feelingtheblanks :
Hey somebody special, why are you feel so offended. I didn't tell anything directly to you, just mentioned that the capacitor plague or bad caps isn't the case anymore. And I was talking about the mid-range boards since this thread is about that context. That's really weird. Take some air man. We are cool. Don't take everything personal. 🙂
On the other hand. How do you know I wasn't building PCs or even manufacturing them? More than 8 years maybe? Maybe even longer than your age? So please don't put yourself in a funny position.
Above I just mentioned my real findings while closely analyzing some z97 boards. If you've done some surgery on some VRMs before you would understand me I guess.
About RMA rates... Well, last year for z77 chipsets the RMA rates are very very close between a %2-3 range avarage. For z77 boards Asus Rampage had the highest RMA rate for example with %5+. Can you call that a bad board? Not sure. But Asus had some poor QC going there for sure. You can find these datas on the net. From my friend's experience it took more than 2 months to get his board back from Asus RMA procedures. I still don't call them bad even though sht loads of people I know had similar problems. Yet I haven't had any problem with them.
So these things are still a bit subjective and even the actual RMA rates might not give a final word on the quality. But it still tells us something right? And it proves your argument is ungrounded.
I don't understand how correcting you means I'm offended. I'm assuming a few others might have been, which is why I sarcastically responded with all the grins/winks.
You did attack pretty much everyone's comments on quality with blanket statements about not believing ungrounded crap. I agree, which is why people reading this should ignore most of what you said and rely on the people who know what RMA's mean in large quantity. It IS very grounded in RMA data between these guys and IT people/technicians doing the work. Further you made a blanket statement about caps:
"Well, for more than 7-8 years everyone is using Japanese made solid caps. Don't worry about it."
Anyone reading this would assume you meant EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING, as that is what you said. You didn't just say in the price range his boards are in, not just these guys, etc you said everyone & don't worry. If anyone takes that and purchases they will be wrong. I do not believe you meant just this range, it was only after I showed how ridiculous the blanket statement was that you adjust the statement. Not all caps are the same either, as I pointed out.
Surgery on VRM's means nothing regarding quality of a board and how many times they come back over the whole brand (you're saying what, you know how to use a soldering iron? Many techs do). Nobody brags about building 20 pc's since the 90's if they've built 1000's and worked as a certified tech the whole time (my first computer was 1982, not that it matters). Your cherry picking of a single board that had problems by ASUS shows you don't understand the difference between the RMA rates of Gigabyte (or asus) vs. MSI as a whole. You chose ONE board and everyone makes a bad product occasionally. The data you used is from a french report here (translated by linustechtips I Guess):
http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/108284-huge-list-of-failure-rates-on-pc-components-french-but-i-translated-nearly-everything/
The point you'd understand as a re-seller/var etc is this:
"Average Failure rates:
- Gigabyte 1,19% (vs 1,77% before)
- ASUS 1,79% (vs 2,34% before)
- ASRock 2,09% (vs 1,67% before)
- MSI 3,05% (vs 2,24% before)
Compared to the previous period, Gigabyte and Asus do better, Asrock and MSI less. Gigabyte is in an obvious lead, while MSI's number surpasses 3%, which is worrying to say the least."
First look at the percent and understand it's 3x more work on MSI (and it's getting worse from the prior year right?) and for the two you WOULD NOT be fixing if NOT selling MSI you could be EARNING money building another machine that probably doesn't come back at 1.19% (not to mention the reputation hit for selling them something that failed, they usually assume YOU built them the piece of junk, fair or not). It's not just the 3x more fixing, it's what you're losing by not BUILDING more instead of fixing also. If I'm selling 100's or thousands of boards you don't want to be fixing 3x as many as gigabyte. That is the OVERALL average not just a SINGLE bad product, which clearly you'd avoid selling if you did your homework first in a few forums etc. Intel sells a ton of boards to people who merely just don't want to FIX it later. Though I rarely like their features I get why they sell.
Further in the report you're citing data from for rampage board:
"If we look more specifically at LGA 1155 Z77 Express motherboards, here is the ranking we get:
- Gigabyte 1,70%
- ASUS 1,87%
- ASRock 1,91%
- MSI 3,57%"
Again, we're seeing DOUBLE Asus/Gbyte. And the writers very DAMNING conclusion on that group of models?:
"A high percentage of the high return rate for MSI motherboards is then related to their Z77 models."
Sure a board or two sticks out, but OVERALL, even over an product chipset, MSI is WORSE and that isn't hype or "ungrounded" crap. It is the GROUNDED IN DATA plain truth.
All z77 boards combined again shows MSI as one of the worst 5 models:
All models combined, here are the 4 models with higher than 5% return rates :
- 7,05% ASRock 970 Extreme3
- 6,19% MSI X79A-GD45
- 6,08% ASRock 990FX Extreme3
- 6,06% ASRock 970 Pro3
Isn't 6.19% above the board you cited? As I said everybody has a piece of junk once in a while, but the main point is are they doing WORSE overall? Because when you're picking new models you have no idea how that particular one will pan out for a while so you run on OVERALL how have they been over the years. The data has shown you bet Gigabyte or Asus in most cases year after year and drop models quarterly that appear to come back more than others (I got my data quarterly from ASI/supercom). As a reseller/var you don't just sell one board or chipset you sell a LOT of chipsets and even many models in each one (hopefully you pick the ones that come back the least).
Your info no VRM's is really only applicable to a person who wants to push a board to the limits and for most overclockers this kind of info is moot as they will be plenty satisfied by most of the top end models which will likely show your cpu hitting limits without LN2 etc. Surgery? You think he'll whip out a soldering iron or something? I'd expect his post to include more details if that's what he was planning (or anything remotely like that, he may just be wanting a great gamer board, which both are overkill for anyway). The user didn't even mention overclocking in his initial post. It seems the person just wanted to know the features of the boards and if he's making a mistake buying these. Posters answered via RMA data they've seen over the brands which for me ends the conversation (regarding MSI, and leaves the gigabyte) as I wouldn't advise home users to build MSI based on RMA data if they don't know how to troubleshoot extensively themselves. Worse if someone takes your CAP comment seriously, they may just say heck buy the $50 board since everything has great solid caps (which we know is completely wrong). Many users might not even know the difference between a solid or electrolytic cap (the way it looks I mean) and just run on the thought everything is solid so who cares. NOPE. Your statement had to be corrected no matter what you claim you meant for the benefit of the newbies/tech-ignorant; which is the majority of users in the market no matter which website we're on. Look at the questions in the forum if you don't get my drift.
MSI GAMING 7=9 reviews at newegg (only one at amazon).
GIGABYTE GAMING 7=0 reviews at newegg as it just landed (even amazon has zero reviews still).
The only thing you can say about how they MIGHT turn out is older RMA data based on the entire brand's boards. These are too new to judge on RMA/quality probably for another quarter. Until then you're pretty much a beta tester for both boards
😉
That said even 3-5% isn't bad if you're NOT one of those in the percent...LOL.