Question Finding reliable hardware.

Aug 22, 2022
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Hello all,

Researching a new build. I have not built a rig since 2010. This rig is a X58 Build with a i7-980X, and corsair dominator memory. Its still kicking, but I know its days are numbered. I did quite a bit of gaming back when I built this rig, so biggest and the best was always a good option. I don't do much with newer games, so not looking to push max pixels, but forward compatibility is a goal.

I have been reading reviews for quite a while now. I thought I had settled in on a target build. Then i go read product reviews on Newegg, Amazon or other sites, and see just about everything has issues. Picking the CPU was easy enough - alder lake core 7 -12700k. since I'm retired the budget is constrained, but a good rig is doable.

Asus motherboards I believe are awesome if you get lucky and it works. - I've dealt with ASUS on RMA's of motherboards for work, and they are horrible. in the end, just go buy another board you'll never get a working from Asus through RMA's. We tried 3 times, first they sent us the same board back, with the same problem, then sent a different board, missing 2 of the 4 screw tie down hard on the mother board for the heat sink, then the third board was again the first board, that still wouldn't boot the second CPU. We missed a contract date, and finally gave up on Asus, being able to get us a working motherboard, and had to just go buy a new one. That one worked, and we had a nice 600 dollar paper weight we sent to purchasing , and ask for a Ban on buying from Asus for anything in the future. At the time I worked for one of the top 5 defense contractors.

Evga - made my current board - X58 classified - its 12 years old and still works. The current line up from them seems .. lacking. Their customer support was always great.

Gigabyte - all I keep reading is a lot of problems with firmware. and some really frustrated people having to figure out why it doesn't recognize usb 3.0

Msi - is the way I am leaning - but again - issues - bad soldering on the boards. M.2 slot 1 heatsink standoff detaching, which causes grounding issues. manufacturing will have defects, part of the business, but the same exact issue over and over, that's a problem. was it just that production run? or is it on going. MSI support gets various rating from ok, to rude. these days I expect that to be the norm.

So are there threads where folks are tracking these problems and updating when companies finally get a real resolution? Toms has always been a good source for reviews and comparisons, But I am finding it much harder to track down the more useful information of when new products with major issues finally get resolved.

We are always rolling the dice when we buy these types of products, but it's sad when you get a lemon off the production line, and getting it resolved without incurring an ulcer is almost impossible.
 
If you're trying to find hardware that has 100+ 4 or 5 star reviews with zero 3 or less stars, you're not going to find it. Plus people tend to write a negative review if they have a problem moreso than if they have a positive experience. And there's also the fact that the number of reviews doesn't necessarily reflect the number of units sold. The only time I'd feel user reviews would be helpful in determining if a product is "reliable" or not is if there's a relatively high number of mediocre to negative reviews.

Just pick a few out that seems to be a popular model, that review sites have given positive remarks (assuming they've done something detailed), and go see on forums or whatever if you can get any more info and pick whichever you feel the most comfortable going with.

Also the thing about firmware updates since I saw it: never do it unless you absolutely have to. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. There were reports of issues with one of the versions of AGESA for AM4 motherboards. I wasn't affected, because I don't update my motherboard's firmware unless I have to. And heck, despite AMD rolling out a fix for the USB bugs, I still won't update it, because I'm not experiencing said bug.

There's also the alternative: buy from a boutique system builder like Puget Systems. Do you pay more? Sure. Will you get something that works out of the box and great customer service, at least from a cursory glance at a Google search? Yes, at least from Puget Systems.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yeah that really didn't answer anything. Ignoring reported problems and blinding picking a popular board just results in more uclers.
Where are you looking to shop?

User reviews at many major sites are often...less than useful.

For instance:
Looking at a tool earlier today (not a computer part)
1 Star review - "Does not come with directions on how to install so I wish it had because I really was hoping to use it instead it just sitting on a shelf "

This is something an average 11 year old can figure out, and there is a video of how to "install".
 
Aug 22, 2022
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Trying to find a Z690 board. not extreme high end, but more around the Tomahawk, or Ace category. I'll probably source the components from Newegg/Amazon/BH Photo. I'm just trying to find info on common problems many users across all sites are talking about, on several of these mainstream boards, from a few of the top makers.

When I talk about reviews .. for instance, go read about the reviews on newegg all talking about the gigabyte boards and not being able to recognize devices out of the box, without doing a lot of work to get the bios flashed. Not the one-off odd ball problems. Or even the DOA boards. Those don't count, that stuff happens. But things like reviews on MSI z690 boards talking about the first M2 slot soldering being defective and things coming loose, and the RMA replacements arriving with the exact same issue, this has been reported in many reviews, that is a real concern. Those are valid problems folks need to know if they have been resolved.

I had been set on the tomahawk wifi board DD4. then found reviews all over about the defective soldering. many reviews with pictures.

I was simply asking if you had any threads that where specific to these new boards and the common issues folks have been having.
 
I don't know what kind of quality work you are expecting from Uyghur slaves, but every major manufacturer except Gigabyte now manufactures their motherboards in China. Gigabyte is the last to still manufacture in Taiwan.

Slaves are of course notoriously unwilling to help improve manufacturing processes, so you end up with a lot of hand-soldered rework/repairs. Still way cheaper than robots but the quality will vary. This is what we end up with when the price matters more than anything else.

If I were looking for a board for i7-12700k to last 12 years, I would choose a Supermicro X13SAE, whose W680 chipset is essentially a Z690 with ECC, and still overclockable. $100 more, but made in USA.
 
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I was simply asking if you had any threads that where specific to these new boards and the common issues folks have been having.

I'm not aware of any such threads or website that might track motherboard reliability over time.

I'd expect any candidates to be undisciplined and riddled with personal anecdotes and fan boy ravings, rendering the info near useless. Pretty much like Newegg and Amazon reviews.

Corporate buyers might be highly interested in that info but it seems to me that the average home consumer has other priorities that trump reliability unless the differences were egregious and widely recognized.

The industry has always been subject to intense price competition, which drives quality and quality control down. I don't expect that to change, so I try to guess at the best house in the bad neighborhood. Guess.
 
I was simply asking if you had any threads that where specific to these new boards and the common issues folks have been having.
Adding to what @Lafong said, the problem with what you're asking for requires statistical analysis, which requires people submitting their data about the product you're interested. Plus there's a confidence factor you have to deal with. You want something that lasts for 10+ years? Then how much data do you need until your confidence level high enough to meet that requirement? 1 year's worth of data? 2 years? 10 years?

You're just going to have to go with the general reputation of the company. Or you buy products that were meant for something like servers or workstations since those have to be built to last. Or you buy complete systems that cater to the corporate sector since they also tend to be more reliable and maybe won't come with bottom barrel support.
 
There actually was something sort of like this, in that the EU equivalent of Newegg used to report their RMA numbers. Unfortunately they quit reporting them about 5 years ago.

This is long enough ago that most stuff was still made in Taiwan, plus as you look at the numbers keep in mind that most returned motherboards and PSUs are found to have no detectable issues when tested, so this may be more a measure of how incompetent or unscrupulous that brand's customers are (PSUs in particular are frequently bought as rentals for troubleshooting, much as large TVs are often "borrowed" from stores for the Super Bowl)
 
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Aug 22, 2022
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Yeah, I guess I didn't ask the question the right way. since I doubt, I would ever want 10 years of data to find out if they fixed an issue with a brand-new product off the production line, for a build I expect to put together in the near future.

No, I did not ever say I wanted something to last 10 years, no idea where you all got that from. So, I'll chalk this up to my inability to properly phrase the question. Thanks for trying, I'll go back to reading current user reviews on normal sites and hope to see a positive trend.

As for statistical analysis. You don't need to collect data to find out if a company finally updated the bios on new boards shiping out that fixes a common issue. Certainly, don't need 10 years of data to figure that out. Thats usually why folks search out forums like this to find out that type of information from other users.
 
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DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Yeah, I guess I didn't ask the question the right way. since I doubt, I would ever want 10 years of data to find out if they fixed an issue with a brand-new product off the production line, for a build I expect to put together in the near future.

No, I did not ever say I wanted something to last 10 years, no idea where you all got that from. So, I'll chalk this up to my inability to properly phrase the question. Thanks for trying, I'll go back to reading current user reviews on normal sites and hope to see a positive trend.

As for statistical analysis. You don't need to collect data to find out if a company finally updated the bios on new boards shiping out that fixes a common issue. Certainly, don't need 10 years of data to figure that out.

It's not that you didn't ask the question the right way, it's that what you want is unlikely to exist on a practical level. When there's something major, like Gigabyte PSUs being junk that catches on fire or NZXT's case issues or the ASUS recall for the backwards capacitor, you basically need enough people to catch it, which takes time.

You'll never find anything from user reviews because user reviews are the worst place to obtain objective information. In literally none of these instances of an actual systemic issue with a part were customer reviews the key to catching it. The cure for inadequate information is, unfortunately, not bad information.