Any bad experiences with Sapphire?

[Energycore]

In my time in the forums I had heard that Sapphire had pretty good to good customer service, just from word of mouth. But I was talking to someone on this thread that described a pretty abysmal RMA process. So I wanted to ask you all, how all of your experiences have been with Sapphire RMAs, how they were handled and if you ran into any problems.

 

And I've been thinking about setting up a new RMA thread, now that @thekeemo has stopped being active. That RMA experience thread was very useful.

[Mr.Humble]

Can't really say, never had to RMA a Sapphire card.

[Mr.Meerkat]

Asus's UK CS is abysmal...oh wait, we're talking about sapphire, never mind  

[Teddy07]

Well you will always find people saying something bad about a company... (I have no negative experience with them)

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

I did this once for my father about ~3 years ago, went smooth, nothing out of the ordinary or to mention explicitly.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Teddy07 said:

Well you will always find people saying something bad about a company...

Yeah, that's exactly why I wanted to find out whether this one anecdote is isolated

 

It's for science.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

I did this once for my father about ~3 years ago, went smooth, nothing out of the ordinary or to mention explicitly.

Were you able to RMA directly with them?

[ItsTheDuckAgain]

2 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Were you able to RMA directly with them?

if I recall correctly I sent it to the vendor (Mindfactory in Germany) who sold it to me.

[Bananasplit_00]

Sapphire stuff dosent tend to break much from what i know lol. but i do own a dead 280X Tri-X 

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, ItsTheDuckAgain said:

if I recall correctly I sent it to the vendor (Mindfactory in Germany) who sold it to me.

Yeah it sounds like Sapphire will not let you RMA directly with them but rather will have you go through the retailer. That's fine if your retailer has good CS, but it's putting one more failure point in the RMA system and if your retailer is a jerk, you're outta luck.

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

Sapphire stuff dosent tend to break much from what i know lol. but i do own a dead 280X Tri-X 

At least I can commend them on their build quality, for sure.

[TheRandomness]

2 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

Sapphire stuff dosent tend to break much from what i know lol. but i do own a dead 280X Tri-X 

Toxic*

 

I've no bad experiences with Sapphire, and my 290 is still partially kicking. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

10 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

Sapphire stuff dosent tend to break much from what i know lol. but i do own a dead 280X Tri-X 

 

7 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

Toxic*

 

I've no bad experiences with Sapphire, and my 290 is still partially kicking. 

Does it count if I've fried a sapphire 290X reference? I mean it kicked out before my powercolor 290X reference so points off? 

[Energycore]

2 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

290X reference

So that's why sometimes you can't hear what I say

[Fancyland]

Never had to RMA anything to Sapphire. My 2 Sapphire R9 290(x) TRI-X are still alive. Even my Sapphire HD5870 Vapor-x is still kicking after 6+ years.

Don't know any stories about their RMA either.

 

Got some stories about MSI and Gigabyte though.

[Mr.Meerkat]

3 minutes ago, Energycore said:

So that's why sometimes you can't hear what I say

1. They're both dead, one had a VRM go kaboom and the other had a few of it's vRAM chips go kaboom

2. One was cooled by a h75 and one by an accelero 3 so...no noise?

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

1. They're both dead, one had a VRM go kaboom and the other had a few of it's vRAM chips go kaboom

2. One was cooled by a h75 and one by an accelero 3 so...no noise?

Oh, well GG me I suppose. Although I do wonder how loud the reference cooler can be. Is it like, server room loud?

[Mr.Meerkat]

2 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Oh, well GG me I suppose. Although I do wonder how loud the reference cooler can be. Is it like, server room loud?

Ermmmm...40% fan speeds and 65C on the bottom card and 70C on the top card...I mean that was with ambient temps of a cool 5-10C sooooooo at least in my experience, not very loud  (to be honest, shouldn't have installed custom coolers on em, they'll still be alive as I wouldn't have OCed them to 1200MHz core...)

[Energycore]

6 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

1. They're both dead, one had a VRM go kaboom and the other had a few of it's vRAM chips go kaboom

2. One was cooled by a h75 and one by an accelero 3 so...no noise?

Edit: I thought the other post didn't go through

[Mr.Meerkat]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

So you never got to experience the stock cooler noise?

I wonder how loud it really is. Is it like server room loud?

IDK, I had them on reference from end of summer till winter 2014 so...ermmmmm

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

IDK, I had them on reference from end of summer till winter 2014 so...ermmmmm

So you did get ear damage and you're not purposefully ignoring me when I call upon you. right?

 

Right?

[ashypanda]

31 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Asus's UK CS is abysmal...oh wait, we're talking about sapphire, never mind  

Asus just pawn you off to the retailer and don't want anything to do with you, but hopefully i never have to deal with sapphire's RMA process.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, ashypanda said:

Asus just pawn you off to the retailer and don't want anything to do with you, but hopefully i never have to deal with sapphire's RMA process.

It sounds like that's what Sapphire does too by the looks of it.

[Mr.Meerkat]

4 minutes ago, Energycore said:

So you did get ear damage and you're not purposefully ignoring me when I call upon you. right?

 

Right?

Maybe? I don't remember you ever calling upon me tho...  

However, that may be the reason why I can no longer hear what people are whispering 5 meters away  

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Maybe? I don't remember you ever calling upon me tho...  

However, that may be the reason why I can no longer hear what people are whispering 5 meters away  

Oh god

 

I mean it's that or loud music with headphones. But again I can't say, I switched my reference 560 Ti fan for a 212 EVO fan just so I didn't get to hear the whine of a 80mm fan going full speed

[Mr.Meerkat]

3 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Oh god

 

I mean it's that or loud music with headphones. But again I can't say, I switched my reference 560 Ti fan for a 212 EVO fan just so I didn't get to hear the whine of a 80mm fan going full speed

What are you planning to get anyway? Anything custom cooled should be decently quiet no?