DOA boards, etc? Why so many?

[2cats]

I'm looking at Newegg to buy a new board and all for a new pc. I've bought a few boards and stuff, usually Asus, from them and never had a bad board or bad part from them. A bad board was not unheard of. but, now, it seems that every board reviewed, Asus or otherwise, has had multiple DOA's or RMA's in less than a year. Hard drives too have seemed to have gone to crap with High end WD's failing at a high rate.

Are new parts failing at a really high rate, or is it Newegg maybe handling them poorly? I'm kind of afraid to buy anything from them or anyone. Anyone have a better place to buy, or any insight to offer?

 

[MrWizzard]

Unfortunately many of the “DOA” boards are just the users installing them wrong, moving jumpers they should not. Installing components wrong, or getting in over their heads.

Most of the PC’s I have fixed where the user said their mobo was “DOA” was one of the above reasons.

There was also the case where the user put a screwdriver through their MOBO and said it was DOA.

I have bought dozens of boards from them and have yet to get a DOA one. I do have friends who have bought from them also who thought it was DOA and it just turned out to be they overlooked a installation step.

I'm skeptical of people saying DOA, it does happen but most of the time there is more to the story.

 

[BrightCandle]

Motherboards do have a lot of problems actually, completely dead is uncommon but its not uncommon to have issues with RAM slots or other particular features that are hardware related. I don't know why its the case but it stretches across the entire industry, its not just Asus its everybody. RAM is normally the least likely to run to spec in my experience, followed closely by the motherboard and then hard drives then graphics cards. I am yet to receive a broken CPU or have one fail but motherboards normally get replaced quite a bit as they die relatively young.

 

[Torn Mind]

Soldering, which is how components are attached to the circuit board can go wrong.

Components such as a transistor can also be defective by the time it arrives.

In addition, something could have broke during packaging.

Inadequate ESD protection when handling mobos could also cause a failure somewhere.

No manufacturing process is 100% perfect, especially something like soldering, in which both machine and human soldering can be done "poorly". ASUS has a great process, so the majority of people won't get any issues, but they'll kick the unlucky ones to the curb with their allegedly poor support.

Hard drives though, are sensitive to shocks and poor handling can wreck them. A defective controller board can also render them inoperable.

 

[2cats]

There was also the case where the user put a screwdriver through their MOBO and said it was DOA.

How does one, in the normal course of installing a board, put a screwdriver through a board? This is not a person I want to hang around with.

 

[2cats]

Well, I feel a little better about buying now. I have to have this stuff from somewhere if I'm going to have a computer at home. Thank for the replies.

 

[Alan G]

Don't pay much attention to the complaints. Unless you know the total number of MoBos sold you cannot possibly know what the rate of problem boards are. I've only had one bad board in all the time I've been building computers and it was a bad DVI port that went bad right after Win7 installation. I've never had any other issues, bad memory or PSUs. My total number of builds is 17 which may be on the low side on this forum.

 

[john3850]

I wonder how many of those doa have to do with the LGA or and grid contacts bent.

 

[Rezist]

When I purchased my MSi Z77-G41 on some websites like ncix.com where I bought it from was relatively well rated for it's price, on newegg.ca close 35% were probably DOA complaints, I had a feeling that board revisions and manufacturing defects kinda prop up at certain points since alot of the complaints ended up coming from the same time period.

 

[BrightCandle]

Asus being the biggest motherboard manufacturer is going to have the most complaints in around the forums. Its hard for us to really evaluate how that compares to the others and the complaints we see for them. Unless the manufacturer publishes data we wont know the true failure rates.

What I don't really understand is why so many come with such wide ranging faults. I would have expected that every port on the motherboard would have been tested thoroughly and automatically to prove that each board worked. The testing process for a CPU is extensive and it seems to me that motherboard manufacturers are doing a basic test on the boards but not everything which is resulting in these bad boards making it out into the sales channel. It just doesn't seem likely that all these dead boards are due to bad handling in shipping or just so happen to fail just after installation of parts.

 

[nForce2]

How does one, in the normal course of installing a board, put a screwdriver through a board? This is not a person I want to hang around with.

It used to be pretty easy to do with the Athlon/AthlonXP motherboards. Many of the heatsink retaining clips just had a little bent over tab, and to install the heatsink, you had to pry outward, press down (with a surprising amount of force on some), and then hook the rest of it over the plastic clips on the CPU socket before you let go. You had to be careful doing it, or the screwdriver would slip right out, and although I didn't ever see one with a screwdriver "through" the motherboard, I did see a number that were damaged (through several layers of the PCB) because of it.

 

[john3850]

It used to be pretty easy to do with the Athlon/AthlonXP motherboards. Many of the heatsink retaining clips just had a little bent over tab, and to install the heatsink, you had to pry outward, press down (with a surprising amount of force on some), and then hook the rest of it over the plastic clips on the CPU socket before you let go. You had to be careful doing it, or the screwdriver would slip right out, and although I didn't ever see one with a screwdriver "through" the motherboard, I did see a number that were damaged (through several layers of the PCB) because of it.

Those original single slot clips were even worse.
Athlon HSF install hold the last clip by pushing it flush with the HSF with one screwdriver then push down and lock it with second screwdriver.
I always put a few layers of cloth tape on the mb to save the traces if I slipped.

 

[fixbsod]

Is that a hsf cooler? It's like a solid block of metal!!

 

[bononos]

Is that a hsf cooler? It's like a solid block of metal!!

Back in the day before heatpipes and radial designs, that chunky type heatsink was all that people had.

 

[Torn Mind]

Asus being the biggest motherboard manufacturer is going to have the most complaints in around the forums. Its hard for us to really evaluate how that compares to the others and the complaints we see for them. Unless the manufacturer publishes data we wont know the true failure rates.

What I don't really understand is why so many come with such wide ranging faults. I would have expected that every port on the motherboard would have been tested thoroughly and automatically to prove that each board worked. The testing process for a CPU is extensive and it seems to me that motherboard manufacturers are doing a basic test on the boards but not everything which is resulting in these bad boards making it out into the sales channel. It just doesn't seem likely that all these dead boards are due to bad handling in shipping or just so happen to fail just after installation of parts.

Cold solder joints might pass burn-in test only to fail later. ESD might have damaged a part, but not enough to totally destroy it. Or, the component was a dud out of the factory itself, such as a capacitor or IC chip just not right.

 

[philipma1957]

out of the box new items

1)My mobo success is around 25 for 25.

2)When ssds first came out they had a lot of doas for me (2 or 3 of 100 fast) pretty good now.

3)CPUs 50 for 50.

4)Ram 370 for 400. C2D 2010 mac mini found lots of ram stick issues if you went to 8gb from 4gb


5)Gpus 25 of 28 good

6)psu's 25 of 28

7)hdds out of the box all good other then seagates 500gb 2.5 inch 7200 rpm hdd they had the first 500gb 2.5 inch hdd in 2008 and I had 8 of 14 fail fast.



6 months later

1) 1 or 2 mobos failed most of the time the ethernet.

2) ssds jumped from 2 or 3 to 5 or 6 of 100

3) CPUS 50 for 50

4) Ram 360 out of 400

5) GPUs 20 of 28 good

6) psu's 23 of 28 good

8) hdds a few failed in under 6 months

So when you read newegg reviews about doa I would believe them on ram more then any other item.

 

[piasabird]

Asus sells a lot of motherboards compared to other companies. So they should have a lot of defective motherboards. With the economy, I wonder sometimes if they just put the motherboards that are defective back on the shelves. I think some of these hard drives could be ending back on the shelves. There was a flood a while back and I wonder if there some in a warehouse somewhere that should have been junked. The last computer I had, I ended up doing an RMA on the hard drive. It is expensive to ship stuff back if you hardly ever do any shipping and are not getting a special discount on shipping. No reason to not complain about the company if this is how they treat their customers.

Sometimes in the past I have ordered parts from places like www.directron.com because they offer testing for a small fee on things like motherboards, hard drives, power supplies. However, they don't sell the ASROCK brand of motherboards. They sell parts and also can build computers or just assemble a barebones box for you. Typically they charge just a little more than newegg. Everything is money.

I used an INTEL motherboard last time I ordered. Wish they would just keep making motherboards.

 

[piasabird]

I have assembled a few computers and Have not had trouble damaging parts. Typically I don't do the assembly on a rug and just touch the metal case to ground out any static electricity. However, I did have one problem when I had some RAM that just did not want to work with a motherboard, but worked fine in another motherboard. After the second motherboard did not work I switched out the RAM. After that I checked compatibility with the RAM manufacturers website before purchasing any RAM.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

I've never personally had a DOA motherboard either, and I've bought around 15 of them in the past several years. I blame the low review averages on user error.

 

[aigomorla]

I'm looking at Newegg to buy a new board and all for a new pc. I've bought a few boards and stuff, usually Asus, from them and never had a bad board or bad part from them. A bad board was not unheard of. but, now, it seems that every board reviewed, Asus or otherwise, has had multiple DOA's or RMA's in less than a year. Hard drives too have seemed to have gone to crap with High end WD's failing at a high rate.

Are new parts failing at a really high rate, or is it Newegg maybe handling them poorly? I'm kind of afraid to buy anything from them or anyone. Anyone have a better place to buy, or any insight to offer?

qty has exploded.. so more components are in circulation.

Example... before when demand was low... if only 10 items were sold... 1 would be DOA... everyone would go wow 90%.

Now... its not 10 items... its 1000 items.. and if 10 go DOA... those 10 people let everyone know they got a DOA... mostly from rage / fustration / being unlucky..

10/1000 is less then 1/10... yet cuz there was 10, its more announced.

 

[WilliamM2]

I've put together at least 150 PC's, probably closer to 200. Never a DOA motherboard, CPU, or video card yet. I have had bad memory or optical/floppy drives a couple of times.

Used to have lots of bad hard drives, then I quit buying them from Newegg. Their packaging is horrible, especially if you buy 5 or 10 at a time.

 

[john3850]

I've never had any DOA motherboard, Cpu or viedo card either since 88.
I have had 4 defective video cards that died after a few short weeks.

 

[schmuckley]

1st board I ever bought was DOA..
..and 1 had some RAM slots bad..
another had no sound..
that's 3 out of..hmmm..Idk.