I also picked up three Asus H81M-PLUS LGA1150 boards from blinq.com for $40 each new, and no problem so far.
I selected this board because it's way more cost-efficient than other Asus boards with B85 for $50 more, which I find $90 too price-gouging.
I'm glad you didn't take offense. I only meant that that particular statement was not very 'well-thought-out' would have actually been a better alternative, had I been able to think of it at the time. Unfortunately, a lot of people on the internet take almost everything personally. I'm glad that you were smart enough not to take it personally.
I also picked up three Asus H81M-PLUS LGA1150 boards from blinq.com for $40 each new, and no problem so far.
I selected this board because it's way more cost-efficient than other Asus boards with B85 for $50 more, which I find $90 too price-gouging.
Well, I doubt you'll find anyone, anywhere who would fault you for selecting a motherboard with comparable (to you, at least) features for less than half of the cost of the next higher alternative on the chain, especially one from the same company. I sure don't, it makes perfect sense to me.
I'll be honest here, and I don't have anymore Asus problems after January 2015. This includes some AMD boards, DVD drives, desktops, laptops, and all other Asus accessories.
That's great to hear. I can personally vouch for Asus' more expensive motherboards, and their video cards, especially the more expensive ones. I've owned many of each, and never had a single problem with any of them. I've also owned many of their optical drives, and have never had one of them fail, as far back as I can remember, either.
I would not recommend anyone buy one of their pre-built desktop computers, however. Not because they are of horrible quality (they may be, they may not be, I don't know for sure), but because of numbers. They sell almost no pre-built desktop computers, compared to their competition. Yes, they sell quite a few laptops, especially the cheap netbooks, but I would bet dollars to donuts that Asus' best selling desktop model each year sells considerably fewer than Lenovo's, HP's, and/or Dell's worst selling models of the same year. The larger your sales volume, the better quality you can have at the same cost, or have lower cost at the same quality/performance level, which of course leads to higher profits. There's just no way around it.
They
do seem to have a horrible RMA process, and I would advise anyone who buys any of their products to test them out fully, during the time period that they can still return them to the original place of purchase. It's what I do.