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.
Gigabyte (remember them?)
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’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 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.
Wtf?
What about MSI? Do they do this shit too?
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.
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 and on cult fandom.
They’ve been shit for quite a few years. Overheating laptops made me vocally against them after the fifth repair/replacement.
Dude has 35 subs, is this your own account?
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.
