For the record, has anyone got any proof regarding Abit's high RMA rate?

[Sir Fredrick]

That's all good in theory, but when they charge you for an RMA, plus you have to pay to ship it back, *and* it's an essential part so you can't finish building your computer/start using it until you get your new motherboard, then there's a serious issue there.

Gigabyte boards usually don't get much attention because they're nothing very special, pretty generic, but they are supposed to be very stable. One of my dad's PCs has a gigabyte motherboard, works just fine.

The fact that Russ (ala compucheap.com) stopped selling abit boards is proof enough for me that they are suck. My current board is an ASUS, and my next board will be either an ASUS or an MSI. I must admit that I did have to RMA an ASUS K7V once, but I only had to pay for shipping, Abit is the only company I know of charging a fee for RMAs.

 

[Hanpan]

Actually i ahve found most mom and pop shops use gigabyte boards. They are cheap and relativley stable.

 

[darth maul]

But finally we got %'s numbers. Is there any data about those returned boards, meaning why they were returned?

My personal opinion, if the board gets me that extra % or two in benchmarks cause it can be tweaked to the max, and its overclocker friendly, and it has the features I want/need.....its the board for me. Hmmmm, sounds like an Abit.

[sarcasm]I guess I'll just have to live on the edge worrying about rma'ng it someday[/sarcasm], till then Q3CTF here I come!!!

 

[Dameon]

Something to take into account:
Abit targets the overclocker / tweaker market. I feel this seriously increases their RMA rate.

too many people out there jack with their system, crank the voltage or speed too high and can't figure out the BIOS reset. So they RMA the board or return it saying it's bad. Or, like with the latest KT7 BIOS, they don't read the directions that come with the flash. The later Kt7 BIOs enabled Chipsaving technology that required a fan to be plugged into header one. Header one was not the closest header to the CPU. This meant that often people did not have a fan connected and thus after flashing the system would just beep 4 times & power itself down.

Targeting the "people who know enough to be dangerous" community I feel seriously jacks up their RMA rate with idiots not knowing how to fully troubleshoot, clear BIOS settings, and NOT to hold the board vendor at fault when their overclock experiment goes awry.

 

[Rand]

I would say Gigabyte is one of the largest motherboard manufacturers in the world, they just don't tend to get as much attention b/c their motherboards are usually not targeted toward the highend/tweaker/overclocker market. They produce good solid boards but boards that arent any SPECIAl, more along the lines of a 'generic' motheboard. And so they don't get as much attention as boards from many other manufacturers.

 

[snut]

has anyone actually RMAed a motherbord? Mines just died after using it for couple mines and I dont know who to contact to RMA it...Do I e-mail a-bit?...The place I bought it from..being thatIve had it for couple months..I think ive lost the recipt and dont know will the store rma it..Am I fx0red and have to buy a new mb or can I some how RMA it ?

 

[miniMUNCH]

I also have the same question for Patrick:

who spends that much time and money testing 1000 MB's from each maufacturer, or even one? What an incredible waste of time and money. The same tests could be accomplished with a much smaller sample size or a few phone calls and emails to a couple distributors QA/RMA department.

What's the PC Resources website?? www.pcresources.com?

 

[jeebus21]

My ABIT BX6 2 had a fan header die on it after the third week. it would not properly reboot after making changes in BIOS (saved or not). It wouldn't supply proper voltage to my processor. Then, one day, all the problems went away except for the fan header and I'm using it right now. The only reason I didn't send it back was because I would be computer-less for three-five weeks while they had it and I had papers to write. I probably will not by another ABIT...maybe ASUS or TYAN workstation boards.

I did contact ABIT's tech support and the guy was not very helpful or friendly, so I said "f#$k it" and kept it.

 

[HellRaven]

<< who spends that much time and money testing 1000 MB's from each maufacturer, or even one? >>


No offense minimunch, but what exactly do you know about PCResources and his job - let alone why he does what he does.

Last time I checked, businesses didn't purposefully spend money for no reason (if you ignore all those dot com's that went out of business at least )

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Dameon, this is highly unlikely since you can't just send it back for RMA without their authorization. This means you must talk to tech support first, and they will try to work out problems such as not having a fan plugged into the correct header. Abit boards target the overclockers market, but when you get a board with a bad fan header or a bad keyboard connector, it's hardly the user's fault. Compucheap sells mostly to computer geeks, hwo are obviously going to be tweaking their computers more than your average user. According to your theory they should have about the same amount of problems with Asus, MSI and Abit boards, yet they only decided to drop Abit boards.

It can see how PCResources would easily test 1000 boards from each manufacturer. If they are doing any kind of volume, it would be very easy to sell those boards, and it's a very smart business practice to test a system before selling it.


Am interested in seeing their website though.

 

[borealiss]

what is the rma rate for soyotek and fic?

 

[Stallion]

I'm going to go with RedShirt on this. I built my PC over 1 1/2 years ago with an Abit BE6 and have not had a problem. It runs my 700@933 smooth as silk and runs for months with out a re-boot. I built my wife a PC with a BE6 II and 550Katmai (1 year ago)and it also runs like a champ. I built my Mom-in-law a PC with an Abit board (forgot model)and she has never had a problem either.

I built a unit for my parents with an Asus Cuv4x and have had nothing but problems. First off it wouldn't run when we first started it at all. It wouldn't detect the CPU speed. Took it back ,shop tested it, yep, it was TU... Got new mobo.

Then we had more problems, ram? we swaped ram, that didn't work. It would run for 4-6 days and hang. We took it to where we bought all the parts and they tested it. Said it was the 4 in 1 drivers and then loaded the drivers (all though we loaded the new ones ourselves) and gave it back... It hung 2 days later.. Back to the shop, now they said it was the CPU, it was a Celeron 566. They said the new celerons didn't work with the mobo. But if I bought a PIII 600 it would run fine...

Side note, if the celly wouldn't run on the board why did the biatches sell it to me?

Back to story, loaded the 600 and it ran for a week and then hung up and has continued to do so for the last 5 months. The longest it has run is for 8 days. So some might say that is no big deal. But then why does my Abit and the wifes run for months on end 24/7 (SETI) with out hanging..

I'm about to go buy my parents an Abit. Or maybe I'll go see Russ and get an MSI from him..

 

[Dulanic]

<< Geesh, I personally don't care about the RMA rate of any company! People may buy Abit because they are known to be extremely easy to set up. So you have a bunch of newbie computer builders who think rubbing inflated ballons on their head while working on a motherboard is a good thing, that are using this board. >>



RMA rates also help give an idea of over quality of the board... from my experience, Abit boards dont last as long either... and Abit only has 1 year warantty... Asus has 2 or 3 year (can't remeber), and Im not sure about MSI. So if your Abit board dies after 1 year and a month your screwed.

 

[PCResources]

<< who spends that much time and money testing 1000 MB's from each maufacturer, or even one? What an incredible waste of time and money. The same tests could be accomplished with a much smaller sample size or a few phone calls and emails to a couple distributors QA/RMA department. >>



I do not trust anyone on these issues, no distributors, no manufacturers, no reviews... I do a 3 week quality test on every board that ever passes through PC Resources, no i don't do every test personally...

These tests are much more reliable than any 12hour testing done in reviews, and this way i know that my customer get's a stable board.

As i also deliver boards for military applications this IS necessary, the average customer just get's a system that is stable enough for military uses...

www.pcresources.com is not PC Resources, PC Resources exists in more than one country in the world, in fact, many of the innovations and designs made by and sold by PC Resources are actually developed in Sweden by PC Resourses kronoberg...

Soon enough you will see my web site, it is down for now, but in a few months it will be up, i want perfection in everything, that's why it takes a bit of time...

Patrick Palm

PC Resources

 

[SiliconVandal]

My old BE6-2 (I gave it to AT user MangoDude) wouldn't work with any GeForce chip properly. It would take a hole hellof a lot of tinkering to even get the computer to POST. MangoDude has a Radeon so it doesn't much matter. He's a local friend

 

[PCResources]

Redshirt:



<< Just shut up and buy whatever product you want, just as long as it eventually works. >>



Sure, lets shut down all the forums discussing hw, lets shut down every site that does reviews...

If you do not like it, don't read it, i have helped many people out here, i get about 10-15 PM's a day from different people, asking me what i would recommend, and asking for help about issues... I answer all of those, even though i do not make one buck from it...

This forum does provide some factual info on what is good and what's not, you can belieave whatever you want to believe, but some people use the recommendations here...

Patrick Palm

PC Resources

 

[Rand]

Easy there PCResources, I'm sure he's not suggesting to shut down the forums or Anandtech or any other site.
I myself also get a num,ber of PM's and emails from people asking my advice and opinions on what to buy, hardware/software issues etc.

I'm sure anyone that has spent a fair bit of time here, myself included, has learned a good deal from many of the intelligent posters that frequent the Anandtech forums.

 

[hans007]

first off a lot of people dont like the huge HASSLE of RMA ing anything. Also i would think asus sold more than a million boards a month, during peak production months HP alone uses something like 350000 of them a month. And sony uses them too. SO lets say another 50000. MSI isn't used in any of the big computer companies. As far as i know it goes


sony-asus
hp-asus
dell-intel
micron-tyan
compaq-fic
gateway-custom boards for amd, intel for intel
emachines-uses piece of crap made by trigem

 

[PCResources]

<< MSI isn't used in any of the big computer companies. As far as i know it goes >>



Now this is a bold statement, but i will make it anyway... I will take on any of the bigger brand-name companies regarding quality and performance any day of the week... Most home users who have had a few years of experience could probably do the same...

PC Resources takes pride in what we do, we deliver high quality, stable and high performance systems, we test each and every one of them thouroughly befor we ship them, sure, they are expensive, but we only deliver to people who really need stability and quality... We do not need a big service desk, because we have very few complaints about our systems... We go with MSI or Soltek these days...

Now, who likes any of the bioses and special solutions delivered by those big brand companies?

Just because it is a HP that doesn't mean that it is better than any old home built computer, regarding performance, it will almost always be worse...

Patrick Palm

PC Resources

 

[bomb99]

got couple of abit BH6 and a few abit Bx6 rev2 no problems at all. Once i started to get the via chipset i got 2 and both is a POS, one i exchange and one I RMA back. got an asus works perfectly. MY story with abit, don't think i'm going use another one again.

 

[SPAnDAU]

PC Resources,

Are you able to share some of your testing methods with us? You're a pretty smart guy, and I feel that I and many others would benefit from being able to test with your methods.

If nothing else, all of us here can have a baseline for our testing so that we know we are comparing apples to apples.

 

[SmackDown]

<<I do not trust anyone on these issues, no distributors, no manufacturers, no reviews... I do a 3 week quality test on every board that ever passes through PC Resources, no i don't do every test personally...

These tests are much more reliable than any 12hour testing done in reviews, and this way i know that my customer get's a stable board.

As i also deliver boards for military applications this IS necessary, the average customer just get's a system that is stable enough for military uses...

www.pcresources.com is not PC Resources, PC Resources exists in more than one country in the world, in fact, many of the innovations and designs made by and sold by PC Resources are actually developed in Sweden by PC Resourses kronoberg...

Soon enough you will see my web site, it is down for now, but in a few months it will be up, i want perfection in everything, that's why it takes a bit of time...

Patrick Palm

PC Resources
>>


I don't buy a word this guy says. Never have. Far too many claims without a single shred of proof. You're telling me a MultiNational computer company has NO web presence at all. Surely if this company is so involved in the industry there MUST be some reference to them somewhere... other than what this guy 'says'.

As far as we know 'PC Resources' could be run out of his garage.

 

[Rand]

SmackDown, frankly what does it matter who PCResouces is or how valid the company he represents is. It's clear from many more people then just him that the RMA rate of Abit motherboards is rather high compared to that of other manufacturers.

I will take on any of the bigger brand-name companies regarding quality and performance any day of the week... Most home users who have had a few years of experience could probably do the same...

I have to agree with that comment, most people on this forum know enough to build their own system with ease and troubleshoot any prooblems themselves. And so their better off building their own systems then going to some big brand name company like Dell or HP and purchasing a system.
If you know what your doing and know what you want to buy, what hardware is good and what isnt then you can easily build a system that is more reliable and higher performing for the same money that you could by a similar computer from any &quot;brand name&quot; manufacturer.

 

[Viperoni]

I can tell you with 100% honesty that from the mouth of a computer dealer that sells higher end/specialty components (such as the type our crowd is interested in) that Abit does have th highest RMA rates.

 

[AMD4ME2]

one of my friends got an asus a7v133, and none of the fan headers worked. thats the only board I've seen bad so far in my somewhat limited experience. but I believe its a toss up, I'm perfectly happy with my abit kt7a-raid.