Used? Damn man, that would not make me happy. I'd use it, but get back in touch with that manager and tell him look man, when I buy a flagship motherboard that fails, I expect a new condition replacement. Not something that has been used and has TIM all over the CPU socket. This is very poor service after the sale IMO. Then again, I'm a bit confrontational with these people because I've just had them hand me vinegar instead of wine too many times, and I don't just mean ASUS. Sorry man. I was hoping they'd make it right, right.
Eh its right enough, I knew I would be getting a refurb as this board has been out of production for over a year, and it was a tiny bit of TIM. The fact the slow mode switch was on tells me this board was probably never even used more than a little bit by someone who is a moron. The cosmetics were otherwise perfect and the plastic protection sticker was still on the NB cover. Its a newer revision than mine was, they probably have made some tiny improvements in performance and whatnot which is a plus.
I ran some tests last night and everything seems to be operating correctly, it seems to boot a bit faster than before, and I was able to get 200more points in Time Spy but that may just be the new AMD drivers. I left it running overnight to download Windows updates and whatever else and it didn't crash. I ran some of my heat/power torture tests (Prime95 and Heaven at the same time) last night as well and no crashes. My Windows did deactivate however, this being the 3rd board this license would be used on. And the activation troubleshooter wouldn't activate it kept giving me an error. So I whipped out my Windows 7 key, entered it, bam activated, done. Will do some more testing tonight to be sure, but I think I'm probably fine.
As for ASUS emailing them is pissing into the wind. I got no response at all on social media, CEO email, etc, nothing, so clearly they don't care. Its a drop in the bucket for them, but my next build, whenever that may be, will not be an ASUS product.