A bit disappointing with ASUS

[nzoomed]

Not good to hear this, not that I spend $$$ on silly gaming motherboards anyway, but its a shame to hear such negative news about the brand, several youtubers are talking about this right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ-QVOKGVyM

[Bryan]

Oh dear. That does not sound good. My rigs are much older and are running well but if I have to upgrade to a better board I will be looking harder at another brand.

[nzoomed]

Im using ASUS here in my system with no issues, its got a Z97 premium motherboard, been running a solid 6 years now.
I dont know what board I will go for in my next system, but dont want something thats going to fail.

[king1]

would be sad if this is just a sponsorship row, it's not a good way to end it. and contractually I'd be surprised if there isn't a clause in the sponsorship deal that deals with this sort of behaviour

[nzoomed]

would be sad if this is just a sponsorship row, it's not a good way to end it.  and contractually I'd be surprised if there isn't a clause in the sponsorship deal that deals with this sort of behaviour

The way he was talking it appeared he was trying to negotiate their sponsorship renewal as the contract had expired and was not getting anywhere, looks like this was the last straw, but there are other youtubers covering this same issue on this board, kinda nuts that the BIOS update that fixes the CPU's cooking up actually voids the warranty. Dunno whats up with that.
I will be watching LTT closely regarding this, he hasn't uploaded any videos about this as far as I know.

[king1]

would be sad if this is just a sponsorship row, it's not a good way to end it.  and contractually I'd be surprised if there isn't a clause in the sponsorship deal that deals with this sort of behaviour

The way he was talking it appeared he was trying to negotiate their sponsorship renewal as the contract had expired and was not getting anywhere, looks like this was the last straw, but there are other youtubers covering this same issue on this board, kinda nuts that the BIOS update that fixes the CPU's cooking up actually voids the warranty. Dunno whats up with that.
I will be watching LTT closely regarding this, he hasn't uploaded any videos about this as far as I know.

he might find himself on the wrong end of a lawsuit if that was the case - you can't do stuff like that just because your contract wasn't renewed.  It really throws a bit of doubt on his claim of firing them because of product performance when it might be just a bit of sour grapes on his part because his contract wasn't renewed.  

Probably not the first influencer to overestimate their influence... 

and personally I've always used gigabyte with no real issues in the last 10 years or so... But I don't do that many builds TBH.

[Wainuitech]

Looking at the Video, it does come across as a bit of sour grapes, then of course there's the one event he hits on multiple times- the BETA BIOS upgrade .. Well anyone with half a brain knows BETA means its not complete, can be unstable and ASUS do warn a person of that.

When it comes to flashing a BIOS, ALL the manufactures state it can give problems.

Heres the Warning from Gigabyte, even on approved BIOS upgrades

"Because BIOS flashing is potentially risky, if you do not encounter problems using the current version of BIOS, it is recommended that you not flash the BIOS. To flash the BIOS, do it with caution. Inadequate BIOS flashing may result in system malfunction."

The 2nd board he displayed, even said it wasn't new.

Of course every so often you'll get a DOA board, but over the 20+ years and building over a thousand Computers ( literally) had very few MB DOA's Well apart from Asrock when working for Quay's. (what a nightmare those were)

[nzoomed]

The way he was talking it appeared he was trying to negotiate their sponsorship renewal as the contract had expired and was not getting anywhere, looks like this was the last straw, but there are other youtubers covering this same issue on this board, kinda nuts that the BIOS update that fixes the CPU's cooking up actually voids the warranty. Dunno whats up with that.
I will be watching LTT closely regarding this, he hasn't uploaded any videos about this as far as I know.

he might find himself on the wrong end of a lawsuit if that was the case - you can't do stuff like that just because your contract wasn't renewed.  It really throws a bit of doubt on his claim of firing them because of product performance when it might be just a bit of sour grapes on his part because his contract wasn't renewed.  

Probably not the first influencer to overestimate their influence... 

and personally I've always used gigabyte with no real issues in the last 10 years or so... But I don't do that many builds TBH.

IDK how it works, but he likely has good legal advice, the way he was talking didnt indicate he was worried about any potential lawsuits.
Ive found gigabyte pretty good alternative to ASUS too, although I used to see alot of failures with the gigabyte boards we used in the machines we built at the company i worked for, but that was in the early 2000's. I dont care much for the other brands such as MSI, however even brands such as ASRock which were originally a cheap low quality board are actually putting out some pretty impressive stuff these days.
There actually needs to be more competition in the field, we used to have a ton of motherboard manufacturers back in the day and now we are only really left with about 3 or 4.

[nzoomed]

Looking at the Video, it does come across as a bit of sour grapes, then of course there's the one event he hits on multiple times- the BETA BIOS upgrade .. Well anyone with half a brain knows BETA means its not complete, can be unstable and ASUS do warn a person of that.

When it comes to flashing a BIOS, ALL the manufactures state it can give problems.

Heres the Warning from Gigabyte, even on approved BIOS upgrades

"Because BIOS flashing is potentially risky, if you do not encounter problems using the current version of BIOS, it is recommended that you not flash the BIOS. To flash the BIOS, do it with caution. Inadequate BIOS flashing may result in system malfunction."

The 2nd board he displayed, even said it wasn't new.

Of course every so often you'll get a DOA board, but over the 20+ years and building over a thousand Computers ( literally) had very few MB DOA's  Well apart from Asrock when working for Quay's. (what a nightmare those were)

Yes that is understandable and a good point, however the main issue I see from this is that these motherboards had a fault from factory which this revision was intended to fix. TBH, its serious enough that it warrants fixing ASAP when we are talking about something that is cooking CPU's here. Whats going to cost ASUS more? RMA claims on fried CPU's and other components or rolling out a fix that will prevent the damage? I doubt their firmware update would do any damage to the motherboard, but cant be any worse to connected hardware than the current update?

I know BIOS upgrades can be a risky procedure and Ive bricked at least one motherboard in the process when everything appeared to go OK, however ive seen these things roll out with windows updates which is somewhat of a surprise to me knowing the inherent risks, especially with an impatient user who may reboot the machine thinking its frozen.
When you spend the best part of $1000 on one of these boards and taking the market into account that these boards are targeted at, it doesnt look good when you see this sort of thing happening.
I think the customer service is the big part here thats the issue more than anything else.
Seems users are stuck between a rock and a hard place where they can no longer use their computer and either void the warranty and apply their fix.
Interestingly enough ive received new motherboards in the past with beta BIOS installed, its not that uncommon.

Also reading the comments in this video, seems to indicate ASUS likes to take action against negativity.
Its unclear whether or not this youtuber actually signed such papers.

"As a former ASUS employee, none of this surprises me. I used ASUS products for 20+ years, and will never touch another one, due to the way they treated customers, and how they handled laying me off. They tried to push me into signing a form that said I would never say anything negative about ASUS, its current/future products, or current/future employees. If I do ever say anything negative, they assured me they would take legal action. Since I didn't sign it, I received no severance pay, which goes against the whole "we're a family" thing that they push on you from the moment you join."

[Dugimodo]

I've been watching these for the last little bit. On the one hand new platforms always have issues which is why it's best to wait a while after release if you can hold off although this one is unlikely to be a problem for most people. On the other hand as I understand it Asus has had motherboards killing some CPUs due to overly aggressive voltage settings, released Firmware updates to address the issue, then put up a disclaimer that using the update will void your warranty. This one is a lot more involved but explains it better than Jay did (he referenced this video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbGfc-JBxlY

For me it seems like an early adopter issue for some customers that Asus has handled poorly.

[Agent_24]

This one is a lot more involved but explains it better than Jay did (he referenced this video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbGfc-JBxlY

For me it seems like an early adopter issue for some customers that Asus has handled poorly.

Yeah, the Gamers Nexus videos tell the full story, which Asus has handled quite badly indeed.

And why Asus felt the need to overvolt the CPU in that way by default is beyond me, especially given that it was not recommended by AMD.

[piroska]

Hmm, interesting. My ASUS MB is now 13 years old. Haven't even charged the battery.
Still I always liked Gigabyte too.
Or is that now bad too?