[NECRO] What do we think of the following brands!

I know a lot of people like Asus, MSI, Sapphire, EVGA, Gigabyte etc…

But what do people think of:
Zotac
XFX
PNY
Asrock

I have seen prices for XFX graphics cards much cheaper than some of the more common brands, in some cases their R9 390 cards were priced similar to MSI or Asus R9380’s.

I cant say I have read too many horror stories but a few have said the above mentioned brands carry some risks such as overheating, or failing after a few months usage etc.

With Asrock I have used some of their boards and have not had any major problems with them.

I would like to know what others think of some these brands.

Zotac is an great brand, I like it an lot.

I have no experience with XFX, but as far as I can read an great Second Rank Brand.

PNY is an budget brand, I only had one of there board in my hand (I think) nice board for the money.

Asrock is the one brand I stay the hell away from, RMA't 3 motherboard an total of 12 times. 2 with broken LAN Cards and one, my personal board for 2 years, with USB Issues, not posting, bricking my graphicscard, 2 sataports not working, blowing of its sound capasators.

Asrock Rack is an solid choise, totally, different from the consumer variance.

xfx is pretty decent ive had a xfx psu 550W for about 2 years i think and it worked flawlessly and ive got a xfx R9 380 and thats been great no issues there

With all of these brands, it just depends on what you buy.

They all make really nice high end stuff and really shitty low end stuff.

PNY is the only one that is really weird. They only make no frills stuff. IMO they are more of a supplier to businesses than they are to consumers.

And lastly asrock seems to make good stuff across the board. They still make low end shit, but at least their low end stuff works.

I would actually use asrock over gigabyte for motherboards. I have had several gigabyte boards fail with little help from gigabyte. All my asrock boards are still running strong.

All the brands you have mentioned I have had success with in terms of buying stuff from them and having it work. That is all I can ask. : )

I had never had issues with any of that brands. From PNY i have one hybrid computer and some powerbank and till now everything fine.

From ZOTAC i even had some nano XS scratch cases mods and not a single issue, I was worried with cooling but it runned smooth. Mine brother still run him watercooled SLI of 460 AMP! to play Rocket League.

Is always easier to find horror stories, because no one post "this part run perfect for years" topics. For me the horror is ASUS and them shi**y PWM controllers on top boards.

Zotac - used to be cheap and nasty, now is very good.
XFX - Good PSU's (mostly rebranded seasonics) average GPU's
PNY - Heard more bad than good - sorta has the reputation OCZ used to have for their SSD's
Asrock - Probably the best mobo manufacturer, but will never compete with Asus because they give zero fucks about aesthetics.

These are just my personal opinions

Very good. Heard only good things about it. Too bad they only work with Nvidia

It's up and down. On one side, They have great products, on another side many people have complained about them...

Know nothing, therefore no comment.

I want to like them, but I have their board in my PC, and must say I did not have those kinds of issues when I was using Gigabyte or Asus... I guess it depends on the product. Still, I wouldn't go with another board, because this one is quite feature rich... I love it, but I can't say I am 100% happy with Asrock.

I had good and bad experiences with nearly every manufacturer at this point. I had a Zotac GTX670 and it was great ... until it just died two months after warranty. I had a shitload of problems with may ASRock X99 WS. But in the end it all could have been fixed by one press of a button months ago....

I do think some brands are better that others but I KNOW that in reality it is all subjective BS based on personal experience.
No brand is perfect, no brand is pure shit. It all depends on the specific product.

Zotac is an oddball company. I'd place them as the Powercolor of Nvidia. They're like Palit, or Elsa. Because they're an oddball company, they do oddball things, like sticking 1.5Kg of copper, steel and aluminium on a 1070.

XFX is similar, except they're known for usually being the first aftermarket company to release AMD's new stuff. Their coolers are acceptable and their fans are kinda loud. I generally avoid them because XFX releasing cards generally means that Sapphire is just around the corner, and Sapphire's coolers are vastly superior.

PNY I generally associate with Staples and Best Buy's overpriced SSDs and USB drives for the stores to market to the ignorant consumer. As far as I know, they just put their badge on other people's stuff. The NAND's not theirs, the controllers aren't theirs... I think of them as little more than a name. And I avoid it.

ASRock is by far the best. It's one of the Big Five: MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Supermicro and ASRock. In terms of where they stand in the market, I'd put them between Asus and Supermicro - all three of them are big names in the workstation/server market (ASRock makes the Avoton and X99-10G), and all of them also make lots of consumer and desktop parts. (ASRock making products ranging from the Beebox to the Extreme9 and 11 boards)

I have had an ASRock Z77 Extreme9 for the past two years and it has been an absolute pleasure to use. Took a 2600K straight up to 5GHz and did not hiccup once. Some people don't like ASRock because they're not as big in the marketing show as Asus, MSI and Gigabyte - they don't have the gaming branding that the others have. But in my experience, they make rock-solid products, as their name would imply.

da real MVP, I run a Z97M OC Formula, its the bees knees

kickass warranty

meh, bought 16GB of xlr8 RAM, nothing special

they love making enormous coolers

Ditto this. Hell, even with Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Sapphire, and EVGA you can't just blindly buy by brand name - they also make good high-end stuff and terrible how-end shit.

Zotac, is doing a lot of great things I believe. Great Video Cards, and their mini computers look good as well. No previous experience with them but wouldn’t mind buying from them.

XFX seem like an okay brand. Some of their lower end power supplies (I think it’s the XT series) are not the greatest, but I’m sure they’re fine if you’re selective about what you’re buying.

PNY I honestly have no clue about, cannot comment.

ASRock is brilliant. Please take the hate towards them, with a pinch of salt, because the people that review/talk about asrock, in general either love it, or hate it - essentially they’re using their experience (good/bad) as an incentive to comment on asrock. So I’ll try and keep my opinions as non biased as possible. I have used two of their boards. One of them, I have used for two years with zero problems, and I had a power supply that often powered off due to it being faulty, and it lasted through that for a year, until I RMA’D that power supply. From that experience, I bought another one for a ryzen 3 system, and it has been running for about 3 weeks with zero problems. A lot of people swear by them, and a lot of people avoid them. Just bear in mind that the average consumer, won’t usually comment on them if their experience has been normal with them, so bear that in mind. They aren’t the best looking boards, but they work fine, from my experience. I shall definitely purchase from them in the future. Even if you do have a faulty board, I’ve heard their RMA process is relatively painless. So yeah, recommend asrock.

Please read dates of threads before posting, thank you for your input though, enjoy the rest of the forum :slight_smile: