Monarch Computer Bashes Epox

[kfranc9]

I contacted Monarch Computers to see why they didn't sell the Epox motherboards that are somewhat praised around here. Well this is what they had to say...

Thank you for your request. Unfortunately, Monarch will not sell Epox motherboards due to a very high failure rate we experienced with their products. If there is a comparable product you are interested in, please let me know. Thank you for your time and patience. We appreciate your business.

Dabney Harris

 

[CraigRT]

If I may speak up on this matter, I've only ever had 1 motherboard die in my main system at home, and it was EPoX... it was a piece of crap along the way too.

I can relate with them, I wouldn't sell them either after that.. heh

 

[aphex]

I've had two manufacturers boards die on me (or my customers), ECS and EPoX.

 

[MichaelD]

Last week, I pulled my Epox 8K5A2+ out of storage (about...two years, IIRC) the board was dead. Wouldn't boot. Even tried changing the mobo battery. I threw it away.

That said: I am currently running TWO Epox boards in two of my home rigs and they are FLAWLESS. They overclock like Muthas and are feature-rich. I'm running a 8RDA+ and a 8RDA3I, FYI.

I would buy another Epox in a heartbeat. Sh1t happens...with all mobo manufacturers. Unless we're talking about MSI...they just suck, period.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Can't really argue with there position I'm sure they have numbers that don't lie. Granted not everyone is going to get bad boards but apparently they had to deal with enough crap to warrent not dealing with epox anymore.

 

[Bar81]

I fail to see how the truth is "bashing" If they've experienced a higher failure rate then their response to your inquiry is nothing of the sort.

 

[Zebo]

Sounds like someone can't sell Epox to me.

 

[Bar81]

Originally posted by: Zebo
Sounds like someone can't sell Epox to me.

What does that mean? They're unable to call any of the major distributers in the US and place a simple order?

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Zebo
Sounds like someone can't sell Epox to me.

What does that mean? They're unable to call any of the major distributers in the US and place a simple order?

Not at all. What I mean is they can't move them like they might want, or simply don't carry them due to being to poor to so instead of carrying stock they may be bashing it so you go with what they do carry.

Why? Monarch only has about 5 brands of mobos. I'd be curious if the same reply did'nt come about soltek, albatron, ledtek, Iwill, shuttle or what ever else they don't carry.

 

[Bar81]

Definitely a possibility.

 

[Zebo]

Truly I don't know if that's the case...they me be horrendous...just rubs me the wrong way talking crap about competitors products or products you don't have...as a business a little more so. I think I'll shoot "Dabney" a email about wanting a K8S8X or somthing

 

[roibm]

I had two boards dieing on me:
abit with some pentium II at work(several years ago)
asus a7n8x rev 1.?(Wiwndows BSOD, reboot, nothing...)
I have an epox running a duron 700 on one of my servers since nov 2000. not a problem @ 24x7x36[56]

One dead board won't tell much but when you got multiple from the same company, it brings some '???'

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Zebo
Truly I don't know if that's the case...they me be horrendous...just rubs me the wrong way talking crap about competitors products or products you don't have...as a business a little more so. I think I'll shoot "Dabney" a email about wanting a K8S8X or somthing

Still no reply....two days...

 

[Zap]

I don't think there is a brand I've come across that I haven't seen at least one failed part, no matter how vaunted the brand.

I've seen hard drive failures of every brand.

My first NEC monitor (NEC Multisync 3D) died in 10 months. One minute I was playing Starcontrol, next minute black screen.

My first (and so far only) Intel 875P chipset motherboard was an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe. Yup, all the way baby!!! All the way to a dead board in a few minutes. I had a Celeron in there (yup, cheap chip, expensive board) and on a reboot, died. From that point on, when trying to power on the board the fans would not spin up and the board would emit a high-pitched sound from around the capacitor area next to the CPU socket.

Of course some manufacturers may have a bad bunch, such as the infamous IBM "Deathstar" drives, or those drives that Western Digital actually recalled.

 

[demonx]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Zebo
Sounds like someone can't sell Epox to me.

What does that mean? They're unable to call any of the major distributers in the US and place a simple order?

Not at all. What I mean is they can't move them like they might want, or simply don't carry them due to being to poor to so instead of carrying stock they may be bashing it so you go with what they do carry.

Why? Monarch only has about 5 brands of mobos. I'd be curious if the same reply did'nt come about soltek, albatron, ledtek, Iwill, shuttle or what ever else they don't carry.

Sounds to me they exprienced a larger failure with Epox and choose not to carry them. As a business if money is being lost or customers not being satasfied due to failures and the numbers are also showing it, would it not make sense not to carry said product anymore?

Dosen't seem like bashing to me, just a smart business model.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I've always heard good things about Monarch though I've never delt with them, but they just did a header off the overpass into heavy traffic in my book. Any biz that will claim they don't carry Epox due to failure rates, yet carries MSI gets a 1/10 :disgust:

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: demonx

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Zebo
Sounds like someone can't sell Epox to me.

What does that mean? They're unable to call any of the major distributers in the US and place a simple order?

Not at all. What I mean is they can't move them like they might want, or simply don't carry them due to being to poor to so instead of carrying stock they may be bashing it so you go with what they do carry.

Why? Monarch only has about 5 brands of mobos. I'd be curious if the same reply did'nt come about soltek, albatron, ledtek, Iwill, shuttle or what ever else they don't carry.

Sounds to me they exprienced a larger failure with Epox and choose not to carry them. As a business if money is being lost or customers not being satasfied due to failures and the numbers are also showing it, would it not make sense not to carry said product anymore?

Dosen't seem like bashing to me, just a smart business model.

Sounds like you're young and naive. Read DP's post. Or explain why they have'nt contacted me back even about Asrock I want.

BTW- how would an $5 an hour order taker know about reliablity reports? Anand does'nt even have access to that sort of thing.

 

[Mem]

I don't think there is a brand I've come across that I haven't seen at least one failed part, no matter how vaunted the brand.

That`s true no brand is 100%,my own experience with Epox has been generally excellent with solid stability and easy setup,I did have some bad leaking capacitors that developed over time(few years after) but as you know Abit,Asus, etc all had that problem so I don`t blame them.

I`ve seen other hardware companies in the past not recommending well known brands etc based on failure rate/returns....however in the end it`s really down to you on what brand and where you buy your next board.

I don`t take any dealer/company serious on what they think is good or bad even when based on their own experience.

 

[demonx]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: demonx

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: Bar81

Originally posted by: Zebo
Sounds like someone can't sell Epox to me.

What does that mean? They're unable to call any of the major distributers in the US and place a simple order?

Not at all. What I mean is they can't move them like they might want, or simply don't carry them due to being to poor to so instead of carrying stock they may be bashing it so you go with what they do carry.

Why? Monarch only has about 5 brands of mobos. I'd be curious if the same reply did'nt come about soltek, albatron, ledtek, Iwill, shuttle or what ever else they don't carry.

Sounds to me they exprienced a larger failure with Epox and choose not to carry them. As a business if money is being lost or customers not being satasfied due to failures and the numbers are also showing it, would it not make sense not to carry said product anymore?

Dosen't seem like bashing to me, just a smart business model.

Sounds like you're young and naive. Read DP's post. Or explain why they have'nt contacted me back even about Asrock I want.

BTW- how would an $5 an hour order taker know about reliablity reports? Anand does'nt even have access to that sort of thing.

Sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about but instead are making assumptions.
But then again you do know what each monarch employee has access to/makes so who knows

 

[MichaelD]

I have purchased from Monarch twice. Once was an IDE Raid card, next was....a case, IIRC.

Both times; fast shipping, good packing. No issues. I would buy from them again.

 

[Zebo]

You have $15,000 tires??? Damn don't know if I sould even trust anything you say micheal since you always give the salesman the vaseline

What's fast 28 days
---

Seriously Monarchs good people, (and a way for Kalifornians to escape newegg/zippys/mwave sales tax) I just have my doubts if this particular woman is being acurate or it was just an expediant answer... I mean they carry MSI and ECS mobos for chris sakes!

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Zebo
You have $15,000 tires??? Damn don't know if I sould even trust anything you say micheal since you always give the salesman the vaseline

What's fast 28 days
---

Seriously Monarchs good people, (and a way for Kalifornians to escape newegg/zippys/mwave sales tax) I just have my doubts if this particular woman is being acurate or it was just an expediant answer... I mean they carry MSI and ECS mobos for chris sakes!

LOL! That was notfred's assessment of my life. The tires were considerably cheaper than that!

 

[ga400]

Originally posted by: Zebo
You have $15,000 tires??? Damn don't know if I sould even trust anything you say micheal since you always give the salesman the vaseline

What's fast 28 days
---

Seriously Monarchs good people, (and a way for Kalifornians to escape newegg/zippys/mwave sales tax) I just have my doubts if this particular woman is being acurate or it was just an expediant answer... I mean they carry MSI and ECS mobos for chris sakes!

I work for Monarch in sales. Dabney is a good kid, works hard, and is as truthful as she is allowed to be. She's not in sales, she works with purchasing. She has access to reliability reports. Anand doesn't because Anand doesn't sell hundreds of each model of motherboard. We sell enough to develop our own reports.

We had seriously high failure rates on Epox. Keep in mind, when we talk high failure rates, we're dealing with hundreds of boards at a time, so a 2% failure rate is really, really high for us.

I won't comment on specific failure rates for any manufacturer here. Again, I'm in sales, not tech or purchasing so my opinions here are my own, and not Monarch's.

MSI, although they've had quality mixups in the past, have come around quite a bit. Their failure rate has been acceptable.

We don't carry that many ECS boards, didja notice? If the few models we carry continue to sell and not come back we might expand that and carry a few more.

Its funny because a lot of those brands you've mentioned we have carried and dropped for one reason or another. Leadtek and Albatron we dropped but I don't think it was because of quality. We had one Leadtek NF2 board that I sold a lot of myself and didn't have any complaints. Its possible that their manufacturer reps just didn't take care of our purchasers like they should have. I don't know.

I know that Shuttle has given us problems with every product we've ever tried to carry of theirs. We will never carry Shuttle again. Iwill and Soltek will have to work REALLY hard to get us to carry their products again, but I wouldn't say that would never happen.

Look at the boards we push. Intel, Asus, Abit, DFI...all of these have very high quality standards and, as such, extremely low (less than 1/2%) failure rates. MSI, well, I wouldn't push it on you but if you really really want it I would sell it to you. I would not sell Epox to my worst enemy.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

EDIT: Soltek and Shuttle have been extremely reliable and high performing boards for me and I've used dozens of each. I think 98% of the problem is between the chair and monitor.

 

[Zap]

I do think Shuttle has had its share of problems, just like any other manufacturer. For instance, power supply issues with the XPC. I've personally had one fail (SS51G). Look in comments at Newegg.com and you'll see many XPC systems that one day just stops working, oftentimes turning out to be the power supply. I do think Shuttle is trying to resolve the issue. Note the SN45G and the SN45G2. The original has the 200W power supply and many of the comments state that their power supply died, sometimes within days or weeks of purchase. The version 2 system uses the better 250W unit. Thus we can probably safely say that Shuttle is a company that learns from past mistakes.

Speaking of Shuttle's past mistakes, I've seen a few AK31 boards become unstable or die. Those were actually about the only VIA KT266 (before the KT266A) chipset boards that actually worked. I think many of the problems had to do with chipset overheating (Northbridge HSF problems). Another, older board that I've seem be problematic is the Shuttle AV61. I think that's the model number, can't even find it on us.shuttle.com anymore. It used the VIA 693 chipset and was a really slow board. Tomshardware found it to be very slow compared to competing motherboards in a roundup. These two are specific examples but overall I've found Shuttle motherboard products to be pretty decent.

ECS had a lot of problems with their super popular K7S5A series boards (I've seen my share of dead ones) but I can't say that boards since then have been too bad.

MSI? Well, a former AT forum member (H8tank, I think he's been banned for life, LOL ) swears by the brand. I used to swear at the brand, specifically for one particular board. It was their model KM2M Combo-L using the VIA KM266 chipset. I've personally seen too many dead and flakey examples of that particular model. However, I've had good luck with my personal MSI PT880 board and some friends have had good luck with some other MSI boards, just not with the KM2M.

Abit... problems with crappy capacitors. They learned from their mistakes also. Well, sometimes. I'm not happy with the onboard sound of my IS7 (crackle/hiss, picks up HDD seeks and mouse movements) but nevertheless the board is stable and overclocks well.

My point, as before, is that no brand is fallible. Don't judge an entire brand based on one bad example or one bad model. If I did that I would no longer use Asus boards because of a P4C800-E Deluxe that died on me in less than an hour.