Should you buy MSI

[NaGoldfarb]

So in full disclosure I have a 2 MSI MOBOs and 1 MSI graphics card. However, with everything that has come out with MSI over the past year or so with there shady business practess, 

should you be buying there products. Over the past year a number of "scandals" have emerged.. The most recent being the scalping of graphics cards and not to long before the review of the laptop. 

And the death of the last CEO.

 

Should we still be supporting this company? What are the trade off between buying a product you like vs supporting a bad company? 

related:

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.dailyesports.gg/msi-ceo-charles-chiang-dies-after-falling-from-building-aged-56/

 

[Moonzy]

I mean, in the end I'll still pick product that makes the most sense for me

 

If there are choices then I'll weight in on ethics of the companies

Most of the time it's just pricing and product quality for me

[Stygian Zenith]

but the cute mascot.. lucky

[NaGoldfarb]

 

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

I mean, in the end I'll still pick product that makes the most sense for me

 

If there are choices then I'll weight in on ethics of the companies

Most of the time it's just pricing and product quality for me

 

I agree, I just got a new MSI board for that reason. I just feel bad supporting a company that clearly is unethical. 

 

[Senzelian]

I'd still buy MSI products.

 

It's difficult to avoid products from companies that haven't pulled some bullsh*t yet. The only tech-companies that come to mind that aren't full of sh*t are Fractal, be Quiet and Noctua. Did I miss one? Probably not...

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, NaGoldfarb said:

I agree, I just got a new MSI board for that reason. I just feel bad supporting a company that clearly is unethical. 

In the end it's up to the individual to judge

If they care more about ethics, they can do what feels right for them

No choice is right or wrong.

 

Remember, companies aren't your friend, they will stab you in the back and take your credit card if they are allowed to

[dilpickle]

If you are worried about ethics you can never buy anything. The fact is most of the things you eat come from companies that are doing things far more "evil" than a PC company.

[NaGoldfarb]

2 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Remember, companies aren't your friend, they will stab you in the back and take your credit card if they are allowed to

I  agree, they are in business to make money, nothing else. 

 

Does this shady business deals and from what it looks like out that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing indicate anything about there actual products? If they are willing do strong arm reviews, then misleading the products specs is possible.  This is why 3rd party reviews are good, I guess. 

[Sorenson]

They have good customer service and decent warranty support so I’ll stick with MSI. 

[sub68]

I am agreeing with @Arika S says

Quote

Judge the product by its own merits, not by the Company that created it.

 

[TetraSky]

I buy whichever thing offers the best value to performance for my money, regardless of the brand. MSI is fine in my book.

[NineEyeRon]

7 minutes ago, sub68 said:

I am agreeing with @Arika S says

 

I agree with this 80% of the way.

 

One key part of my job is checking up on companies before we do deals with them. I look into the ethics of their supply chain and their past transgressions.

 

For companies buying things, just going on the product and not the company is a BAD idea! It can lead to a lot of issues down the line.

 

For an individual, it is up to you to judge if you should buy from a company or not. I have my personal standards and avoid some companies who would not pass my personal "due diligence". Sadly I don't have the time or clout to audit Nestle in regards to my recent plans to purchase a KitKat.

[sub68]

4 minutes ago, NineEyeRon said:

For companies buying things, just going on the product and not the company is a BAD idea! It can lead to a lot of issues down the line.

ok fair point

 

 

[ProjectBox153]

Most of the time I don't really care about the things a company has done. I buy products that work well for me and fit my needs. 

[panzersharkcat]

27 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

If you are worried about ethics you can never buy anything. The fact is most of the things you eat come from companies that are doing things far more "evil" than a PC company.

I still buy ThinkPads even though Lenovo is partly owned (indirectly) by the Chinese government, who I'm not exactly a big fan of. (Grandfather on mother's side was arrested during the Cultural Revolution. Grandfather on father's side had to burn his air force uniform because he was on the Nationalist side.)

[Sousuke]

Some to be honest, I have an MSi Motherboard and Graphics card in my gaming PC.

 

I've never had a problem with their products (Quality & Support) which is my biggest concern when purchasing from a company.

[CommanderAlex]

23 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

They have good customer service and decent warranty support so I’ll stick with MSI. 

My first motherboard was a Z97 Gaming 5 from MSI and that has lasted for 4 years (would be longer if I was still on that system). I had good luck with their brand and I love their aesthetics so I purchased a GTX 1070 Gaming X. That all got replaced with what I have now and even have a MSI monitor from them (keeping the theme). I would still buy MSI and I thought I had to RMA my motherboard due to an audio issue and all that was required was to clear CMOS (mainly my fault for exerting my "affection" on the side of the case), but I contacted them before clearing CMOS and they said they will go with an RMA if I'd like, no questions asked. 

[SPARTAN VI]

I avoid them, but it's not an outright boycott. Was at MicroCenter with my buddy helping him with his new build and I gave him the tl;dr on MSI's recent scandals. We tried to avoid getting an MSI board, but our options were a bit limited at the time. There just wasn't an mATX board there with the right chipset & features combination, so we ended up walking out with a MSI B550M PRO-VDH board anyway. 

[dilpickle]

I buy what works. I just went thru 3 mobos with all kinds of issues. I actually specifically avoided MSI because of these same ethical problems.

 

But finally they were the only choice left to me and I don't regret it at all. It has been rock solid.

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

The only tech-companies that come to mind that aren't full of sh*t are Fractal, be Quiet and Noctua. Did I miss one? Probably not...

lol i kinda agree, what about evga though? I mean their cs doesn't seem to be the best but products seem mostly solid, I suppose they *do* honor RMAs and such, and they have the "step up" program which, in this form, is unheard of with other companies. 

 

3 hours ago, Senzelian said:

I'd still buy MSI products.

I don't, just like EA, SE, Nintendo, Apple and a plethora of other "publishers" or "manufacturers" I have no reason whatsoever to support their business practices with my money and therfore simply don't do it. 

[Senzelian]

20 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

lol i kinda agree, what about evga though? I mean their cs doesn't seem to be the best but products seem mostly solid, I suppose they *do* honor RMAs and such, and they have the "step up" program which, in this form, is unheard of with other companies. 

Yeah I guess EVGA is also one of the only ones that hasn't pulled some major bullsh*t move yet.
Maybe Arctic too.  Superflower is another one that comes to mind. I guess there are still a few good ones left.

[unsorted]

Not to make excuses, but...

 

* All the companies I know are shady.

* All the governments I know are shady.

* All the banks I know are shady.

* All the Rothschilds I know are shady.

* All the Vatican I know is shady.

* Marketers and management-types have job descriptions that call for shady. Those that don't are in the ultra-minority (and usually find themselves stepped-on or dismissed)

 

The shadier the better. The list of shady activities in PC-land over the past few decades would have you researching well beyond your death. DRAM price-fixing is a good place to start. See how long that's been going on. Look into the State Mafia contracts with State Intelligence with all the tech companies that are spying on us daily. Look into Amazon itself, with its shady CIA and countless other State Mafia contracts. Still that doesn't stop those countless affiliate links, does it.

 

When I buy, I go into this all knowing that whoever I'm buying from is a company that will get away whatever it can get away with to amass the most wealth it can from the public while lying and obfuscating and cheating its way through it all. Because that is the closest to the truth.

 

But if we just concern ourselves with actual products (and turn the topic back to a personal level that would affect my buying decisions in the future for sure), I would just like to know why my MSI B450M Mortar Max:

=======

1) has the Front Panel connectors on the mainboard completely unlabelled, unlike every other mainboard I've ever assembled in recent and not-recent memory. They didn't forget to print their dragon logo, though. Important stuff.

2) has so much trouble with SPD values on my Kingston memory sticks and wants to overvolt by default, again unlike every other board I have assembled that would choose sensible SPD settings

3) has the most obnoxious BIOS I've ever seen: huge real-estate is devoted to showing super-important stuff like: 'conquer the battlefield'. I must be very (very) far away from the target market of this board if they think this is what attracts customers.

4) can't permanently turn off RGB lights in the BIOS. No, they'd rather you use a silly Windows crapware utility which is not still 100% effective.

======

 

This is what would make me think twice about buying MSI again. I have never seen any of these discussed by anyone of course, so these major things to me must be minor to everyone else.

 

 

 

 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

I'd love to boycott brands with shady business practices, but I don't feel like becoming Robinson Crusoe today  

 

In all seriousness, there's only so much you can do based on "people's quality". At the end of the day you are dealing with systemic problems, that require not selecting extraordinary people, but rather providing the incentives for the average to behave as intended. And it's been proven time and again: it has to work in the decentralized market, where all of our individual, uncoordinated behaviors add up to the right incentive. "Let's organize and coordinate to non-spontaneously generate this result" will not do.

 

I mean, if we're talking about shady business practices: who made that CPU you may or may not put in an MSI motherboard? 

[Teddy07]

5 hours ago, NaGoldfarb said:

The most recent being the scalping of graphics cards and not to long before the review of the laptop. 

Are you serious?

A first class flight of their CEO costs more than their profit of a few „scalped“ GPUs. It was an accident 

[Sorenson]

7 hours ago, CommanderAlex said:

My first motherboard was a Z97 Gaming 5 from MSI and that has lasted for 4 years (would be longer if I was still on that system). I had good luck with their brand and I love their aesthetics so I purchased a GTX 1070 Gaming X. That all got replaced with what I have now and even have a MSI monitor from them (keeping the theme). I would still buy MSI and I thought I had to RMA my motherboard due to an audio issue and all that was required was to clear CMOS (mainly my fault for exerting my "affection" on the side of the case), but I contacted them before clearing CMOS and they said they will go with an RMA if I'd like, no questions asked. 

This has been my experience too. Earlier this year I bought an Asus x570-I motherboard. To install the m.2 you have to remove this heatsink which is connected to these little copper sheathes for the RGB. When I pulled off the heatsink some of the copper sheathed came up with it. I’ve been trying to get the thing repaired by Asus but they claim it’s user damage and my warranty is voided. This would be fine, but to repair the little cosmetic rgb heatsink (which is on a little daughter board that could easily be replaced) they want me to pay $250 (the cost of the motherboard). They’ve had my motherboard for over a month now and I keep getting shuffled around to different supervisors.
 

I ended up going out and buying the MSI B550 motherboard and couldn’t be happier with it.