News - abit exits mainboard market - confirmed

[Nelly.]

We keep hearing these rumors, but how reliable is this source of information - is Hexus 100% confident that it's true? Just think of the damage you are doing to companys by posting this in the first place, at the same time in the best interest of the consumers if it is true then we should have a right to know.

Makes you wonder if companys like DFI will end up exiting the motherboard market, where will all the Abit customers goto? I for one dont wish to purchase Asus motherboards when there customer service in the UK is diabolicle.

I've had Abit motherboards for around 10 years now, as well as purchasing Asus motherboards.

In the last few years I've just kept buying Abit motherboards as I am totally disatisfied at Asus as a motherboard manufacturer.


Asus
1) Only a couple of reasons I will not buy an Asus motherboard at the current time is because of very poor RMA service i.e. 6 - 8 weeks, to me this is unacceptable considering the size of Asus as a company with over 8,000 employee's & taking into consideration that http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk will even tell you that 14-28 days is a reasonable enough time to sort it, Asus are breaking UK consumer laws.

Taking this into consideration, the only two motherboards I've ever had to RMA were Abit motherboards, but at the time I received replacements within 4 working days - see here. (Abit RMA moved to Holland now)

2) I'm also not keen on Asus using soldered on bios chips, this means you still have to RMA your motherboard instead of just replacing the chip from a 3rd party source in the event of a bad bios flash.

If you look here you will see just one of many horror stories of Asus taking upto 5 months to sort out RMA's on Notebooks/Laptops.

Note: P5Q Deluxe does come with two non-soldered bios chips, one as backup - good move by Asus. (Not sure about other models)

[digit]

This is a great shame, one less player in the market means less competitive prices amongst others

[nightmare99]

Asus are breaking UK consumer laws.

No they are not, you did not purchase the product from ASUS, your contract is with your reseller. ASUS do not have to do anything for you.

Damn it I hate the way the channel has erroded over the last 10 years. People wanted the products cheaper and the etailors managed this but somehting has to give. I suggest you watch the Hexus.tv interview with (forgotton the gents name) from Scan and listen to what he has to say about the edi boys.

[Nelly.]

No they are not, you did not purchase the product from ASUS, your contract is with your reseller. ASUS do not have to do anything for you.

So it's basically a flaw in the system, Asus take longer than 4 weeks to return the faulty motherboard/graphics card/laptop to the reseller who in turn are obliged by consumer law to return the item to the customer within 28 days?

Asus are still crap no matter which way you look at it, every RMA will take 28 days & then you still end up chasing companys like OcUK, Scan etc for the RMA to be sorted.

[Platinum]

If the reseller takes longer than 28 days to get it back to you ask for a replacment, there obligied to give you one so whats the problem?

[Nelly.]

If the reseller takes longer than 28 days to get it back to you ask for a replacment, there obligied to give you one so whats the problem?

It's just annoying when companys like Gigabyte, Abit do their RMA turnaround within 5 working days & Asus go over 28 days so the reseller has to offer a replacement.

Say you have one PC & the motherboard fails - not nice to have to wait a month for a replacement, not everyone has a spare PC or laptop but saying that if you have got the money that would be the logical thing to have/do I guess.

[nightmare99]

Actually it should be down to the disty. Disty would replace faulty product from thier own stock normally 1 week process then they disty has the long wait for the manufacturer to sort repairs out. This was how it used to work before the channel got screwed.

What happens now is the etailors (I'm being kinda general here some are bettrer than others) punt out as much stock as possible but have no means for testing returned boards or giving any kind of useful tech support, the upshot of this is the disties would get swaped with lots of returns many of which won't be faulty (which should be tested by the reseller) then the disties asked the manufacturers to give the large resellers/etailors direct rma accounts as they couldn't handle the rma load.

[Lucio]

It's a great shame to loose another area of choice, but given the attitude that we should have everything as cheaply as possible, combined with the expectation of corporate types to get ever increasing profit margins year on year it's hardly unexpected that things are tending towards one company in each field.

[staffsMike]

Problem with ABIt was their mid to high end boards were over prices for what they were. Yes their high end boards were good, but no better than other makers high end boards.

The dark raider until is went EOL was great value for money at around £60. It was everything most people would need. A similar asus board was £15 to £20 more.

[menthel]

Problem with ABIt was their mid to high end boards were over prices for what they were. Yes their high end boards were good, but no better than other makers high end boards.

Money is made in the mid and low end market and Abit's boards were generally uninteresting or special.

So who's next to go.... DFI perhaps?

As already stated- the IP 35 darkraider- cracking board at a great price. Perfect mid range board!

[Nelly.]

I wonder whose next to drop out the mainboard market? Biostar? DFI? unless all the Abit fanatics jump ship to DFI / Biostar.

Current Motherboard Market Share - Aug 2008

1. Asus
2. Gigabyte
3. MSI
4. Abit
5. DFI
6. Dell
7. Biostar
8. Intel
9. EVGA
10. ECS
11. Other

Source

[TAKTAK]

^^^ thats some seriously good info

i didn't realise ASUS had SUCH a huge lead in the market

[DR]

We keep hearing these rumors, but how reliable is this source of information - is Hexus 100% confident that it's true? Just think of the damage you are doing to companys by posting this in the first place, at the same time in the best interest of the consumers if it is true then we should have a right to know.

I know who the source is and trust me - this isn't some 'fake' story... this is a genuine situation.

[Agent]

<graph>

I'm at an utter loss as to why so many people buy ASUS. I've tried many of their boards over the generations and they have rarely been problem free. They are usually quite big issues in my experience too.

I have never found them to be particularly good overclockers either, under water, phase or air *shrug*. Very average boards in my experience.
Oh and their customer service (BIOS updates etc.) is quite simply shocking.

[Saracen]

I have never found them to be particularly good overclockers either, under water, phase or air *shrug*. Very average boards in my experience.

I'm not surprised you've had problems if you're running them under water.

[staffsMike]

I'm at an utter loss as to why so many people buy ASUS. I've tried many of their boards over the generations and they have rarely been problem free. They are usually quite big issues in my experience too.

I have never found them to be particularly good overclockers either, under water, phase or air *shrug*. Very average boards in my experience.
Oh and their customer service (BIOS updates etc.) is quite simply shocking.

I've never really had a problem with them, but never really overclocked before core 2..

Most recent boards I have from them are the P5B and M2A-VM and both are very good actually

Still, I dread the day I have to contact them lol

I won't touch gigabyte or MSI, so DFI are next to try. My old company used industrial DFI boards which proved very good but I've hear lan party boards have been fussy about PSU's in the past.