues in some games and stutter in others as well as periodically elevated background activity due to the telemetry. The various MSI apps have significant amounts of background processes and some questionable data gathering going on.
 
Rroff said:
Sadly none of the other vendors are much better, maybe a bit less potential security issues but Gigabyte Control Center is buggy, very bloated, slapped together and loaded with telemetry and useless AI features, causing some minor performance issues in some games and stutter in others as well as periodically elevated background activity due to the telemetry. The various MSI apps have significant amounts of background processes and some questionable data gathering going on.
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The first thing I always do with all this junk is disable it / not install it. That includes Asus and Gigabyte. Asus is a little more tedious in that you need to disable it in the BIOS.
 
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On the one hand, I think some of this stuff has caught out manufacturers - they have historically been hardware companies who had to make firmware, BIOS and drivers.

Then suddenly they're having to build software, as all these lighting effects and syncing with games and controlling mobos from Windows etc takes off, and they're just not set up for it at all.

The weird thing is that by now, they should have got it figured out and hired the right kinds of software engineering teams, and more than that, ASUS should be better positioned than any of the competitors. They've got an entire mobile phone division, a router division, pumping out software on a regular basis, and desperately wanted to be an alternative to Samsung. And yet it just feels like every time it falls short of expectations.
 
This really surprised me. Maybe I've been out of things for too long. But always saw Asus as a premium manufacturer and had loads of motherboards from them over the years. Would absolutely think again now!
 
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