I will NEVER purchase another MSI product again, here's why.

I disagree.

a) After your warranty expires - you are no longer owed anything by the manufacturer (even if it's a bloody Benz and not a $200 mobo). Anything you get is Kindness - which has a price on the manufacturer's side (which I think is one of the reasons BFG is no longer with us).

b) When a shop sold me a 6800GT with 12 pixel pipelines (if anyone remembers that small fiasco) , I involved MSI since the shop would not pony up the advertised model.
MSI had a rep call me and set up a meet to replace the card, ignoring the shop's BS.

I have since bought two more MSI products (GPUs), Loved 'em both.
One thing to note is that both products died 6-12 months after the warranty expired...
which is something I have not experienced with Sapphire, Asus, Gigabyte or even Hercules products of similar caliber.
 
thanks for the read, OP.
I got a chuckle out of it.

PS: quit whining.
 
GIMME GIMME GIMME!!!!

wow, OP is an asshole. MSI are under no obligation to give you anything! it sucks for you, but its outside the warranty period (which is 3 freakin years anyway!!).
I came into this thread expecting MSI to be assholes for not honouring a warranty or something as equally heinous, but I find a total jerk-off with an entitlement complex whining about something OUT OF WARRANTY. Grow up.
 
Alouette Radeon said:
Back in March of 2008, I spent over $200 and purchased a motherboard in anticipation of my next (Phenom II X4 940) build. It was more than I had ever dreamed of having before. It was the MSI K9A2 Platinum v1.0. It had the awesome AMD 790FX northbridge and although it only had the ATi SB600 southbridge, it was the only 790FX motherboard that had its PCI-Express x16 lanes arranged so that it could hold 4 double-wide Radeon cards. I purchased this board with confidence that such a high-end board would be extremely durable and long-lived as long as I didn't try anything like overclocking. Well, to date, I have NEVER OC'd my X4 940 because I never felt the need to. It's still plenty fast for anything I've ever wanted it to do.


Well, in early July, my system started acting up. It had intermittent problems with posting and those intermittent problems became so common that they became the norm. The computer would also freeze while being used which led me to have to press the reset button which again made me have to try several times to get it to post again. Of course, I never dreamed that a once-flagship motherboard would be the problem, especially since I took such good care of it. I originally thought that my OCZ Z-Series 1000w PSU was the problem because the system would turn on by only flicking the back switch on the PSU, without pressing the power button. I contacted OCZ and they said that the behaviour my system was experiencing was not PSU-related. I tried switching my PSU to another one of my systems and sure enough, the problem ceased. It wasn't the PSU, so I thought maybe it was my computer case.


My case had 2x120mm Thermaltake adjustable fans (Some of the most powerful case fans that money can buy) and an 80mm fan in the side panel. I made damn sure that heat would not be a problem for my system, especially since I use Radeon HD 4870s. I changed my case from that PowerUp gaming Mid-Tower to the massive Ultra Black ULT-40670 Full-Tower case because I reasoned that the relatively cheap power wiring in my PowerUp case was probably the culprit. Well, after luckily finding that huge (and beautiful!) case on sale at a Tiger Direct outlet store for $130CAD, I was certain that my problems would be over. I couldn't have been more wrong. After spending the hours switching my system over to the new case, I turned it on. There was no change at all but it did post, twice in fact. Little did I know that those would be the last times that my K9A2 Platinum would ever post.


I was in shock. I'd never had a motherboard fail on me that quickly before and I've been building systems since 1988 (at the age of 12). I still have an old ECS PM800-M2 with a Celeron D as my fileserver running in my basement and an old ASUS P4P800 with a P4 2.4 running as my HTPC. Both of those boards are almost 10 years old and they're still running flawlessly. I even gave my old ASRock 4Core Dual-VSTA motherboard to my cousin so he could have a PC that runs games and that one was running a Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz Conroe, it's also still running perfectly. I wondered what to do next since I knew that this sort of thing must have been pretty rare.


I still didn't fully believe that it was my motherboard but rather than pay Tiger Direct over $50 to diagnose it, I spent $50 on a cheap ECS A780GM-A motherboard with an AMD 770 chipset. I was limited in my choices due to the fact that the Phenom II X4 940 is not an AM3 CPU and so I had to get an AM2+ motherboard. I couldn't find ANY that supported Crossfire so I just made sure that the one I got could hold my 8GB of DDR2-800. As soon as I moved everything over to the new motherboard, all my problems ceased. It had been confirmed, my MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard had failed 3 years and 4-5 months after its initial purchase.


I realised that it had only been 4-5 months since my warranty expired and so I contacted MSI support. I thought to myself "Sure, it's only a 3 year warranty but MSI wouldn't want a customer to be burned on one of their flagship boards by having it fail essentially right after the warranty ends." I didn't expect a replacement but I thought "Maybe they'll send me a coupon that I can use to get a discount on another MSI motherboard to replace this one." Well, their answer was "We are sorry, but your warranty expired in March of this year." which was basically the same as "Get lost kid, ya bother me!". I didn't even know what to say in reply because I didn't anticipate that response.


I just wanted to let everyone know about this and I can guarantee you that I will NEVER buy another MSI product again. It's such a shame too because before this happened, I was absolutely THRILLED with my motherboard's performance and had even updated the BIOS so that it could recognise Thuban. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

*rant over*
Click to expand...

I expected a more mature rant from a 35 year old man...I'm disappointed.
 
Alouette Radeon said:
Back in March of 2008, I spent over $200 and purchased a motherboard in anticipation of my next (Phenom II X4 940) build. It was more than I had ever dreamed of having before. It was the MSI K9A2 Platinum v1.0. It had the awesome AMD 790FX northbridge and although it only had the ATi SB600 southbridge, it was the only 790FX motherboard that had its PCI-Express x16 lanes arranged so that it could hold 4 double-wide Radeon cards. I purchased this board with confidence that such a high-end board would be extremely durable and long-lived as long as I didn't try anything like overclocking. Well, to date, I have NEVER OC'd my X4 940 because I never felt the need to. It's still plenty fast for anything I've ever wanted it to do.


Well, in early July, my system started acting up. It had intermittent problems with posting and those intermittent problems became so common that they became the norm. The computer would also freeze while being used which led me to have to press the reset button which again made me have to try several times to get it to post again. Of course, I never dreamed that a once-flagship motherboard would be the problem, especially since I took such good care of it. I originally thought that my OCZ Z-Series 1000w PSU was the problem because the system would turn on by only flicking the back switch on the PSU, without pressing the power button. I contacted OCZ and they said that the behaviour my system was experiencing was not PSU-related. I tried switching my PSU to another one of my systems and sure enough, the problem ceased. It wasn't the PSU, so I thought maybe it was my computer case.


My case had 2x120mm Thermaltake adjustable fans (Some of the most powerful case fans that money can buy) and an 80mm fan in the side panel. I made damn sure that heat would not be a problem for my system, especially since I use Radeon HD 4870s. I changed my case from that PowerUp gaming Mid-Tower to the massive Ultra Black ULT-40670 Full-Tower case because I reasoned that the relatively cheap power wiring in my PowerUp case was probably the culprit. Well, after luckily finding that huge (and beautiful!) case on sale at a Tiger Direct outlet store for $130CAD, I was certain that my problems would be over. I couldn't have been more wrong. After spending the hours switching my system over to the new case, I turned it on. There was no change at all but it did post, twice in fact. Little did I know that those would be the last times that my K9A2 Platinum would ever post.


I was in shock. I'd never had a motherboard fail on me that quickly before and I've been building systems since 1988 (at the age of 12). I still have an old ECS PM800-M2 with a Celeron D as my fileserver running in my basement and an old ASUS P4P800 with a P4 2.4 running as my HTPC. Both of those boards are almost 10 years old and they're still running flawlessly. I even gave my old ASRock 4Core Dual-VSTA motherboard to my cousin so he could have a PC that runs games and that one was running a Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz Conroe, it's also still running perfectly. I wondered what to do next since I knew that this sort of thing must have been pretty rare.


I still didn't fully believe that it was my motherboard but rather than pay Tiger Direct over $50 to diagnose it, I spent $50 on a cheap ECS A780GM-A motherboard with an AMD 770 chipset. I was limited in my choices due to the fact that the Phenom II X4 940 is not an AM3 CPU and so I had to get an AM2+ motherboard. I couldn't find ANY that supported Crossfire so I just made sure that the one I got could hold my 8GB of DDR2-800. As soon as I moved everything over to the new motherboard, all my problems ceased. It had been confirmed, my MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard had failed 3 years and 4-5 months after its initial purchase.


I realised that it had only been 4-5 months since my warranty expired and so I contacted MSI support. I thought to myself "Sure, it's only a 3 year warranty but MSI wouldn't want a customer to be burned on one of their flagship boards by having it fail essentially right after the warranty ends." I didn't expect a replacement but I thought "Maybe they'll send me a coupon that I can use to get a discount on another MSI motherboard to replace this one." Well, their answer was "We are sorry, but your warranty expired in March of this year." which was basically the same as "Get lost kid, ya bother me!". I didn't even know what to say in reply because I didn't anticipate that response.


I just wanted to let everyone know about this and I can guarantee you that I will NEVER buy another MSI product again. It's such a shame too because before this happened, I was absolutely THRILLED with my motherboard's performance and had even updated the BIOS so that it could recognise Thuban. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

*rant over*
Click to expand...

cool story bro...
 
I had quite the opposite story...MSI 8800GTX died less than a month away from warranty expiry. They emailed me the option to replace it with the same card or with the GTX260 I have now. No brainer. I like MSI...have had a few of their mobos in the past and they worked well. Even after a CPU water block failed on one and it is STILL working to this way. ;)
 
Alouette Radeon said:
Back in March of 2008, I spent over $200 and purchased a motherboard in anticipation of my next (Phenom II X4 940) build. It was more than I had ever dreamed of having before. It was the MSI K9A2 Platinum v1.0. It had the awesome AMD 790FX northbridge and although it only had the ATi SB600 southbridge, it was the only 790FX motherboard that had its PCI-Express x16 lanes arranged so that it could hold 4 double-wide Radeon cards. I purchased this board with confidence that such a high-end board would be extremely durable and long-lived as long as I didn't try anything like overclocking. Well, to date, I have NEVER OC'd my X4 940 because I never felt the need to. It's still plenty fast for anything I've ever wanted it to do.


Well, in early July, my system started acting up. It had intermittent problems with posting and those intermittent problems became so common that they became the norm. The computer would also freeze while being used which led me to have to press the reset button which again made me have to try several times to get it to post again. Of course, I never dreamed that a once-flagship motherboard would be the problem, especially since I took such good care of it. I originally thought that my OCZ Z-Series 1000w PSU was the problem because the system would turn on by only flicking the back switch on the PSU, without pressing the power button. I contacted OCZ and they said that the behaviour my system was experiencing was not PSU-related. I tried switching my PSU to another one of my systems and sure enough, the problem ceased. It wasn't the PSU, so I thought maybe it was my computer case.


My case had 2x120mm Thermaltake adjustable fans (Some of the most powerful case fans that money can buy) and an 80mm fan in the side panel. I made damn sure that heat would not be a problem for my system, especially since I use Radeon HD 4870s. I changed my case from that PowerUp gaming Mid-Tower to the massive Ultra Black ULT-40670 Full-Tower case because I reasoned that the relatively cheap power wiring in my PowerUp case was probably the culprit. Well, after luckily finding that huge (and beautiful!) case on sale at a Tiger Direct outlet store for $130CAD, I was certain that my problems would be over. I couldn't have been more wrong. After spending the hours switching my system over to the new case, I turned it on. There was no change at all but it did post, twice in fact. Little did I know that those would be the last times that my K9A2 Platinum would ever post.


I was in shock. I'd never had a motherboard fail on me that quickly before and I've been building systems since 1988 (at the age of 12). I still have an old ECS PM800-M2 with a Celeron D as my fileserver running in my basement and an old ASUS P4P800 with a P4 2.4 running as my HTPC. Both of those boards are almost 10 years old and they're still running flawlessly. I even gave my old ASRock 4Core Dual-VSTA motherboard to my cousin so he could have a PC that runs games and that one was running a Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz Conroe, it's also still running perfectly. I wondered what to do next since I knew that this sort of thing must have been pretty rare.


I still didn't fully believe that it was my motherboard but rather than pay Tiger Direct over $50 to diagnose it, I spent $50 on a cheap ECS A780GM-A motherboard with an AMD 770 chipset. I was limited in my choices due to the fact that the Phenom II X4 940 is not an AM3 CPU and so I had to get an AM2+ motherboard. I couldn't find ANY that supported Crossfire so I just made sure that the one I got could hold my 8GB of DDR2-800. As soon as I moved everything over to the new motherboard, all my problems ceased. It had been confirmed, my MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard had failed 3 years and 4-5 months after its initial purchase.


I realised that it had only been 4-5 months since my warranty expired and so I contacted MSI support. I thought to myself "Sure, it's only a 3 year warranty but MSI wouldn't want a customer to be burned on one of their flagship boards by having it fail essentially right after the warranty ends." I didn't expect a replacement but I thought "Maybe they'll send me a coupon that I can use to get a discount on another MSI motherboard to replace this one." Well, their answer was "We are sorry, but your warranty expired in March of this year." which was basically the same as "Get lost kid, ya bother me!". I didn't even know what to say in reply because I didn't anticipate that response.


I just wanted to let everyone know about this and I can guarantee you that I will NEVER buy another MSI product again. It's such a shame too because before this happened, I was absolutely THRILLED with my motherboard's performance and had even updated the BIOS so that it could recognise Thuban. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

*rant over*
Click to expand...

This is the dumbest thing I have ever read. Limited warranties are there for a reason - parts are definitely going to die, they have to - that's just physics. You motherboard lasted the full three years it was supposed to, plus more - that's a good run for something with billions of tiny circuits that are experiencing the wear of electricity going through them all day. To expect more just makes you sound whiny, and like an idiot.
 
Well, in early July, my system started acting up. It had intermittent problems with posting and those intermittent problems became so common that they became the norm. The computer would also freeze while being used which led me to have to press the reset button which again made me have to try several times to get it to post again. Of course, I never dreamed that a once-flagship motherboard would be the problem, especially since I took such good care of it. I originally thought that my OCZ Z-Series 1000w PSU was the problem because the system would turn on by only flicking the back switch on the PSU, without pressing the power button. I contacted OCZ and they said that the behaviour my system was experiencing was not PSU-related. I tried switching my PSU to another one of my systems and sure enough, the problem ceased. It wasn't the PSU, so I thought maybe it was my computer case.


My case had 2x120mm Thermaltake adjustable fans (Some of the most powerful case fans that money can buy) and an 80mm fan in the side panel. I made damn sure that heat would not be a problem for my system, especially since I use Radeon HD 4870s. I changed my case from that PowerUp gaming Mid-Tower to the massive Ultra Black ULT-40670 Full-Tower case because I reasoned that the relatively cheap power wiring in my PowerUp case was probably the culprit. Well, after luckily finding that huge (and beautiful!) case on sale at a Tiger Direct outlet store for $130CAD, I was certain that my problems would be over. I couldn't have been more wrong. After spending the hours switching my system over to the new case, I turned it on. There was no change at all but it did post, twice in fact. Little did I know that those would be the last times that my K9A2 Platinum would ever post.
Click to expand...

Looks like a bad diagnosis on your part. Electronics, even high end ones do go bad at times. I had 2 of the same intel branded boards, one started having issues like you had the other is still going strong.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague"]Capacitor plague - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Bad_Capacitor_01.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Bad_Capacitor_01.jpg/220px-Bad_Capacitor_01.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/7/79/Bad_Capacitor_01.jpg/220px-Bad_Capacitor_01.jpg[/ame] maybe?

As the capacitor ages, its capacitance decreases and its (ESR) increases. When this happens, the capacitors no longer adequately serve their purpose of filtering the direct current voltages on the motherboard, and system instability results. Some common symptoms are:
Not turning on all the time; having to hit reset or try turning the computer on again
Instabilities (hangs, BSODs, kernel panics, etc.), especially when symptoms get progressively more frequent over time
Memory errors, especially ones that get more frequent with time
Spontaneous reboots
In case of on-board video cards, unstable image in some video modes
Failing to complete the POST, or rebooting before it is completed
Never starting the POST; fans spin but the system appears dead
Capacitors with high ESR can make power supplies malfunction, sometimes causing further circuit damage. CPU core voltage or other system voltages may fluctuate or go out of range, possibly with an increase in CPU temperature as the core voltage rises
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what you think cheap power wiring in a case would do, unless one of the switches/LED's was shorting it's all pretty much the same from case to case.
 
Man you guys are a bit too harsh. That really isn't that long of a time to have a motherboard go bad. In the computer world sure, for obsoletion, but when you have products that last past your upgrade cycles you know it was well made. I've always bought ASUS boards and they always outlast my upgrades and rarely ever have them die on their own. However, I don't blame MSI for not honoring a warranty months after your board died because that's why it's there.

If you think 3 years warranty is bad for a motherboard you should try and remember Sony's god awful 1 year warranty on a six-hundred dollar PS3. Now that was a fucking joke.
 
It's not unheard of for companies to honor warranties with 6 months or so of the warranty expiration period, especially a company like this that would be hoping for repeat customers. I can't blame the OP for hoping that something would be done, that's not unreasonable in my opinion. However, them not honoring the warranty (or lack therof) at that point wouldn't be reason enough to avoid a company completely.

That being said, I'll never buy another MSI product after I had 3 separate defective MSI X-58 Platinum boards. The first wouldn't post, the second had multiple bad ram slots, and the 3rd wouldn't post. GG quality control.
 
I stand by my last comment. We been trolled, and you guys are feeding the troll.

Oh, and quit hitting the quote button.
 
I buy expensive boards and I've only had one or two issues over the years. (680i SLI / 780i SLI boards not withstanding. Those were all garbage.)
 
I have a biostar gf2 video card that went bad last week, think biostar will warantee for me since when i bought it i wasnt making much money and had to skip meals to pay for it...only lasted 10yrs...ill never buy another biostar product if they dont replace it with a new one.....
 
thats a long time you have a board that lasted 3.5 years and you are whining, get real
 
While i'm with the rest of the guys here, 3 years is great for a new board DESIGNED to fail after the life cycle of the product.

Those boards that are 10yrs old were designed to work, not to fail.

p.s. I'm running the same board, and had the same problem. It was my PSU as well. New Antec 550 and i've been running with no issues for another year. (x1900 & 2 samsung 1tb drives)
 
enuro12 said:
While i'm with the rest of the guys here, 3 years is great for a new board DESIGNED to fail after the life cycle of the product.

Those boards that are 10yrs old were designed to work, not to fail.
Click to expand...

I hope the tinfoil hat store stocks up before you go there again. None of these companies design things to fail after X number of years. Components are spec'd out based on the price of the board and the warranty period, however they never sit around and try to make sure the boards fail once the warranty is over.
 
msi builds some fine boards...my buddy has the x58 big bang and he beats the hell out of that board and it never fails..its built like a tank....just like all msi x58 boards you must do a replce of the tim on the heatsinks...
heat is an issue with all computers, that board in question had a nvidia chipset..dude they run hot and if you didnt add a decent fan to the northbridge it probubly ran to hot...mine always did till i modified the cooling...ran for a year and sold it to upgrade to x58/920do
, never had a problem but i was not kind to the board, i o/clocked the hell out of the 955be...but i always had real good cooling.....nvidia chipsets always ran hot..too hot for my liking......
your car breaks down every so often dosent it? never gonna buy a chevy or ford or honda again...
get real dude....#hit happens....
 
bboynitrous said:
If you think 3 years warranty is bad for a motherboard you should try and remember Sony's god awful 1 year warranty on a six-hundred dollar PS3. Now that was a fucking joke.
Click to expand...

QFT. Bought a launch PS2 Oct. 26 2000. On Oct 28 2001 after buying Time Crisis 2 I realize the top USB on the system was broken all along... Never had a way of testing it until that point, never needed it. Sony didn't care, and wanted 250 dollars to fix it... 2 days after the warranty expired.
 
It's a 3 year warranty. That machine is fairly long in the tooth anyway. $200 for a motherboard gets you anything but the "flagship" these days, sorry. Next time buy a board with a longer warranty if you expect to be using the same machine longer than 3 years.
 
My experience with MSI motherboards is mixed. Some were ok, but most of my problems with motherboards came from MSI since the Athlon XP era.

Bottomline, MSI motherboards are mostly fine running stock settings in normal environments, but don't try to push it with overclocking or using MSI motherboard in high-end builds. Each time one or both of these conditions were used, always ended up having problems.

On another note, on budget build for light gaming, office or family computers, I rarely have complaints on my builds that used MSI motherboards.

In my book, ASUS/Gigabyte is a grade above MSI. so for the minor price difference, it's maybe a good idea to keep that in mind on your next own build.
 
I don't consider a mobo lasting 3.5 yrs to be a "long" time. Aged and obsolete to what's out now, sure, but old to the point that it's basically expected to fail? No. I expect the machine I built a year and a couple months ago to last me at the very least three years without any major problems.

I guess my point is, I think the OP has a legitimate beef with a piece of hardware going out 3.5 yrs after he got it. Not getting anything from the manufacturer who isn't obligated to give anything isn't a legit beef, and after seeing the OP plastered this rant over a few different forums I'm giving my two cents independently from the OP's that I don't think 3.5 yrs is all that long for a PC to hold up.
 
I disagree with the sentiment that boards are designed to last only three years. I've seen nothing to indicate that. Performance machines which are highly overclocked can and will have higher failure rates than the same systems running at stock speeds. This is no doubt due to increases in voltages and increased thermal loads. However, I've still seen boards from 5 years ago still run strong today. There is no reason to believe that boards made with solid electrolytic capacitors are going to fail in 3 years. Especially when some people still keep their machines from 3 to 5 years. I'm again still seeing people get that kind of time out of computers.

Just because every other type of consumer electronics has a short life span doesn't mean that computer parts do. Again I'm not seeing that. My server is approaching 4 years old. No problems there. My girlfriends machine was over three years old until I replaced it yesterday, and my HTPC is about 3 years old as well. Again they are still going strong. Until I see boards dying with failed caps, burnt out voltage regulators etc. in droves I'm going to disagree with the assumption that they are designed to die in three years. It's simply not true.

Now, that being said I don't care if they do. After three years I'm likely to replace it due to being dated. And for gamers, the life cycle is even shorter. 2 to 3 years is about the best you can expect, and most likely there have been upgrades along the way. I don't think that the OP should be whining about a board only making it three and a half years and not 10. Then bitching about MSI for not honoring a warranty that had expired months ago. That's just insane. Do you think your dealership will cover a new engine if you managed to seize it a year or more outside of warranty? Or how about if you put 200,000 miles on it inside of two years? You think you'd get a new engine then? I don't.

People have this sense of entitlement and act like corporations that didn't go beyond their initial guarantee are some how evil and immoral. Hell no MSI wasn't going to give you a new motherboard outside of the warranty period. Why should they? MSI wants you to buy a new motherboard, and hopefully choose one of theirs. Not give you a free part so you can avoid paying for a motherboard for another two or three years. It's not wrong or evil, it's just business. You can't make money giving away shit for free. Especially since the supply of discontinued motherboards is finite. Those need to be used for people with a legitimate warranty claim so they don't have to upgrade them to newer boards and deal with all the shit that goes along with that.
 
After reading the OP's rant I'm thinking I should have been more upset about my Asus Striker Extreme dieing after less than a year (circa 2007). The lesson I learned was don't buy bleeding edge. It isn't really needed, worth the risk, or worth the hassle.

3.5 years? You got a good ride out of it, time to pony up for a new system. Every 2 years I'm thinking about building a new system. I've got 10-15 years worth of working parts sitting in the garage collecting dust.
 
Jacmac said:
After reading the OP's rant I'm thinking I should have been more upset about my Asus Striker Extreme dieing after less than a year (circa 2007). The lesson I learned was don't buy bleeding edge. It isn't really needed, worth the risk, or worth the hassle.

3.5 years? You got a good ride out of it, time to pony up for a new system. Every 2 years I'm thinking about building a new system. I've got 10-15 years worth of working parts sitting in the garage collecting dust.
Click to expand...

The Striker Extreme is a special case. It's based on the 680i SLI chipset which is why it was a huge piece of shit. All of them were. This is not ASUS' fault.
 
Dan_D said:
The Striker Extreme is a special case. It's based on the 680i SLI chipset which is why it was a huge piece of shit. All of them were. This is not ASUS' fault.
Click to expand...

As most nforce chipsets in my experience, but granted, the 680i was a failure. When I was younger, I laughed at my gamer friends who went all Nvidia (GPU + Chipset) to insure the best performance possible.

Even the updated 780i couldn't perform very well.
 
Ctek said:
As most nforce chipsets in my experience, but granted, the 680i was a failure. When I was younger, I laughed at my gamer friends who went all Nvidia (GPU + Chipset) to insure the best performance possible.

Even the updated 780i couldn't perform very well.
Click to expand...

The performance of the nForce chipsets wasn't the problem. And technically, if you went SLI you could get a much better performing system than you could get out of Intel + ATI / Crossfire at the time. Remember during the 8800GTX days, ATI wasn't very competitive. The problem was that the chipsets had a high failure rate and the reference designs were plagued with problems. Their voltage hardware was garbage to say the least. Voltage regulation was laughable, quality of components were questionable, and the BIOS was even worse. Overclocking your dual core gave great results on the nForce chipsets. Overclocking your quad core didn't. That being said the games were still more GPU bound than CPU bound so even the massive difference in overclockability of the CPU wasn't enough to compensate for the Intel chipset based system's lack of a secondary GPU on the high end.

Once the Intel D5400XS came out things changed. Then we got reliable SLI, but unfortunately it came at a supremely high price. Not all of which was cost related.
 
Sorry to see you go OP

My GD80 is probably one the best motherboards I've ever seen reviewed and best one I've ever owned.


(bought because I'm a HARDOCP sellout :p)
 
MSI has made some damned good boards over the years. I don't think this thread diminishes their products or reputation in any way.
 
Dan_D said:
I disagree with the sentiment that boards are designed to last only three years. I've seen nothing to indicate that. Performance machines which are highly overclocked can and will have higher failure rates than the same systems running at stock speeds. This is no doubt due to increases in voltages and increased thermal loads. However, I've still seen boards from 5 years ago still run strong today. There is no reason to believe that boards made with solid electrolytic capacitors are going to fail in 3 years. Especially when some people still keep their machines from 3 to 5 years. I'm again still seeing people get that kind of time out of computers.

Just because every other type of consumer electronics has a short life span doesn't mean that computer parts do. Again I'm not seeing that. My server is approaching 4 years old. No problems there. My girlfriends machine was over three years old until I replaced it yesterday, and my HTPC is about 3 years old as well. Again they are still going strong. Until I see boards dying with failed caps, burnt out voltage regulators etc. in droves I'm going to disagree with the assumption that they are designed to die in three years. It's simply not true.

Now, that being said I don't care if they do. After three years I'm likely to replace it due to being dated. And for gamers, the life cycle is even shorter. 2 to 3 years is about the best you can expect, and most likely there have been upgrades along the way. I don't think that the OP should be whining about a board only making it three and a half years and not 10. Then bitching about MSI for not honoring a warranty that had expired months ago. That's just insane. Do you think your dealership will cover a new engine if you managed to seize it a year or more outside of warranty? Or how about if you put 200,000 miles on it inside of two years? You think you'd get a new engine then? I don't.

People have this sense of entitlement and act like corporations that didn't go beyond their initial guarantee are some how evil and immoral. Hell no MSI wasn't going to give you a new motherboard outside of the warranty period. Why should they? MSI wants you to buy a new motherboard, and hopefully choose one of theirs. Not give you a free part so you can avoid paying for a motherboard for another two or three years. It's not wrong or evil, it's just business. You can't make money giving away shit for free. Especially since the supply of discontinued motherboards is finite. Those need to be used for people with a legitimate warranty claim so they don't have to upgrade them to newer boards and deal with all the shit that goes along with that.
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Your anecdotes don't negate that fact that, thanks to the laws of physics, motherboards see a greater than linear increase in probability of failure as time goes on. MSI and other companies have to take this into account when they make products and decide on warranties, or they would be caught in an eternal cycle of giving away free motherboards.

All motherboards eventually fail. Companies look at the statistics, and average rates of failure, lower the value a bit (say average time of failure was 5 years, it would be rasonable to warranty for 3) to compensate for the large chance that consumer products may see extra wear due to poor ventilation, spills, etc, and decide on that warranty length to guarantee the product won't fail too far outside the average time before failure.


There will always be outliers, and for everyone claiming "I've got a motherboard that has lasted ten years" needs to understand that for every motherboard lasting 10 years, there is one failing in 6 months, and also that modern chipsets are so dense that they are more greatly affected by the damage heat causes.
 
ndruw said:
Your anecdotes don't negate that fact that, thanks to the laws of physics, motherboards see a greater than linear increase in probability of failure as time goes on. MSI and other companies have to take this into account when they make products and decide on warranties, or they would be caught in an eternal cycle of giving away free motherboards.

All motherboards eventually fail. Companies look at the statistics, and average rates of failure, lower the value a bit (say average time of failure was 5 years, it would be rasonable to warranty for 3) to compensate for the large chance that consumer products may see extra wear due to poor ventilation, spills, etc, and decide on that warranty length to guarantee the product won't fail too far outside the average time before failure.


There will always be outliers, and for everyone claiming "I've got a motherboard that has lasted ten years" needs to understand that for every motherboard lasting 10 years, there is one failing in 6 months, and also that modern chipsets are so dense that they are more greatly affected by the damage heat causes.
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I'm not saying they are built to last 10 years but they aren't designed to fail 6 days beyond warranty either.
 
Dan_D said:
The performance of the nForce chipsets wasn't the problem. And technically, if you went SLI you could get a much better performing system than you could get out of Intel + ATI / Crossfire at the time. Remember during the 8800GTX days, ATI wasn't very competitive. The problem was that the chipsets had a high failure rate and the reference designs were plagued with problems. Their voltage hardware was garbage to say the least. Voltage regulation was laughable, quality of components were questionable, and the BIOS was even worse. Overclocking your dual core gave great results on the nForce chipsets. Overclocking your quad core didn't. That being said the games were still more GPU bound than CPU bound so even the massive difference in overclockability of the CPU wasn't enough to compensate for the Intel chipset based system's lack of a secondary GPU on the high end.

Once the Intel D5400XS came out things changed. Then we got reliable SLI, but unfortunately it came at a supremely high price. Not all of which was cost related.
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I did not express myself correctly. When I said perform, I meant to be reliable. I had so much issues with simple RAID failling on nForce chipsets, impossible overclocking (with the same CPU overclocking well on P35 motherboards), lots of BSODs, and so on. I did not use 100+ nForce motherboards so my liability is rather small, but I used enough to never recommand one to a friend, and never buying one.

/OT
 
Ctek said:
I did not express myself correctly. When I said perform, I meant to be reliable. I had so much issues with simple RAID failling on nForce chipsets, impossible overclocking (with the same CPU overclocking well on P35 motherboards), lots of BSODs, and so on. I did not use 100+ nForce motherboards so my liability is rather small, but I used enough to never recommand one to a friend, and never buying one.

/OT
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No, reliable was out of the question for those pieces of shit. Believe me, I've had 12 680i SLI boards I think and 2 780i SLI boards. That doesn't even begin to break the surface of all the boards I had to deal with in friend's machines. I know many people who bought those boards only to have them die a short time later. They were all shit.
 
When you bought the mobo, you should have been fully aware of the manufacturer's warranty period. You made it past that by around half a year. Hooray! No since in bitching. Try asking a home builder or car manufacturer to fix something for free or give you a discount coupon on a replacement when you're that far out of warranty.

Question: Did you use proper ESD prevention when assembling your system back in '08? If not, that may greatly explain why you started getting little annoyances and it just got worse and worse as time went on.
 
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