Scumbag ASUS: Overvolting CPUs & Screwing the Customer

Lakados said:
I don’t have a lot of AMD 7000 series on site but all our x670 based boards received AGESA bios updates to fix the issue regardless of which brand they were. If it was only Asus why would Gigabyte need to patch for it?
The “fix” is in AGESA 1.0.0.6, and if the fix is there it would stand that the flaw was there as well. As AMD provides the AGESA and it comes pre compiled it could be many places not all boards may use the effected code the same way though.

I use the term fix loosely here because independent tests are still out on weather it fixes anything or not.
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1.0.0.6 was a temporary fix by setting a hard voltage limit that manufactures can't bypass, 1.0.0.7 is the actual fix. AGESA 1.0.0.7 takes control away from the AIB's bios settings and puts a hard temperature limit within the cpu microcode so that whether or not the AIB bios protections trip the cpu will automatically trigger an SOC temperature limit protection by reducing the SOC voltage. mostly because it looks like ASUS and potentially others are cheating it by having the controller report the SOC voltage incorrectly to the bios.. for example why even with the 1.3v limit in place with the AGESA 1.0.0.6 the ASUS boards were still pushing 1.4v to the SOC. the temperature limit protection "should" keep that from damaging the cpu even if asus and other AIB's don't fix the voltage reporting. as far as agesa code goes, it's always been a platform wide update because it's easier on AMD and the AIB's.

now should the protection of always been there? yes, but if manufactures had stuck to the specifications AMD gave them it possibly wouldn't of mattered. end of the day the AGESA update is AMD doing what they need to do to protect themselves which now puts the liability on the AIB's if failures continue to happen after the update.
 
Apparantly Asus have realised that they might have shot themselves in the foot with this one

https://www.asus.com/us/news/ihctikmgahafyrib/

"We would like to reassure our customers that both beta and fully validated BIOS updates for ASUS AM5 motherboards are covered by the original manufacturer’s warranty.

  1. The ASUS AM5 motherboard warranty also covers all AMD EXPO, Intel XMP, and DOCP memory configurations.
  2. All recent BIOS updates follow the latest AMD voltage guidelines for AMD Ryzen™ 7000 series processors."
 
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SmokeRngs said:
It's not just Asus who has been juicing hardware although Asus is probably the worst culprit.
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I agree with you. This seems to be the trend in PC gaming hardware in general. I understand the general progression over the years is to get faster, but the power draw that this latest hardware needs and has been consuming is getting beyond crazy. I remember when the 3090/3090Ti series came out then the 4090 series and how people complained about the power draw and now here we are with motherboards and processors. Granted this latest motherboard issue sounds more like an oversight/mistake.
 
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Yeah Gigabyte does the same thing with having stock high voltages on their motherboard. The difference though is that Gigabyte lately has had better QC and surface mounted components on their boards. I feel like Asrock is another company to maybe look at for future purchases as they seem to be up and coming with better quality lately.
 
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Armenius said:
They may have made some AM4 boards, but they haven't made any AM5 boards.
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Indeed they did. They did create an X570 Dark motherboard for example.
lopoetve said:
They’re slow?
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It's more likely that EVGA simply isn't going to release any. We've had X670/X670e etc. for some time now. If EVGA hasn't released a board by now, it's not going to. On their website they only have four models. They have two Z690 and two Z790 motherboard models. EVGA poached talent from ABIT and a couple other companies years ago and most of those guys have moved on. As I understand it, they have a very small R&D team for their motherboard division at present. My guess is that their AMD boards didn't sell very well and don't think its worth the R&D costs to design and market AM5 motherboards. You can tell that they aren't investing a lot in the motherboard market based on their limited model selection. They don't even have products that cover the general price range. They have a mid-range and a high end offering for Z690 and Z790. There aren't any B650's or anything like that.
 
They might have just tried to do it as leverage against Nvidia in 'negotiations' going on with what we now know

I know there was a big deal about EVGA having to go to Nvidia to make that board, but it might have been EVGA trying to say to Nvidia "we don't need you" and Nvidia calling their bluff and that's why we see no more from them cause it was just a bluff, maybe
 
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Unless EVGA is making money hand over fist with power supplies or something, I think its likely that the company is going to basically die on the vine. It's going to just implode to a point where it isn't worth a lot and it gets bought out by some other company. You'd figure that it would have AMD graphics cards or double down on its motherboard business after ditching NVIDIA, but it looks like they are content going the abit route and fading away.
 
They didn't release their x570 boards until nearly the end of the last cycle, like 5800x3d range iirc. I wouldn't be surprised if they do much the same with this round of boards. With all that's gone on recently I wouldn't be surprised if they are even slower than usual.

It wouldn't take much digging to find out. The mods and tech support staff at their forum are generally pretty knowledgeable and equally forthcoming.
 
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hititnquitit said:
They didn't release their x570 boards until nearly the end of the last cycle, like 5800x3d range iirc. I wouldn't be surprised if they do much the same with this round of boards. With all that's gone on recently I wouldn't be surprised if they are even slower than usual.

It wouldn't take much digging to find out. The mods and tech support staff at their forum are generally pretty knowledgeable and equally forthcoming.
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Being late on motherboard release cycles is not a good business practice.
 
Dan_D said:
Being late on motherboard release cycles is not a good business practice.
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I agree. Unfortunately that seems to be how they have to go about doing it. KP is heavily involved in the Dark series of boards. From what I remember reading he won't sign off on a project until it's perfect. Combined with small teams on all levels...well we have seen how late and expensive all of their last few generations have been because of it. Doesn't leave much room for profit when the only ones buying are die hards.
 
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hititnquitit said:
I agree. Unfortunately that seems to be how they have to go about doing it. KP is heavily involved in the Dark series of boards. From what I remember reading he won't sign off on a project until it's perfect. Combined with small teams on all levels...well we have seen how late and expensive all of their last few generations have been because of it. Doesn't leave much room for profit when the only ones buying are die hards.
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Here is the problem: When you make an ultra-high end board, the only people that are going to want to buy it are serious enthusiasts that have deep pockets. The type that buy those boards are usually early adopters. After 6 months, they've probably already bought something else. Sure, a few die hard overclockers with deep pockets may buy these as well or even replace what they have with a better board later in the product life-cycle but this isn't the kind of person you want to cater to exclusively. It's a losing strategy. I'm generally the type of guy that buys these ultra-high end boards. When I buy motherboards, I literally do it within the first month after a new chipset and CPU is released.
 
Dan_D said:
Here is the problem: When you make an ultra-high end board, the only people that are going to want to buy it are serious enthusiasts that have deep pockets. The type that buy those boards are usually early adopters. After 6 months, they've probably already bought something else. Sure, a few die hard overclockers with deep pockets may buy these as well or even replace what they have with a better board later in the product life-cycle but this isn't the kind of person you want to cater to exclusively. It's a losing strategy. I'm generally the type of guy that buys these ultra-high end boards. When I buy motherboards, I literally do it within the first month after a new chipset and CPU is released.
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That’s what confused me about the dark hero.

I tend to agree, although I aim for the 2-3 month mark to avoid some of the super early adopter bugs and problems (especially fundamentally flawed boards like the asus ones with the backwards component that lit on fire). Wait, wasn’t that an x670 board too?!?
 
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lopoetve said:
That’s what confused me about the dark hero.

I tend to agree, although I aim for the 2-3 month mark to avoid some of the super early adopter bugs and problems (especially fundamentally flawed boards like the asus ones with the backwards component that lit on fire). Wait, wasn’t that an x670 board too?!?
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lopoetve said:
They’re slow?
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More that there'd be no ROI to EVGA making AM5 boards, no way to really set themselves apart. EVGA's X570 was a one-off, experiment. AIB partners have been taking a bath producing AM5 boards since they're expensive to produce; a big part is the massive signal integrity requirements of PCIe Gen5 (more PCB layers, higher quality components). Nevermind PCIe Gen5 has been a nonstarter in the consumer space and will take a couple years before add-in components transcend barely-better-than-Gen4 performance.

IMO the existential issue being missed in this latest viral youtube festival is the why ASUS, Gigabyte and other AIB's are trying to juice their AM5 boards to begin with: for competitive advantage, to set their products apart. Just like EVGA made its name doing. But it's fundamentally an architecture that doesn't really want to be overclocked.

"Chiplets chiplets" was the mantra extolled like it was some performance multiplier to be excited about, instead of the manufacturing cost reduction multiplier it actually is. The CPU and memory controller mostly want to run in a fixed, "sweet-spot" configuration - and unfortunately that's the downside for enthusiast/tinkerers. The platform is powerful, but also hamstrung in some ways by its architecture.

So there are no EVGA AM5 boards for the same reason there are no more EVGA Nvidia GPU's - the margin for juicing up stock design and setting themselves apart has been eroded with each successive product gen. The iPhone/Prius/Tesla-fication of everything continues - a slow, creeping transition to fixed configurations set and controlled by the original manufacturer. It's arguably what killed EVGA, and IMO is the root why to ASUS' self-inflicted headache with X670E.
 
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DPI said:
The existential issue being missed in this latest Youtube outrage circlejerk is the *WHY* ASUS, Gigabyte and other AIB's are/were trying to juice their AM5 boards to begin with: for competitive advantage
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I was going to write a whole thing about my time reviewing hardware and detail how if they were smart, Asus and the lot could scam the system, but I'm just going to keep my mouth shut.
 
ZeroBarrier said:
I'm no lover of ASUS products. I've had my fair share of good and really bad products from them, but it speaks volumes to me that Steve of all people pile on ASUS concerning this shit over AMD who is ultimately responsible for their CPUs catastrophically failing as they have. So I can fully believe techtuber collusion on more than just one way.
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I'm a fan of GN Steve, I think he's a good guy when considering the arc of his channel and time as a techtuber holistically. But in this ASUS dust-up I think a narrative was created in a hurry - and conclusions jumped to - where conspiracy, deception, bad faith are being assigned to what's more likely just typical slow-moving corporate bureaucracy.

Ever since the Newegg RMA expose' Steve's developed a bit of a chip on shoulder like "I took down Newegg, so if I contact your company and you don't answer me immediately, I'll inform my vast viewerbase you're scumbags conspiring against your customers. Also if you change something on your website without informing me, I will assume it was systemic, company-wide deception. Did I mention my subscriber base?".

...and then like clockwork Jayz2Braincells waddles up to the trough with his copycat video a few hours later.

ASUS does some shitty things - like their RMA denials - but it's also a big company with 15,000+ employees and many moving parts. One or two midlevel managers making a shortsighted or boneheaded policy decision doesn't erase the fact they also employ some top notch engineers for example. ASUS is also a Taiwanese company, and Steve of all people should know there are cultural differences when dealing with Asian companies. I know firsthand certain styles of communication and engagement (or lack of) can come across as "rude" to let's say someone that grew up in the U.S.

All of this is ofcourse good for customers, but Steve could be more surgical and less sledgehammer about it so he doesn't burn bridges needlessly.
 
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DPI said:
I'm a fan of GN Steve, I think he's a good guy when considering the arc of his channel and time as a techtuber holistically. But in the case of this ASUS dust-up I think a narrative was created in a hurry - and conclusions have been jumped to - that aren't necessarily the objective reality.

Ever since the Newegg RMA expose' Steve's been leaning into an ambush-journalism persona like "I took down Newegg, so every company must shit their pants and answer me immediately when I contact them, OR ELSE I will inform my vast viewerbase your company are gaslighting scumbags acting deceptively for not immediately answering me, or randomly changing something on your website without informing me. Did I mention my subscriber base?". And then like clockwork Jayz2Braincells waddles up to the trough with his copycat video a few hours later.

ASUS does some shitty things, but it's also a big company with many moving parts. One or two midlevel employees making a shortsighted or boneheaded policy decision doesn't erase the fact they also employ some top notch engineers for example. ASUS is also a Taiwanese company, and Steve of all people should know there are cultural differences when dealing with Asian companies. Not better, not worse, just different - and I know firsthand certain styles of communication or engagement can come across as "rude" to let's say someone that grew up in the U.S. Point being there's a lot more nuance to all of this than the way its being portrayed.
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He did net that meeting with those NewEgg Executives and I think every single one of them execs has now been since long ago displaced
 
flegg said:
wouldn't surprise me if some on this forum are on the ASUS take. why replace a $500 mobo when you can pay a shill with a free $100 mobo inventory excess for fake praise.
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OVstXOT.gif


$100 MOBO? Shit. More like free ROG mousepad and coffee mug. But the ROG letters on the mug do change colors when it heats up, so there's that.
 
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Dan_D said:
Indeed they did. They did create an X570 Dark motherboard for example.

It's more likely that EVGA simply isn't going to release any. We've had X670/X670e etc. for some time now. If EVGA hasn't released a board by now, it's not going to. On their website they only have four models. They have two Z690 and two Z790 motherboard models. EVGA poached talent from ABIT and a couple other companies years ago and most of those guys have moved on. As I understand it, they have a very small R&D team for their motherboard division at present. My guess is that their AMD boards didn't sell very well and don't think its worth the R&D costs to design and market AM5 motherboards. You can tell that they aren't investing a lot in the motherboard market based on their limited model selection. They don't even have products that cover the general price range. They have a mid-range and a high end offering for Z690 and Z790. There aren't any B650's or anything like that.
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honestly i think the x570 dark only existed because Vince wanted the board for doing record stuff and to do it the board had to be a production board. it was released so late in the x570 cycle that it was never going to sell outside of the extreme overclockers.
erek said:
He did net that meeting with those NewEgg Executives and I think every single one of them execs has now been since long ago displaced
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long story short they were all "moved" or left the company other than one of them but can't remember which one specifically it was, Steve mentioned it a while ago. i'll give them credit though, they stuck to their word and at least tried to push the company to make policy changes. that being said those positions have been a revolving door of employee's ever since they got bought out. if you notice not a single one of them had been in their position for more than 2 years and one of them had only been there for less than 3 months.
 
DPI said:
I'm a fan of GN Steve, I think he's a good guy when considering the arc of his channel and time as a techtuber holistically. But in this ASUS dust-up I think a narrative was created in a hurry - and conclusions jumped to - where conspiracy, deception, bad faith are being assigned to what's more likely just typical slow-moving corporate bureaucracy.

Ever since the Newegg RMA expose' Steve's developed a bit of a chip on shoulder like "I took down Newegg, so if I contact your company and you don't answer me immediately, I'll inform my vast viewerbase you're scumbags conspiring against your customers. Also if you change something on your website without informing me, I will assume it was systemic, company-wide deception. Did I mention my subscriber base?".

...and then like clockwork Jayz2Braincells waddles up to the trough with his copycat video a few hours later.

ASUS does some shitty things - like their RMA denials - but it's also a big company with 15,000+ employees and many moving parts. One or two midlevel managers making a shortsighted or boneheaded policy decision doesn't erase the fact they also employ some top notch engineers for example. ASUS is also a Taiwanese company, and Steve of all people should know there are cultural differences when dealing with Asian companies. I know firsthand certain styles of communication and engagement (or lack of) can come across as "rude" to let's say someone that grew up in the U.S.

All of this is ofcourse good for customers, but Steve could be more surgical and less sledgehammer about it so he doesn't burn bridges needlessly.
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I kinda felt this way also. Good post.
 
Brands do not require your loyalty. Any publicly traded business would gladly slit your throat if it guaranteed a 10% increase in their share price, assuming they could do it legally. Not only would they, but they're legally obligated to do so if given the opportunity. It's called Fiduciary Shareholder Duty: Essentially, if a publicly traded company encounters an opportunity to increase wealth for their shareholders and decline to do so, they are legally at fault of robbing their shareholders. So Like I said, they will do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING legal to increase their share price, so trust me: They don't need fanboys sucking their dick.
 
KazeoHin said:
Brands do not require your loyalty. Any publicly traded business would gladly slit your throat if it guaranteed a 10% increase in their share price, assuming they could do it legally. Not only would they, but they're legally obligated to do so if given the opportunity. It's called Fiduciary Shareholder Duty: Essentially, if a publicly traded company encounters an opportunity to increase wealth for their shareholders and decline to do so, they are legally at fault of robbing their shareholders. So Like I said, they will do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING legal to increase their share price, so trust me: They don't need fanboys sucking their dick.
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This is correct.

The next step is realizing to then become a shareholder so you're the one being served, served money 🤑
 
Niner21 said:
This is the funniest thing I've read today. I've voiced my dislike of that guys channel on here and how he lets everyone do the work and then he just copies their content and piles on.
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meh it's fine.. totally different demographic of viewers that are less likely to spend the time looking up information so if that's what it takes to get the information to more people then so be it. we live in a silver spoon era where people expect to be handed any and everything to them on that silver spoon.
 
KazeoHin said:
It's called Fiduciary Shareholder Duty
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There's still limits, it's not like all greed is mandatory. Like, they could probably make a lot of money laundering it, but that's illegal. There are still restrictions.

And while this might not qualify, doing stuff that in the long-term that can damage a brand breaks that rule, and shareholders can sue leadership, like how Disney shareholders are currently suing the Disney leadership.
 
Axman said:
There's still limits, it's not like all greed is mandatory. Like, they could probably make a lot of money laundering it, but that's illegal. There are still restrictions.

And while this might not qualify, doing stuff that in the long-term that can damage a brand breaks that rule, and shareholders can sue leadership, like how Disney shareholders are currently suing the Disney leadership.
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True, but that's why I remarked that they have to do anything and everything LEGAL.
 
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Axman said:
There's still limits, it's not like all greed is mandatory. Like, they could probably make a lot of money laundering it, but that's illegal. There are still restrictions.

And while this might not qualify, doing stuff that in the long-term that can damage a brand breaks that rule, and shareholders can sue leadership, like how Disney shareholders are currently suing the Disney leadership.
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Disney shareholders are suing over misleading financial statements on the streaming business and heavy losses there - suing over leadership choices is extremely difficult outside of direct financial impact like that (not stating there would be major losses to build a new revenue stream).
 
lopoetve said:
Disney shareholders are suing over misleading financial statements on the streaming business and heavy losses there - suing over leadership choices is extremely difficult outside of direct financial impact like that (not stating there would be major losses to build a new revenue stream).
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Shareholders can sue for whatever reasons they want, no matter what the decisions they think are bad leadership.

Like when VW got sued over Dieselgate. That was a similar type of fraud.
 
Axman said:
Shareholders can sue for whatever reasons they want, no matter what the decisions they think are bad leadership.

Like when VW got sued over Dieselgate. That was a similar type of fraud.
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Sure, and lose a lot of money to lawyers when it fails. Dieselgate was actually illegal actions; what Chapek did may verge on that (or at least SEC rules) depending on what was in the 10k and other SEC filings. I haven't notably reviewed it, it's recent and doesn't cross over that much to my side of the world.

Suing because you think the leadership is making a choice bad for the company in the short or long run is almost impossible to prove, assuming there is any chance that their decision will have a positive impact. This has been repeated over and over again. Long term planning is an acceptable reason to take short term losses, or to justify short term decisions, as long as there is some form of justification - this is called the Business Judgement Rule (and comes from Ford v. Dodge Motor Company) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_judgment_rule - also Gimbel v Signal.

Given disney is such a hot topic at the moment, I agree with your primary point that there are limits to corporate greed - but I'm curious why the disney reference.
 
lopoetve said:
Given disney is such a hot topic at the moment, I agree with your primary point that there are limits to corporate greed - but I'm curious why the disney reference.
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Just because it's a recent, that's all.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
it looks like ASUS and potentially others are cheating it by having the controller report the SOC voltage incorrectly to the bios.. for example why even with the 1.3v limit in place with the AGESA 1.0.0.6 the ASUS boards were still pushing 1.4v to the SOC. the temperature limit protection "should" keep that from damaging the cpu even if asus and other AIB's don't fix the voltage reporting. as far as agesa code goes, it's always been a platform wide update because it's easier on AMD and the AIB's.
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Wow, so they had to actually circumvent AMD's protections in order to give it more voltage than it was designed for using something reminiscent of a GPU shunt mod.

That is really shitty, and pretty much absolves AMD completely here. The board makers should be burned at the stake for this.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Wow, so they had to actually circumvent AMD's protections in order to give it more voltage than it was designed for using something reminiscent of a GPU shunt mod.

That is really shitty, and pretty much absolves AMD completely here. The board makers should be burned at the stake for this.
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Sounds like bunk, where's the source on that?
 
erek said:
Had this been covered already?


Gigabyte Issues Statement Regarding SOC Voltage on AMD's AM5 Motherboads Under 1.3V

https://www.techpowerup.com/308768/...oc-voltage-on-amds-am5-motherboads-under-1-3v
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So basically, what they are saying is that AMD CPUs are blowing up by themselves as their internal SOC Voltage (SVI3 interface) is in fact 1.3 and in spec. Glad Gigabyte is defending themselves here and putting the ball squarely back in AMDs court.

And before anyone says it, this is not an ASUS only issue, reports of CPUs bulging on Gigabyte boards have been reported. This is indeed an AMD issue.

Hoping to see parity on how we treat one manufacturer vs another, but who are we kidding here. This manufacturer is the golden child. :coffee:
 
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