Dodgy motherboard & dealing with retailer / manufacturer

[phanteh]

Hi all,

 

A couple of months ago, I decided to replace the majority of my system with new kit  - my PSU was 8 years old, among other factors.

 

I bought an Asus x470-F Gaming board, 2700X processor, 16GB Corsair Vengeance 3466MHz, Samsung 970 EVO (nvme m.2 / 256GB) and an Asus Strix Vega64 (I have a freesync monitor & I guess I'm a bit of an AMD fanboy when it comes down to it, it's nice to see them being competitive once again) a new AIO cpu cooler, case, fans etc.

 

I ended up running into a lot of stability issues, and it seemed to be centred around the board I/O. Detailed list of issues below.

Spoiler

After installing windows for the first time, I managed to run Cinebench just fine (posting a healthy score), but noticed that various games either failed to load or ran as a slideshow. This was closely followed by a bluescreen. The next time I tried to install Windows, the installer gave me an error during installation. I contacted the retailer at this point and they agreed to replace it, and advised me to send in my CPU with the board just to make sure that was working correctly (something about controllers on the chip). After getting the new board back... I had the same issues. I realised I hadn't tried updating the BIOS previously, so thought I'd try that.

 

Things improved; I managed a night of gaming before the crashes and bluescreens started creeping in, with a few bootloops after hard crashes thrown in for fun. I thought, maybe this drive just doesn't work with this board. So I pulled my old 840 EVO SSD's out of my old system, put them in a RAID array (as they were being used in my old system, without issue) and installed Windows. Same behaviour. I de-raided them, turned raid mode off and installed Windows onto one of the drives. Same issues. I tried with a different drive... Same issues. 

 

So now, I've tried getting it working with just the m.2 drive, a single SSD, a Raid 0 SSD array and couldn't get a stable windows installation (for the record, I've used 2 different USB keys, one brand new, to create my windows installation disk with the same results). I've tested each of the standard SSDs, updated their bios and confirmed they're still working normally with my old system. So I send the board back, and asked them to take the m.2 drive as I'm unable to test that myself.

 

After an email from their test department, stating that they're running performance tests without issue, I begged them to stress out the I/O on the board as much as possible. They claim that it survived a 72 hour stress test over the weekend with every SATA port filled, but it crashed when they put my m.2 drive back in. So they sent me a new drive.

 

And I've got the same issues!

 

I don't think they bothered trying the drive in another motherboard with an m.2 slot; if they had, I suspect it would've worked just fine.

TL;DR: I sent back the motherboard and CPU (I was advised to send the CPU as well by the retailer) and they 'confirmed a fault' with the m.2 slot, and sent me a replacement. When I observed the same behaviour with the new board, I sent it back along with the m.2 drive (as I don't have any other compatible kit to test myself). They 'confirmed a fault' with the m.2 drive and sent my motherboard back with a brand new drive. I still have the same issues outlined above.

 

I've put the mobo / ram / cpu from my old system into my new case, with the new PSU / graphics card and it's all working just fine. The only other common component I haven't had tested is the RAM, but I've seen RAM failures before and suspect it would be a red herring, especially as the retailer have 'confirmed faults' with the mobo / drive previously...

 

(If you're wondering, I got a Corsair rx750i PSU, which should be enough for 2700X + Vega 64, not that the crashes happened during max cpu + gpu load...)

 

Contacting Asus resulted in them asking me to clear CMOS (by removing the battery...) and change a couple of power save settings. When neither of these seemed to help and I expanded on my issues with the SATA drives, they sent me a guide for setting up a RAID array . They had avoided answering my questions around whether there are any known issues with this board or specifically a compatibility issue with my drive(s). In my last message to them, I asked them if there are any known issues with this board, compatibility issues with my drive(s) and whether a BIOS fix is in the works. I haven't had a reply for over a week now, and I suspect I'm not going to get one; they cynic in me says they know they have issues with those boards but they don't want to confirm that, so they're ignoring me now rather than lying about it.

 

The retailer had previously agreed to replace the motherboard with one from another manufacturer, but the last time I spoke to them, the agent on the phone said something along the lines of they'll have to confirm a fault before they can authorise a replacement. Given their testers have erroneously sent me a new board and a new drive, I don't have any faith in their ability to determine the actual problem and I'm worried the retailer are going to refuse to replace or exchange this motherboard.

 

I've you've read this far; thank you!

 

 

I'm now worried the retailer are going to find no fault with the board, or otherwise just refuse to replace it with a different board. If anyone has any advice on things I could try should I get the same board back, or how best to deal with the retailer (I think dealing with Asus themselves is a dead end), I'd really appreciate it!

 

 

Cheers

Ross

[Torhus]

I am afraid you will just have to let it run its course.

Send back the motherboard and drive again - outline the issues and tell them that you a willing to switch to a completely different board if they believe that could solve the issues.

 

They probably wont find a solution, but then you will get a new board - the issue then being if the problem persists, but if you don't want to spend more money, all you can do is let the retailer do what they can - however little it may be.

[Jurrunio]

did you overclock?

[phanteh]

Nope. I did play around with the cpu 'profile' when it was looking stable, but was the first thing to reset after hitting issues.

 

My previous system is a 4790k @ 4.6GHz, and has been for years - has been lapped and I recently de-lidded and replaced the TIM. 

 

I only state this to try and show that I have some idea of what I'm doing with building PCs

[Guyse]

Wow and to think Asus would show a little more love to AMD with its new effort top shake up the CPU market.
Wanting to ask, did u experience sudden shut downs or black screen but the whole PC is still on?

 

By the way unless you went a deep dive bios configure, our boards only accept 2400mhz OC with 2 ram sticks, need 4 sticks to achieve higher RAM potential.

 edit: Yes we have thesame board but no faulty slots and such.