I’ve been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.
I’m very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.
I had an msi board in my father’s build, and as I was eyeing hardware upgrades I decided to get some more life out of it by adding some memory and updating the bios, as it was quite old. After the bios update, it never booted again. The upgrade tool said it was the correct file, that it was installed successfully, and that I just needed to reboot. Their flashback system? Didn’t work. Researching, it was apparently a KNOWN PROBLEM that msi just shrugged off, and several boards from that era would die after an update. No apology, no resolution, not even an admission of guilt. Because of that fuck up, proprietary software that my father used for business finances, wouldn’t activate on a new machine - the company shutdown the activation servers, and it required hardware checks, and there was no work around. The new program? Unable to read the old file format. We lost access to 20 years of tax/receipt records.
MSI is blacklisted for me, my family, friends, and anyone who I perform IT services for. I don’t give 2 fucks if the hardware is 80% cheaper and 200% better. Fuck you, they fucked perfectly good hardware, my reputation, and if we ever get audited we’re fucked. Eat shit and die, MSI.
This video kind of misses the mark on delivering the points of the title, but these are the simplest boiled down points of the community gripes:
ASUS is having quality control issues, or deliberately skimping to pad profits
They are rebranding lesser quality components with the higher quality ROG brand, and pricing it as such
They are unilaterally voiding warranties when users try to RMA or return said hardware
Gigabyte (remember them?) did this same slow slide of enshittification about 10 years ago. The issue pretty much boils down to a company producing too many different types of things, instead of staying good at the things they do well, and the community has noticed and is calling for boycotts. This will no doubt put them on the defensive for years to come, and affect their overall standing in the larger community until they correct course.
I have a 14 year old gigabyte motherboard in my older computer. When I first got it I didn’t know what I was doing and plugged the wrong thing in somewhere and blew up a component on it. As long as I don’t use that slot it chugs along just fine. I wish companies would just keep making things that last I’d gladly pay a fairly steep premium for that. Instead it seems every company that gets known for making good stuff decides to shit all over themselves
Honestly, in your case, it could just be more about who makes what components can withstand X amount of punishment and keep the electrons flowing through so other things keep working 😂
Agreed on your point though. Cheap shit needs to stop.
Sure do! Both my board and the board in my wife’s computer are Gigabyte. So’s my video card. The only issue I’ve ever had with their stuff has been a bad stick of ram a few years ago, which they exchanged without argument.
Brands in this sphere I definitely have had trouble with: MSI, Razer – so many problems with Razer – and ASUS.
Yeah so the thing with PC parts suppliers is that every brand is going to have people who have experienced problems with their stuff.
Gigabyte I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah during the pandemic their power supplies were fucking exploding so yeah that’s a problem.
Asus I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah their boards on both sides have been setting voltages and power limits very aggressively, killing AM5 CPUs catastrophically, potentially causing instability on higher end Intel chips as well it seems. That’s a problem.
Keyboards, headphones, laptops, a handheld Steam Deck imitator, and various other RGB gamer shit. All of it is trash. Their business model nowadays seems to revolve entirely around upselling Aliexpress quality Chinese garbage at premium prices and then methodically denying every single warranty claim for defective and DOA product using spurious excuses. Oh, and their driver software is crap. And their products are consistently behind even Logitech on the features you get for the price.
Through no particular intentional means, I am now a Logitech convert. For mice and keyboards, their stuff has always been consistently reliable for me, their “G” series driver software is significantly less irritating than Razer Synapse, and most of their stuff is cheaper as well.
I think in my lifetime I’ve trashed four Razer keyboards, at least as many mice, and two pairs of headphones. All of these died early deaths – within weeks, sometimes a couple of months at the outside. Every time I tell myself this time will be different. It never is. I don’t buy their shit anymore, and I don’t recommend anyone else do, either.
I bought the $120 Razer Wolverine V2 Xbox controller after MS shrunk the official controller for the Series S/X and it was a piece of shit. Replaced it with a $45 gamesir (Chinese brand) with hall effect triggers and sticks that I’ve had for two years now with no issues and no drift, a first for any xbox controller I’ve ever had. Razer sucks.
This is troubling. I’ve been using ASUS motherboards for a very long time. I haven’t noticed any problems in the last 3 systems I built, but I also usually go for the workstation type motherboards instead of gaming motherboards, so I can use ECC RAM and dispense with the LED bling I don’t need or want. I wonder if they are still putting enough effort into the business/workstation stuff that it’s not having too many quality issues yet. I hope they can turn this around, because the list of quality PC parts manufacturers is growing smaller all the time.
I have always had issues with ASUS. Their parts have never really worked well for me, and if they did they only lasted a year or two before shitting out. Everyone else seemed to swear by them and I could never even get a part that worked.
I had a $1,300 gaming laptop from Asus from way back in 2013. The hinge for the screen was designed in such a way that it applied pressure against the very thing plastic screen bezel when opening the laptop, so in a very short amount of time the bezel just snapped in front of each hinge. Absolutely brain dead design.
The only non-Apple laptop that has lasted me for years was an asus from 2013. Probably cost me $1900. Luck of the draw for me, I guess. I always thought highly of the company because my HP and Dell laptops fell apart so fast (even the ones that cost close to $1900). I know Lenovo always had issues with back doors. I guess there aren’t a lot of options these days.
That’s my experience with Asus going back over 25 years now. To me, Asus has always been substandard products sold at premium prices. If I wanted a substandard motherboard, I’d buy ECS and save a bunch of money. And to be fair to ECS, I’ve had some of their boards that have worked just fine, which is more than I can say about the Asus stuff.
Years ago I happily used some Razer mice and keyboards, even a headset, so in the not too far past I told people around me that Razer was fairly good, quality wise, but alas, I think each and every one I recommended Razer products to had them break and or die well within warranty, and they always had to start a stupid discussion to get the warranty/RMA accepted, a few times even replacements denied outright by Razer.
For me this stands in sharp contrast with Logitech whom has never denied me a warranty, even for products a few weeks beyond the date, and they generally just send out a new item.
That is, for me it is rare for a Logitech product to actually require replacement to begin with, I have a few mice, keyboards and headsets far older than 5 years and they work fine plus are still supported in the drivers.
Speaking of drivers, Razer at one point also made the decision to have their drivers require an account login to function properly (multi-button mice would only have 2 functional buttons if not logged in etc). But after some flak from its users it slightly changed that to the login being optional, but profiles would still be hampered without a continuous online presence.
Coming back to Asus, for a few years now I hear of people having quality issues and grumpy asus service desks, but for me their videocards ways ran fine (even without coil whine, unlike some MSI cards).
I am quite hesitant to buy an Asus monitor or motherboard though.
I finally bought a Razer mouse just a couple years ago since it was one of the few I could find that was a USB receiver + Bluetooth wireless gaming mouse I could use with my desktop and steam deck. Still works great, thankfully. But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Logitech product actually die on me; I just eventually replace them with a newer Logitech product.
But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year.
Seems to be a problem in general. I’ve been using Elecom trackballs for years, first one I bought still works. Ones I’ve bought in the last year all started wigging out on left click within a couple months. I took one apart recently to swap the mouse switch with a quick solder job and it’s good as new. Seems like the newer ones are using really cheap Chinese Omron switches that die quickly. IIRC the older one uses a Japanese Omron switch. The new one I soldered in is a Kailh GM2.0.
Seconded for difficulty with Razer products. 15+ years ago they were pretty good. But since then I’ve had 2 headsets crap out right after warranty, one in warranty failed, mice quit working and a keyboard fail. They only replaced the one headset. Plus, their gaming software for their upper tier headsets is unbelievably bloated and awful. I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall it several times to get it working when some update f’s it up.
So far, my Logitech gear is still trucking along, even my cheap $14 travel mouse.
I’ve had the opposite experience between Logitech and Razer, at least when it comes to mice. Every modern Logitech mouse I’ve had (3) has had the right and left click switches replaced as they started double clicking right after the warranty expired.
Logitech are actually using the wrong switches as they’re running them below their design voltage and is causing premature failure. I swapped them out with appropriately rated switches and they are still in service, now for much longer than the original switches.
When the failure started though I switched my main mouse to a Razer with optical switches and have had zero problems with the hardware. Software wise, Polychromatic + OpenRazer on Linux works better than Razer’s software on Windows. Razer’s software leaves a lot to be desired, but Logitech’s software is only marginally better.
I’ve had two ASUS gaming laptops, and both of them began having issues within a year, and the second didnt last more than a couple years total.
The first laptop was one of their enormous ROG 17 inch gaming laptops that looked like it had jet engine exhaust. The hard drive died and the power port broke within the first year, and I had to send it in under warranty. The power brick also died, and I ended up having to replace it myself around the 3 year mark.
Thinking it was a fluke, I ended up buying a smaller, more portable ASUS gaming laptop next which had more of a standard form factor. Maybe six or eight months later, that one suffered some issue that required being sent in for service as well. It began experiencing the same issue about four months later, I’d sent it in for repair a second time for the same issue, and they apparently fixed it.
I got to use that laptop for maybe 1.5 years total before it was completely unusable, in spite of two RMAs.
My current gaming laptop is an HP Omen 17 from 2017, and has been completely stable and reliable up to this day. I love to hate on HP because of their dumb printers, but I’m pretty impressed. I’ll probably end up buying another one, because I will literally never own another ASUS product ever in my life, and there are only so many manufacturers out there who I’d consider for a laptop purchase.
I must be in the minority here because I’ve never had major issues with ASUS products, though the caveat here is I have only used their motherboards. I’m using an x570-PLUS right now and it has been solid since purchase.
OLED Display on my Zenbook unglued itself after month of use.
They removed the ability to unlock bootloader in their phones (after repeatedly lying about it returning).
Some people sued them and won.
I won’t buy another Asus product.
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The video linked is not the original.
This is the original - https://youtu.be/oHH9_CDHz94
So OP is a thief even!
I’ve been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.
I’m very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.
Wtf?
What about MSI? Do they do this shit too?
I had an msi board in my father’s build, and as I was eyeing hardware upgrades I decided to get some more life out of it by adding some memory and updating the bios, as it was quite old. After the bios update, it never booted again. The upgrade tool said it was the correct file, that it was installed successfully, and that I just needed to reboot. Their flashback system? Didn’t work. Researching, it was apparently a KNOWN PROBLEM that msi just shrugged off, and several boards from that era would die after an update. No apology, no resolution, not even an admission of guilt. Because of that fuck up, proprietary software that my father used for business finances, wouldn’t activate on a new machine - the company shutdown the activation servers, and it required hardware checks, and there was no work around. The new program? Unable to read the old file format. We lost access to 20 years of tax/receipt records.
MSI is blacklisted for me, my family, friends, and anyone who I perform IT services for. I don’t give 2 fucks if the hardware is 80% cheaper and 200% better. Fuck you, they fucked perfectly good hardware, my reputation, and if we ever get audited we’re fucked. Eat shit and die, MSI.
I saw this headline and immediately thought “ArmouryCrate is the reason”
I certainly avoid ASUS stuff after discovering that piece of nonsense on my new install.
The rootkit is easy enough to turn off in the BIOS but I highly, highly recommend G-Helper instead of Armoury Crate.
Moving to it from AC is like leaving a prison cell full of screaming children and entering a calm beach.
This video kind of misses the mark on delivering the points of the title, but these are the simplest boiled down points of the community gripes:
Gigabyte (remember them?) did this same slow slide of enshittification about 10 years ago. The issue pretty much boils down to a company producing too many different types of things, instead of staying good at the things they do well, and the community has noticed and is calling for boycotts. This will no doubt put them on the defensive for years to come, and affect their overall standing in the larger community until they correct course.
I have a 14 year old gigabyte motherboard in my older computer. When I first got it I didn’t know what I was doing and plugged the wrong thing in somewhere and blew up a component on it. As long as I don’t use that slot it chugs along just fine. I wish companies would just keep making things that last I’d gladly pay a fairly steep premium for that. Instead it seems every company that gets known for making good stuff decides to shit all over themselves
Honestly, in your case, it could just be more about who makes what components can withstand X amount of punishment and keep the electrons flowing through so other things keep working 😂
Agreed on your point though. Cheap shit needs to stop.
Sure do! Both my board and the board in my wife’s computer are Gigabyte. So’s my video card. The only issue I’ve ever had with their stuff has been a bad stick of ram a few years ago, which they exchanged without argument.
Brands in this sphere I definitely have had trouble with: MSI, Razer – so many problems with Razer – and ASUS.
Yeah so the thing with PC parts suppliers is that every brand is going to have people who have experienced problems with their stuff.
Gigabyte I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah during the pandemic their power supplies were fucking exploding so yeah that’s a problem.
Asus I’ve never had a problem with, but yeah their boards on both sides have been setting voltages and power limits very aggressively, killing AM5 CPUs catastrophically, potentially causing instability on higher end Intel chips as well it seems. That’s a problem.
Etc etc etc
What are the problems with Razer? I’ve only used their mice, so I honestly don’t even know what else they make
Keyboards, headphones, laptops, a handheld Steam Deck imitator, and various other RGB gamer shit. All of it is trash. Their business model nowadays seems to revolve entirely around upselling Aliexpress quality Chinese garbage at premium prices and then methodically denying every single warranty claim for defective and DOA product using spurious excuses. Oh, and their driver software is crap. And their products are consistently behind even Logitech on the features you get for the price.
Through no particular intentional means, I am now a Logitech convert. For mice and keyboards, their stuff has always been consistently reliable for me, their “G” series driver software is significantly less irritating than Razer Synapse, and most of their stuff is cheaper as well.
I think in my lifetime I’ve trashed four Razer keyboards, at least as many mice, and two pairs of headphones. All of these died early deaths – within weeks, sometimes a couple of months at the outside. Every time I tell myself this time will be different. It never is. I don’t buy their shit anymore, and I don’t recommend anyone else do, either.
I bought the $120 Razer Wolverine V2 Xbox controller after MS shrunk the official controller for the Series S/X and it was a piece of shit. Replaced it with a $45 gamesir (Chinese brand) with hall effect triggers and sticks that I’ve had for two years now with no issues and no drift, a first for any xbox controller I’ve ever had. Razer sucks.
Tried to RMA a motherboard with Gigabyte and they will find any excuse to void the warranty.
This is troubling. I’ve been using ASUS motherboards for a very long time. I haven’t noticed any problems in the last 3 systems I built, but I also usually go for the workstation type motherboards instead of gaming motherboards, so I can use ECC RAM and dispense with the LED bling I don’t need or want. I wonder if they are still putting enough effort into the business/workstation stuff that it’s not having too many quality issues yet. I hope they can turn this around, because the list of quality PC parts manufacturers is growing smaller all the time.
I have always had issues with ASUS. Their parts have never really worked well for me, and if they did they only lasted a year or two before shitting out. Everyone else seemed to swear by them and I could never even get a part that worked.
I had a $1,300 gaming laptop from Asus from way back in 2013. The hinge for the screen was designed in such a way that it applied pressure against the very thing plastic screen bezel when opening the laptop, so in a very short amount of time the bezel just snapped in front of each hinge. Absolutely brain dead design.
The only non-Apple laptop that has lasted me for years was an asus from 2013. Probably cost me $1900. Luck of the draw for me, I guess. I always thought highly of the company because my HP and Dell laptops fell apart so fast (even the ones that cost close to $1900). I know Lenovo always had issues with back doors. I guess there aren’t a lot of options these days.
That’s my experience with Asus going back over 25 years now. To me, Asus has always been substandard products sold at premium prices. If I wanted a substandard motherboard, I’d buy ECS and save a bunch of money. And to be fair to ECS, I’ve had some of their boards that have worked just fine, which is more than I can say about the Asus stuff.
Years ago I happily used some Razer mice and keyboards, even a headset, so in the not too far past I told people around me that Razer was fairly good, quality wise, but alas, I think each and every one I recommended Razer products to had them break and or die well within warranty, and they always had to start a stupid discussion to get the warranty/RMA accepted, a few times even replacements denied outright by Razer.
For me this stands in sharp contrast with Logitech whom has never denied me a warranty, even for products a few weeks beyond the date, and they generally just send out a new item. That is, for me it is rare for a Logitech product to actually require replacement to begin with, I have a few mice, keyboards and headsets far older than 5 years and they work fine plus are still supported in the drivers.
Speaking of drivers, Razer at one point also made the decision to have their drivers require an account login to function properly (multi-button mice would only have 2 functional buttons if not logged in etc). But after some flak from its users it slightly changed that to the login being optional, but profiles would still be hampered without a continuous online presence.
Coming back to Asus, for a few years now I hear of people having quality issues and grumpy asus service desks, but for me their videocards ways ran fine (even without coil whine, unlike some MSI cards). I am quite hesitant to buy an Asus monitor or motherboard though.
I finally bought a Razer mouse just a couple years ago since it was one of the few I could find that was a USB receiver + Bluetooth wireless gaming mouse I could use with my desktop and steam deck. Still works great, thankfully. But otherwise I learned the hard way many years ago to just buy Logitech after purchasing a stupid expensive gaming mouse from a brand I’ve forgotten whose left click died in less than a year. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Logitech product actually die on me; I just eventually replace them with a newer Logitech product.
Seems to be a problem in general. I’ve been using Elecom trackballs for years, first one I bought still works. Ones I’ve bought in the last year all started wigging out on left click within a couple months. I took one apart recently to swap the mouse switch with a quick solder job and it’s good as new. Seems like the newer ones are using really cheap Chinese Omron switches that die quickly. IIRC the older one uses a Japanese Omron switch. The new one I soldered in is a Kailh GM2.0.
Seconded for difficulty with Razer products. 15+ years ago they were pretty good. But since then I’ve had 2 headsets crap out right after warranty, one in warranty failed, mice quit working and a keyboard fail. They only replaced the one headset. Plus, their gaming software for their upper tier headsets is unbelievably bloated and awful. I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall it several times to get it working when some update f’s it up.
So far, my Logitech gear is still trucking along, even my cheap $14 travel mouse.
I’ve had the opposite experience between Logitech and Razer, at least when it comes to mice. Every modern Logitech mouse I’ve had (3) has had the right and left click switches replaced as they started double clicking right after the warranty expired.
Logitech are actually using the wrong switches as they’re running them below their design voltage and is causing premature failure. I swapped them out with appropriately rated switches and they are still in service, now for much longer than the original switches.
When the failure started though I switched my main mouse to a Razer with optical switches and have had zero problems with the hardware. Software wise, Polychromatic + OpenRazer on Linux works better than Razer’s software on Windows. Razer’s software leaves a lot to be desired, but Logitech’s software is only marginally better.
deleted by creator
It’s not all of the sudden Gamer Nexus dropped them as a sponsor and tore them a new one months ago.
They don’t care about their customers. They just want your money.
deleted by creator
why don’t you tell me?
No, why don’t you tell me?
we are doing this, now?
Yes?
Statement! One-love.
I’ve had two ASUS gaming laptops, and both of them began having issues within a year, and the second didnt last more than a couple years total.
The first laptop was one of their enormous ROG 17 inch gaming laptops that looked like it had jet engine exhaust. The hard drive died and the power port broke within the first year, and I had to send it in under warranty. The power brick also died, and I ended up having to replace it myself around the 3 year mark.
Thinking it was a fluke, I ended up buying a smaller, more portable ASUS gaming laptop next which had more of a standard form factor. Maybe six or eight months later, that one suffered some issue that required being sent in for service as well. It began experiencing the same issue about four months later, I’d sent it in for repair a second time for the same issue, and they apparently fixed it.
I got to use that laptop for maybe 1.5 years total before it was completely unusable, in spite of two RMAs.
My current gaming laptop is an HP Omen 17 from 2017, and has been completely stable and reliable up to this day. I love to hate on HP because of their dumb printers, but I’m pretty impressed. I’ll probably end up buying another one, because I will literally never own another ASUS product ever in my life, and there are only so many manufacturers out there who I’d consider for a laptop purchase.
I’d personally look into Dell and Lenovo enterprise workstation laptops; same tech, but designed to be used instead of just looking flashy on a shelf.
I must be in the minority here because I’ve never had major issues with ASUS products, though the caveat here is I have only used their motherboards. I’m using an x570-PLUS right now and it has been solid since purchase.
OLED Display on my Zenbook unglued itself after month of use. They removed the ability to unlock bootloader in their phones (after repeatedly lying about it returning). Some people sued them and won. I won’t buy another Asus product.
Videos are a terrible way to communicate small amounts of information and these comments aren’t super insightful so I guess I’ll just move on.
A 10-12 minute video is always a huge red flag for me. Either the info is stretched out or over compresses.
their enshittification is sad.
they were always my go to for quality motherboards. oh well.
I feel the same argument applies to many other brands already including lenovo and sadly the thinkpad lineup.
Some others are contributing to the same trend by increasing prices and relying on cult fandom.
All Asus mobos and graphic cards I owned died.
And as in my IT days we had whole rooms of machines with Asus graphics die too.
I avoid Asus components like the plague