ASUS reliability

[vonmayr]

I have built several computers, using MSI and Gigabyte Mobos - had one gigabyte DOA out of 4 builds. A new SBR build is in my future to update my personal E6600. The ASUS socket 1155 Mobos look pretty good, but I am reading lots of reviews on Newegg about bad experiences with ASUS (and for that matter almost every other manufacturer you care to name). What's the general reliability of ASUS in capable hands?

TIA for all you might have to tell me.

 

[o1die]

I don't think any hard core data exists; if it does, the manufacturer's don't want you to know their true rma rate; some are from operator error. I haven't used asus in awhile, but their bios support is still first rate.

 

[satelliteone]

First hand experience with asus, i say pants! saying that, their older chipset boards are awsome, Just the AM3 boards are a not as good as they could be, I`d say go gigiabyte.

 

[rwojcik9]

Just had a miserable experience with off the shelf Asus desktop. Bought it 4 months ago. Optical drive does not work. Called Asus tech support (useless bag of phone-monkeys) who confirmed that it was a hardware failure. Upon hearing the word "hardware", their system prompts the service tech to demand returning to the seller of the computer. So, I had to take it to Best Buy, who is not allowed to open the computer for Asus to see if my optical drive is even plugged in. their only solution is to send the whole tower to Asus for repair. For a $100 optical drive? I've already wasted about 3 hours of my time. I'm not going to hurdle my computer across the country for a couple of weeks. I can buy an external drive for $50.00! No choice - I have to remove the cover of my new computer (voiding the warranty) so that I can fix it myself. Thanks Asus - you suck! And, all the while, their on-hold recording touts their reliabiltiy and servicability. What a crock! Final answer - Asus sucks! Tell your freinds.

 

[Raiddinn]

I have an ASUS motherboard and it works just fine for me. I would buy another ASUS board in the future if the choice was between other boards of the same price and quality.

I can't speak for fully built ASUS computers, but it does sound pretty retarded if you can't open the case without voiding the warranty. Even DELL doesn't have problems letting you open the case and look inside. I haven't heard of any brands having such a strict policy before, but then again I don't know many people with computers from tiny OEMs either.

Every brand of parts has problems once in a while. I wouldn't say that ASUS does any more than any other brand. If anything they have a high raw number of failures because they are a Tier 1 manufacturer with a huge percentage of the market. If their failure rate is 1% and they sell 10 million boards then they will have 100,000 failures, whereas a no name brand like Zotac may fail 10% of the time but if it only sells 100,000 boards it will have 10x less failures than the example Asus figures.

It is hard to measure % good vs % bad since those figures aren't generally available to the average person, but I have been around a while and I haven't seen an abnormally large % of ASUS failing on these boards compared to other Tier 1 makers.

On websites like Amazon a happy customer is roughly 100x less likely to post a positive comment than a sad customer is likely to post a negative comment so you have to take these comments more as a list of possible problems and not draw any meaning for how likely the problems are to actually occur from them.

If ALL the reviews are bad, though, I would stay away.

I doubt it would be that way for ASUS boards though.

In any event, with competent handling there should be only very low failure rates with ASUS boards, like other major manufacturers.