Originally posted by: Googer
Apparently, you have not read this whole thread. So for those of you too lazy to read, I will say I again for the 5th+ time RMA's are ok I have used them for an IDE hard drive and a SCSI Controler that did not have a BIOS installed. What is not ok is to take advantage of the system, intentionally destroy something and then RMA it saying that it just broke and you dont know why. That is fraud. Its costs Consumers money.
Ok, I'm going to bite. You are obviously getting off talking down to others and standardizing your morals and ethical principles to everyone. I'll also go ahead and divuldge that I've never seen the point of most overclocking. What? Risk your hardware for another 3 frames/second in Half Life 2? No thanks. That said...
First question? Why the hell would someone intentionally destroy a motherboard? They might be careless, they might be stupid, but .0001% of RMAs are from people
intentionally destroying an item. That is a careless argument and a gross over-exaggeration.
I'll gladly pay the tiny amount on average I bet we pay for the "RMA factor" built in to the price to know that my RMA will be painless and quick. How many chips does Intel sell a year? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? More? Don't know, don't really care, but with such a massive volume, do you actually think the LGA RMAs you speak so much of make much of a dent at all on the consumer end? The vast majorities of their chips are sold to OEMs and never touch the end-users hands for self-installation.
Performance motherboards are a bit different so we might pay another few bucks, but anything significant? No. I think you overestimate the number of people who fry their boards and RMA them. If it was a significant cost, they'd go the route of Intel boards and limit/lock overclocking.
Stop and think about how many computers are self built and how many are built by a manufacturer. Now... of all computers bought, 1% are self built. Of that self-built, another 1% RMA a part. Of those RMAs, 1% are not legitimate RMAs. Can .01% make a dent in your wallet? Nothing significant. It's not like anything will drop even 10% in price.
10000 motherboards sold @ $100/. 100 RMA'd. 1 carelessly fried. Company distributes carelessly fried cost to everyone on next round and raises price...
(drumroll)
1 cent
(Those numbers are more convenient than based on anything, but I think you get my point.)
And you are making a huge deal about this? C'mon. For the 25% price increase thrown out there earlier by someone I'm too lazy to look up, 1 out of every 50 boards would have to be carelessly fried and RMA'd.
*Disclaimer - My math skills suck, but I think my figures are correct.
And finally... You keep saying we should keep this thread on topic, how about posting in the right forum next time? Not that this can't be classified as "General Hardware," but there are definitely better suited forums to post in rather than picking the popular forum. IMO, monitoring your own thread like a hawk after posting a controversial topic and chastising anyone who says anything different is all a bit childish in my opinion. Until you pull out numbers and figures, you are simply arguing based off of an opinion that you are reluctant to move even the slightest bit from. Nobody is perfect (me and you included).