Gigabyte delivers a cheap shot

[AZEqualizer]

Well, I and several customers of mine had purchased the GA-G1975X motherboards in early 2006... now it is getting on to be close to three years later and the Turbocooler fans are starting to howl. I contact Gigabyte by phone and on their tech site and get the we don't have those parts we don't support that board anymore. "if board was 6 years old model has been discontinue there has no part any more, not thing we can do, hope you can understand" (sic). Wait a second this board was introduced in Oct 2005 how does that make it 6yrs old? So, then I find out the 3 year warranty is for from date of original manufacture.... heck it was hard to come by the board until Jan 2006. You would think a part that would be subject to a short time to failure would be stocked for a little longer than 4 years??!? Heck I got stuff from ASUS that was farther out than 3 years from time of production... It's not like I'm looking for it for free ... though I thought they should be happy to send me some since we haven't had the boards for 3 years yet... Heck we would have bought the part if there were any.

So, I guess I will have to do my own mods to replace out these cooler assemblies. Live and learn.

 

[jitpublisher]

I think those fans are 40mm, and there are many styles and types of this size that can be bought for few dollars each. Should not be too hard to find exact, or very close replacements. For no more than they cost, to me it simply would not be worth messing with RMAing, warranty, sitting on the phone with Gigabyte, etc.
Heck, fans go bad. And you have a motherboard with 4 of them on it! (I think there were 4 from what I remember, 2 in each tube, right?) You had to know when you bought these with all those fans, you would have to start replacing them at some time. 3 years is not a long time, but yeah I can see some of them starting to make noise in that time.

 

[AZEqualizer]

I've had other types of fans last longer and I thought they would be available to replace. The assemblies only have one side that has enough plastic in them to mount a replacement fan. The side toward the memory slots ... that is another problem.... nothing out there has a suitable mount that I could find.

I have even had video card manufacturers ship me replacement fans when they started to get noisy and it was a simple job to replace the squealing fans. But when they don't even carry the parts so you can buy them after 3 years.... that is the cheap shot.

 

[jitpublisher]

They should carry the parts longer than 3 years, that is true.

 

[AZEqualizer]

One would reasonably think that a motherboard that was manufactured in Oct of 2005 would be distributed and sold throughout the year 2006 in normal retail channels. And it would be a reasonable thing for a manufacturer to keep in stock a minimum quantity of parts for replacement of something like a fan assembly for at minimum 3 years (the advertised warranty period) after the product left the normal retail channel. In some peoples opinion it wouldn't be unreasonable to maintain a replacement part for 4 years after a product left the normal retail channel. Some motherboard manufactures do just this. Obviously Gigabyte doesn't feel the need to maintain support for anything past 3yrs of the original production... no matter how long it is being sold in normal retail channels. I find it hard to believe that all the boards were made at once in OCT 2005 and they are then trickled out to the retail channel but that Oct date of Original manufacture and release is what it all is based on... at least according to their tech support.

Maybe there needs to be a disclaimer large bold letters on a sticker of every box that it is a End of Life product at x date.....

I am just disappointed to be left out in the cold ... it's not like this was a cheep board. But I am capable of coming up with my own mod ... what about those that aren't?

 

[bilbat]

I'm with jitpublisher; you're the second person I've run into here with fan problems on this thing in the last six months; it's over 25K hours; and it's a ditzy design to begin with, you had to realize that the fans were a weak spot - CAVEAT EMPTOR!

 

[AZEqualizer]

But a responsible manufacturer also knows it is a weak spot and has replacement parts available for a reasonable time span.

I have Northbridge heatsink /fans that have lasted 5 years with no problem ... so also there is a quality difference as well.

 

[jitpublisher]

I feel for your pain, and frustration, and yes they should support the product a little longer, but 3 years in the life of a PC is an eternity. I would have never bought one of these first place, you have to admit an experienced builder should have had red lights going off all over the place flashing like crazy....4 fans! 4 fans! 4 fans! Going to be replacing a lot of fans!....Going to be replacing a lot of fans!
I just have to rebut a little here because I have been really happy with all the Gigabyte boards I have ever used. I think they make quality products, but this one may have indeed been a poor design. Although I have read the cooling, when working is actually quite good.

 

[bilbat]

Here's the thing: GigaByte exists to turn inventory, to make a profit; not to sit on (which costs money, which has to come from somewhere, i.e., higher prices) old obsolete parts forever (which is, as jit has pointed out, in the life of a PC design, is approximately what three years is...) for your convenience. These days you're lucky if any manufacturer is astute enough to even provide BIOS updates for new CPU steppings using new microcode; GigaByte makes excellent boards; my major complaint (besides the fact that they appear to run their support website on an old Apple IIe w/16K of RAM...) about their current offerings is that, IMHO, they are going after too many 'niches', trying to offer MOBOs with every conceivable combination of features/hardware, which gives them too broad a product line to practically support well; however, I can see their strategy - if you notice, they really offer only a couple of broad families (like the 'd' MOBOs - "whatever MCH/SB"-D(S3, S4, S5, Q6, etc.) which all use, essentially, the same hardware - the same jMicron RAID controller, the same RealTek audio and LAN chips, the same MOSFETs - so, the differences boil down to a different photo mask for MOBO traces, and a different program for the parts inserters; roll 'em over the same wave-solderer, and, voila, lower inventory and more customer variety...