Asus ROG

[dr.walrus]

So there's been a lot of animosity recently floating around Asus and their ROG products. I just had an opportunity to get rid of my motherboard that had been bugging me for a while (due to poor pci-e slot placement), and came across a Crosshair Formula IV in Overclockers.co.uk down from £166 to £122. A friend offered me £90 for my Gigabyte board and BANG i took both offers with open arms.

I've just got everything up and running, and all i can say is OMG. The onboard controls, the excellent onboard sound, the extra long Xfire cable in the box, I'm bowled over by this thing, the extender for the front I/O panel cables, the stable 15% overclock with no settings change, and the absolutely exceptional lights that indicate the cpu/ram/bios status on power on - I've just had to have a friend bring his computer 20 miles to test his cpu because we didn't know if it was his mobo. This lets me know without even testing. Oh yeah, and it's AM3+.

So I suppose the point of my thread is, what's so wrong with this Asus stuff? What have Asus done here?

[dr.walrus]

And, christ, I've just bought a pair of fat studio monitors, the X-fi is a million times better than the Gigabyte's onboard sound!

[Kayin]

For me (and lots of people) it's the fact that I've had no less than 11 boards die, and two were 500 dollar workstation boards that not only never worked but ASUS did NOTHING to fix.

Reports of ignored RMA requests, horrible wait times and high failure rates are everywhere. Luthien's CHIV (same as your board now) is the only one I've seen keep going.

I'll keep my Gigabyte P55A-UD4P.

If you want a real horror story, check out the ASUS Z7S-WS debacle. One user had $25,000 in dead boards. With no fix.

[DynamoNED]

Having used both ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards for years, I've found ASUS generally are higher performing motherboards but less stable and more prone to failures. Gigabyte motherboards have been excellent performers for me, but I could never push them as far as I could an ASUS. However, Gigabyte's reliability is unmatched, IMO. Admittedly, I've only ever had to RMA an ASUS motherboard once (an M4A785-M that had faulty RAM slots and video that I discussed in another thread on here somewhere). I have an ASUS P5B Deluxe board that ran strong with nary a problem until I retired it for my Gigabyte 880GM-UD2H.

I've never used any of ASUS ROG boards, so I can't give a personal opinion other than they look like feature-laden motherboards with odd quirks based on various reviews I've read, and that the Maximus III Gene I was considering for Project BBQ-Q has a horrible outdated Memory QVL. That's about the extent of my knowledge of ASUS ROG boards, other than they seem to hold value really well (i.e. I've seen Striker Extreme 775 and Maximus II boards still going for $180-$220 on eBay).

[diluzio91]

i feel like i'm the only one who has had trouble with gigabyte. i've personally owned 2 boards, and one belonged to a client. The p55 board i had blew in less than a week, the client's x58 board was DOA. The AM2+ matx board i had however... i love that thing with a passion... it was a 785, and oc'd better than any other board i have ever touched (AMD) and easily was beating out my friends asus and various other brand boards, using both am2 and am3 chips. oh, and they had the 7/890 chips.... i only let that board go because it went to my roommate...

[Cale_Hagan]

For me (and lots of people) it's the fact that I've had no less than 11 boards die, and two were 500 dollar workstation boards that not only never worked but ASUS did NOTHING to fix.

Reports of ignored RMA requests, horrible wait times and high failure rates are everywhere. Luthien's CHIV (same as your board now) is the only one I've seen keep going.

I'll keep my Gigabyte P55A-UD4P.

If you want a real horror story, check out the ASUS Z7S-WS debacle. One user had $25,000 in dead boards. With no fix.


i feel like i'm the only one who has had trouble with gigabyte. i've personally owned 2 boards, and one belonged to a client. The p55 board i had blew in less than a week, the client's x58 board was DOA. The AM2+ matx board i had however... i love that thing with a passion... it was a 785, and oc'd better than any other board i have ever touched (AMD) and easily was beating out my friends asus and various other brand boards, using both am2 and am3 chips. oh, and they had the 7/890 chips.... i only let that board go because it went to my roommate...
the only asus products i've had work fine.... an asus rampage gene ii x1366 ROG and a 3870x2 non design spec, still work. gigabyte, i have owned two 6870's still running like champs.... never had bad luck with either company, but whenever you hear horror stories, its always asus cause their customer service is extremely poor. gigabyte is boss! and to comment on whoever posted about x-fi, if its creative, steer far away, im still battling with those horrible customer service people, soon to come a log for the emails.... it's driving me insane. :bash:

[Kayin]

Here (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?183499-My-Dual-Harper-Asus-Z7S-WS-living-review-*56K-warning*) is the thread for the Z7S-WS problems. 1700+ posts. Not a single board listed lives today.

I have better things to do with my money than toss it away on flashy looking boards that simply don't work right.

[dr.walrus]

Here (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?183499-My-Dual-Harper-Asus-Z7S-WS-living-review-*56K-warning*) is the thread for the Z7S-WS problems. 1700+ posts. Not a single board listed lives today.

I have better things to do with my money than toss it away on flashy looking boards that simply don't work right.

So your problem is Asus motherboards in general?

[Kayin]

After 11 boards from all lines, including workstation, yeah, my problem is ASUS in general.

It seems to be the problems of others as well.

[diluzio91]

so... my friends gigabyte ud3 p67 board arrived today.... i take back all the mean things i said about gigabyte... on a side note... anyone wanna give me $500 so i can pick up one of these and a 2600K? lol

[dr.walrus]

Well, 10/10 so far, let's see how it goes, it's certainly hammered the gigabyte at this point

[TheGreatSatan]

At Micro Center, our RoG boards are the most returned board for problems. At least half of the ones we sell come back for various reasons.

[mDust]

I also have a Crosshair IV. It's the best board I've ever had...for almost every reason. The only issue with it is the first few lots had bad northbridge heatsinks as insufficient thermal material was applied and the heatsink itself was not fully screwed down because of this. Unfortunately, fixing this yourself voids the warranty...but I have plans to further void it anyway so I took care of it.
Dr.Walrus, use the PCprobe II and keep an eye on your northbridge temps if you have the stock heatsink on it. If it idles >45-50C consider fixing it as the load temps will be unacceptable.
It's a pretty serious flaw, but it only affects the first boards produced. Other than my own watercooling accidents, I've never had any problems with ASUS boards, but I've only owned 4 of them.

[dr.walrus]

I also have a Crosshair IV. It's the best board I've ever had...for almost every reason. The only issue with it is the first few lots had bad northbridge heatsinks as insufficient thermal material was applied and the heatsink itself was not fully screwed down because of this. Unfortunately, fixing this yourself voids the warranty...but I have plans to further void it anyway so I took care of it.
Dr.Walrus, use the PCprobe II and keep an eye on your northbridge temps if you have the stock heatsink on it. If it idles >45-50C consider fixing it as the load temps will be unacceptable.
It's a pretty serious flaw, but it only affects the first boards produced. Other than my own watercooling accidents, I've never had any problems with ASUS boards, but I've only owned 4 of them.
+rep, this is the post I've been waiting for! What is this PCProbe II of which you speak?

[mDust]

+rep, this is the post I've been waiting for! What is this PCProbe II of which you speak?

It's ASUS software from the driver CD. It monitors all your temps and voltages in realtime. It helps immensely if you use whatever the software is called that allows realtime OC'ing in OS. It's also useful when OC'ing period. I'm sure you'll see...:devious:

BTW, did you drool on the see through mobo package when you first saw it all like I did?

[Fuganater]

Ya that software came with my ASUS P67 Sabertooth mobo.

[Kayin]

And in the greatest show of irony ever, I won a spot in the overclocking competition at the ROG Summit in London. Yep.

[mDust]

And in the greatest show of irony ever, I won a spot in the overclocking competition at the ROG Summit in London. Yep.

Upcoming? Go and have fun. If it's what I'm thinking of they do a lot of crazy LN2 OC'ing and gaming afterward. How often do you get to game on a LN2 rig?? Should be a blast.

How did you win it?

[Kayin]

Bit-tech competition.

Can't go-Snort is still in the hospital, and I'm not allowed to fly. My heart won't allow it. Hopefully they'll let me have the hardware anyway seeing as to the extenuating circumstances.

[mDust]

Bit-tech competition.

Can't go-Snort is still in the hospital, and I'm not allowed to fly. My heart won't allow it. Hopefully they'll let me have the hardware anyway seeing as to the extenuating circumstances.

I'm sure they will if you explain your situation.

[Kayin]

Last I checked, the world doesn't work that way.

However, I messaged a friend at ASUS HQ to see what happens.

[xr4man]

so far my asus m4a89gtd pro has been flawless. once i updated the bios it hasn't shown a bit of flakyness. and it was an open box buy from newegg.

apparently i have used an asus board before since i recently found a manual for one in my box of manuals. but i don't remember it. it must have been fine though since i don't remember any mobo i've had in a main pc going bad.

[Kayin]

Talked to an old friend at ASUS HQ, apparently since I'm known to him (and he knows about my condition as well) he's talking to ASUS UK as well as CPC about what they can do.

I do believe I will have to eat some words. This I am fine with.

[TheMainMan]

I'm really surprised to hear the bad rap on the customer service end, Asus was one of the smoothest experiences I've ever had during an RMA. I had a BIOS flash hang and then crash on a P5N32-E SLI and when I called Asus about it they immediately agreed to RMA the board. When I sent it back they confirmed it was bad (duh!) then realized they didn't have a replacement in stock. They offered me a comparable board but Intel/ATi so I asked if I could have a Striker 2 Formula. I was willing to pay the difference but they sent it on the house. Looking back on the situation the BIOS ROM was probably a bad download and they quite easily could have left me with a dead board. I probably have one of the greatest S2F boards out there as not only has it been problem free for over 2 years of hard use, it runs 8GB of 800MHz DDR2 at stock speeds (something many people are unable to do on theirs). I've built everything from socket 478 to 1155&6 as well as an AM3 all on Asus boards and other than the one BIOS issue they've lived up to their one-time motto: "Rock Solid, Heart Touching."

[Fuganater]

I don't think anyone is aruging that their normal boards are great performers. Its the new ROG boards that have issues.

[TheMainMan]

The S2F is an ROG, I guess I missed the part talking about the new versions. I haven't tried those since most of the systems I build for others don't need $250 mobos. I'll take this into consideration when I eventually replace my S2F (Ivy Bridge maybe?).