this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 284 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (13 children)

This video kind of misses the mark on delivering the points of the title, but these are the simplest boiled down points of the community gripes:

  • ASUS is having quality control issues, or deliberately skimping to pad profits
  • They are rebranding lesser quality components with the higher quality ROG brand, and pricing it as such
  • They are unilaterally voiding warranties when users try to RMA or return said hardware

Gigabyte (remember them?) did this same slow slide of enshittification about 10 years ago. The issue pretty much boils down to a company producing too many different types of things, instead of staying good at the things they do well, and the community has noticed and is calling for boycotts. This will no doubt put them on the defensive for years to come, and affect their overall standing in the larger community until they correct course.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 7 months ago (21 children)

Gigabyte (remember them?)

Sure do! Both my board and the board in my wife's computer are Gigabyte. So's my video card. The only issue I've ever had with their stuff has been a bad stick of ram a few years ago, which they exchanged without argument.

Brands in this sphere I definitely have had trouble with: MSI, Razer -- so many problems with Razer -- and ASUS.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 7 months ago

Yeah so the thing with PC parts suppliers is that every brand is going to have people who have experienced problems with their stuff.

Gigabyte I've never had a problem with, but yeah during the pandemic their power supplies were fucking exploding so yeah that's a problem.

Asus I've never had a problem with, but yeah their boards on both sides have been setting voltages and power limits very aggressively, killing AM5 CPUs catastrophically, potentially causing instability on higher end Intel chips as well it seems. That's a problem.

Etc etc etc

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I have a 14 year old gigabyte motherboard in my older computer. When I first got it I didn't know what I was doing and plugged the wrong thing in somewhere and blew up a component on it. As long as I don't use that slot it chugs along just fine. I wish companies would just keep making things that last I'd gladly pay a fairly steep premium for that. Instead it seems every company that gets known for making good stuff decides to shit all over themselves

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

They also reject advance RMAs. How nice to be without a system for weeks.

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[–] [email protected] 184 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Videos are a terrible way to communicate small amounts of information and these comments aren't super insightful so I guess I'll just move on.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago

Videos are the most monetizable way to communicate small amounts of information.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

A 10-12 minute video is always a huge red flag for me. Either the info is stretched out or over compresses.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I'm old enough to remember when ASUS was viewed as one of the best hardware manufacturers you could go with.

It has been a long, slow decline for ASUS. They really manufactured their own demise here.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Not in a place to watch the video, what's the tl;dw?

[–] [email protected] 70 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Puts out defective products then misleads consumers to think they have voided their warranty so they can't get a replacement for said defective products.

There's more too it but that's the main thing that made people turn on them.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You've just described my entire experience with the Transformer tablet. After a year of sending it in within days of receiving it "repaired," the day after my warranty ended, they said they discovered a faulty network chip and could replace it for the price of a new tablet plus shipping both ways.

I've been shouting "Fuck ASUS" for the past 10 years and I'm so glad I can now join others in it.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The usual. Hardware quality slowly goes to shit, company starts getting tricksy with consumers to make money instead of making quality product.

The big one was the BIOS update that nearly fried a lot of 670 motherboards that ASUS turned around and tried to avoid taking responsibility for, trying to pin issues on the consumer.

It's capitalists being capitalists. Completely ruining their brand to squeeze out a short term 1% increase in revenue.

We are in the "how many of my customers can I screw over and completey piss off and still make a profit" stage of capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Sending out defective boards, then refusing RMAs for said defective boards. They basically go “You voided the warranty by opening it, lul git fukd loser.”

Never mind the fact that (unless the board is visibly broken somehow) you’d need to open it and plug shit in to test it. So there would be no way to test it without voiding the warranty. It’s a catch-22 in action.

The truly shitty part is that using the board doesn’t void the warranty. But ASUS is claiming the people trying to RMA all have voided warranties. If it were only one or two, then yeah it may be scammers trying to avoid losing money after roasting a board. But it quickly turned into a Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario, where nobody is believing ASUS anymore because they’re basically just blanket denying every single warranty RMA.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 7 months ago (7 children)

I hate ASUS. Used to be way in on them -- well not way but relatively. I had the ASUS ROG Phone. The screen unfortunately broke and needed to be sent into service. More unfortunate, it was just about 1 month out of warranty.

So I get it set up to send it. ASUS charges me $300 for the phone screen replacement. It took over 8 months for them to get it back to me. When the phone finally did arrive, the RGB lighting didn't work, the NFC didn't work, and the screen itself had an orange hue in the upper right corner. To boot, it would only connect to AES Wi-Fi networks, so I can't even use it without a SIM card because who the fuck uses AES. They didn't even fucking fix it properly. I never got responses, sending e-mails for months after it was finally returned to me.

Now, in this time I was really patient. I was using a temporary phone. Around month 5, I just needed a new phone and was looking into the newly released ROG Phone 2. I figured the ROG 1 would still get plenty of usage as a spare device. Well I had the ROG 2 until AT&T decided that the phone didn't have the supported bands anymore, so my >1 year old phone is now as effective as an iPod 3g. Just 6 months later, screen itself just died, no fall, no nothing. I can use SCRCPY to use it, the screen just doesn't work. I really, really tried to give them a shot and the benefit of the doubt.

Now, in between these ~2 years I'd accumulated a few accessories for the phones, keycaps and backpacks. Just little things -- ngl, the bag and the keycaps are still really good quality. I also decided to upgrade my PC, and was looking at a nice new motherboard to rebuild my existing PC with.

So I get the ASUS B550 or something like that. Stupidly bought it from Newegg, first time. The motherboard arrives and upon building the computer I just cannot get it to POST. I reach out to the 2 likely culprits, the PSU and the MoBo. EVGA sends me an entirely new PSU, free of charge, and tells me not to bother shipping it back. ASUS on the other hand would not accept that the motherboard could have been the point of failure! And when I FINALLY was able to fully prove that every single component in the board works EXCEPT the MoBo, they told me to take it up with where I purchased it from, Newegg. So I would get to pay some ~20% restocking fee on a broken motherboard, instead of the manufacturr just replacing a defective board. Oh, the best part? The motherboards USB-3.0 header was broken, came right off when trying to plug it in. No wonder it wouldn't POST.

Fuck you, ASUS. Fuck your shitty warranty, your awful customer support, your horrible treatment of customers who put their trust into you. I will never support ASUS again and I will always vehemently suggest anyone else. It's really, really simple to be a good OEM, all it takes is replacing things that break. ASUS treats every single customer like a scammer who is trying to get free stuff out of them, which IMO just goes to show that's exactly the mindset ASUS has as well.

I still have the motherboard btw. If anyone knows how to repair a USB-3.0 header I'll either be glad to be guided through a repair or I'll just send it to you for cost of shipping. It's just going to sit in my garage otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Going to corroborate this with that I had a really similar experience with my old Sabertooth 990FX board. Was supposed to support Bulldozer, and they put out a BIOS update the night before Bulldozer launched. I grabbed the update, put it on a flash drive, and updated the board. It would never post after that. RAM, CPU (FX6100), graphics card were all reseated multiple times. Never even gave post beeps, so there wasn’t even a hint as to what was going on. Even tried a different PSU just to be safe.

ASUS told me to get shafted because they couldn’t guarantee I updated the BIOS safely.

CompUSA exchanged it with a pre-updated board, no questions asked.

I fucking miss. That. Store.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 7 months ago (6 children)

This is a terrible video. 20 minutes just to say "bad customer support". But then, who does nowadays?

On a sidenote, the pearl, the jewel I got from their CS is "WeLL I gUeSs tHiS LaPtOP oNlY sUpPoRtS ThReE ScReEnS iN tOtAl". Bitch! This laptop has 3 separate video outputs! And 2 screens built-in! The fuck is 3 total? Besides, it totally worked until some botched update on their side...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I miss the activeness of the r/saveAClick community.

The closest lemme alternative is https://lemmy.nrd.li/c/savedyouaclick

We need that here for these click bait posts

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (6 children)

I've been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.

I'm very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

I saw this headline and immediately thought "ArmouryCrate is the reason"

I certainly avoid ASUS stuff after discovering that piece of nonsense on my new install.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

The rootkit is easy enough to turn off in the BIOS but I highly, highly recommend G-Helper instead of Armoury Crate.

Moving to it from AC is like leaving a prison cell full of screaming children and entering a calm beach.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

I didn't even know that. Fuck.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Why people are writing statements as questions?

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago

It's not all of the sudden Gamer Nexus dropped them as a sponsor and tore them a new one months ago.

They don't care about their customers. They just want your money.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 7 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Shit, if Asus is no good anymore, what brand is good nowadays?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (13 children)

MSI is still on the come up. Can't think of a bad component they've released in many years.

ASRock is always rock solid.

Gigabyte seems to be making a comeback.

NZXT just started expanding on making components, and has really feature stuff. One to watch, though higher-end.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

It's funny, ASRock went from a company I'd never fucking heard of to one of the top names in the space. I used to be like "what's this no-name brand?" and now I'm like "Oh ASRock, I know them."

Unrelated, I miss the old Gigabyte Dual BIOS, where it had a backup BIOS in case the default got corrupted. Which mine did, a lot.

EDIT: NZXT? Wait, this NZXT? https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2021/NZXT-Recalls-H1-Computer-Cases-Due-to-Fire-Hazard I'd personally wait a while before jumping all in on them. Fire hazards in components is a pretty big fuckin deal.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

NZXT just started expanding on making components, and has really feature stuff. One to watch, though higher-end.

NZXT has always been some really mediocre stuff at ridiculous markup, I don't have literally any faith in this statement

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (3 children)

The video linked is not the original.

This is the original - https://youtu.be/oHH9_CDHz94

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago

This is troubling. I've been using ASUS motherboards for a very long time. I haven't noticed any problems in the last 3 systems I built, but I also usually go for the workstation type motherboards instead of gaming motherboards, so I can use ECC RAM and dispense with the LED bling I don't need or want. I wonder if they are still putting enough effort into the business/workstation stuff that it's not having too many quality issues yet. I hope they can turn this around, because the list of quality PC parts manufacturers is growing smaller all the time.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I have always had issues with ASUS. Their parts have never really worked well for me, and if they did they only lasted a year or two before shitting out. Everyone else seemed to swear by them and I could never even get a part that worked.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Years ago I happily used some Razer mice and keyboards, even a headset, so in the not too far past I told people around me that Razer was fairly good, quality wise, but alas, I think each and every one I recommended Razer products to had them break and or die well within warranty, and they always had to start a stupid discussion to get the warranty/RMA accepted, a few times even replacements denied outright by Razer.

For me this stands in sharp contrast with Logitech whom has never denied me a warranty, even for products a few weeks beyond the date, and they generally just send out a new item. That is, for me it is rare for a Logitech product to actually require replacement to begin with, I have a few mice, keyboards and headsets far older than 5 years and they work fine plus are still supported in the drivers.

Speaking of drivers, Razer at one point also made the decision to have their drivers require an account login to function properly (multi-button mice would only have 2 functional buttons if not logged in etc). But after some flak from its users it slightly changed that to the login being optional, but profiles would still be hampered without a continuous online presence.

Coming back to Asus, for a few years now I hear of people having quality issues and grumpy asus service desks, but for me their videocards ways ran fine (even without coil whine, unlike some MSI cards). I am quite hesitant to buy an Asus monitor or motherboard though.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

their enshittification is sad.

they were always my go to for quality motherboards. oh well.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I feel the same argument applies to many other brands already including lenovo and sadly the thinkpad lineup.

Some others are contributing to the same trend by increasing prices and relying on cult fandom.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Dude has 35 subs, is this your own account?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

Shit video OP

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I've had two ASUS gaming laptops, and both of them began having issues within a year, and the second didnt last more than a couple years total.

The first laptop was one of their enormous ROG 17 inch gaming laptops that looked like it had jet engine exhaust. The hard drive died and the power port broke within the first year, and I had to send it in under warranty. The power brick also died, and I ended up having to replace it myself around the 3 year mark.

Thinking it was a fluke, I ended up buying a smaller, more portable ASUS gaming laptop next which had more of a standard form factor. Maybe six or eight months later, that one suffered some issue that required being sent in for service as well. It began experiencing the same issue about four months later, I'd sent it in for repair a second time for the same issue, and they apparently fixed it.

I got to use that laptop for maybe 1.5 years total before it was completely unusable, in spite of two RMAs.

My current gaming laptop is an HP Omen 17 from 2017, and has been completely stable and reliable up to this day. I love to hate on HP because of their dumb printers, but I'm pretty impressed. I'll probably end up buying another one, because I will literally never own another ASUS product ever in my life, and there are only so many manufacturers out there who I'd consider for a laptop purchase.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I must be in the minority here because I've never had major issues with ASUS products, though the caveat here is I have only used their motherboards. I'm using an x570-PLUS right now and it has been solid since purchase.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

I ordered a board from Asus last year. FedEx delivered it to the wrong place. Delivery picture was at some apartment somewhere. They gave me so much shit. I had to go to my bank to help me get my money back. Took over a month.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

When the imposter is ASUS!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Can't play video currently. Someone has a synopsis?

Edit: Nice, someone did already.

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