Why so much bitching against ASRock?

Hardware Hub Motherboards
1

I have been getting ready to build a new computer recently, and have been looking as large numbers of mobos. I have been hearing more and more about ASRock, and after much decision I think I may go with them. I have, however, seen a lot of hating and bitching against them and don't quite understand it. IIRC, most of their mobos are 4+1 or 8+1 power phase, which is terrible for OC(I don't OC by the way). Perhaps people don't research this shit before they buy?

I am looking at getting the Extreme4 970 for an AMD CPU, and a lot of reviews have stated that the on-board sound likes to fail, so I am going to just spend the $30 on a sound card since I have good 5.1 speakers that can use it and don't want to waste time and money to RMA over something so stupid.

All the negativity had me look around as others, but I have seen even a large number of bad reviews for cream mobos such as the ASUS Sabertooth. I am guessing it would come down to the luck of the draw and hoping you don't get bad parts? It seems like this happens even with the best of hardware, yet these people don't understand that electronic parts can fail at any point with no notice.

2 years ago I bought my ASUS VW266H(IIRC) 26" monitor from Newegg even though about 30% of reviewers stated it had dead pixels upon arrival. I must have been one of the lucky ones since it has been an incredible monitor, especially for what I paid for it brand new. Perhaps these fuckers leave hate reviews because they don't like the company and they never buy the product in the first place? (*cough* Intel and AMD fanboys *cough*)

2

ok to put it simply it is a numbers game the lower the quality = lower price= more people willing to buy it= more profits

the more things you sell at sub par quality the higher the falure rates 

3

This is where I have to disagree. Look at AMD 955 for $80. Excellent CPU and you don't see a bunch of reviews stating failure. Look at a number of Gigabyte and ASUS sub $100 mobos. There are a pretty good number of bad reviews that show failure but a lot of good ones as well, but also for high end $150-300 mobos failures. The best guess I have is that they had a static electric surge or a piece of silicon got a micro fracture during shipping. Hardware in general seems to be a crap shoot and I don't understand all the hatred when people should know this going in.

4

I've had a couple of ASRock motherboards crap out on me. I make it a habit not to buy motherboards that dont have all (Japanese?) solidcaps throughout the board. The newer ASRock boards look good and have solidcaps, it's the older stuff i'd be wary about

5

I don't think the difference is in the hardware quality as such, the difference is in support. Remember Abit? ASRock is the same story. It all depends on what you're looking for. A lot of people can safely buy a preconfigured PC with preconfigured Windows and be totally happy with it, because they will never upgrade their OS or install GNU/Linux or try to overclock or upgrade GPU cards after some time, etc...

The users that do such things, will use Intel, Asus, Gigabyte or MSI motherboards, because they will require BIOS updates and compatibility file for proprietary features for other platforms (well not Gigabyte, they tell GNU/Linux users to fuck off or use Windows basically, but Asus has very good support, even though they have a very bad support website, even for really old boards, they still publish BIOS updates so that no feature is lost on Windows or Linux, just like Intel does, well Intel did because Intel just ceased making PC motherboards). If you buy a 150 USD Sabertooth board from Asus, you get more features that have been tested reliably because Asus just has bigger R&D budgets, and you'll still be able to do a BIOS update after 5 years to integrate new features. Now think about it, chances are that people that bought a premium Asus gaming motherboard for AMD CPU's in 2007, are still using that same board now with completely different GPU cards and a modern AMD CPU without any problem. For Intel boards, that isn't true because Intel changes its socket every couple of years for no apparent reason, and soon will not be supplying consumer sockets anymore, which is something to consider over the brand or manufacturer of the board imo.

6

I just got a ASRock motherboard for a build I was doing for someone and it has had no problems so far and I put the system through Prime95 for a couple hours also. Every company is going to have products that fail, it's just the nature of electronics. The thing I look for the most is usually warranty as that shows how much confidence a manufacturer really has in their product. Sometimes people give bad reviews to a product because the user didn't know what they were doing (usually improper handling of hardware or unrealistic configurations) and something didn't work but instead of acknowledging their incompetence they blame the product through a bad review.

7

ASRock is going from strength to strength from what I've read. The motherboard manufacturers market is becoming less and less crowded. They've done well for themselves and hopefully they can keep the quality up and keep their prices down. If I wasnt such a Gigabyte fag I would have considered getting an Extreme4 board, it's getting a tonne of good reviews. It's just their past motherboards have left a bad taste.. but I like the blinged out Extreme6(?) with gold solidcaps

8

I had this board (a ddr3 one..) for less than 2 years before it gave up on me,

It's the old funky looking lego-esque motherboards that are dodgy, as were most of the lga775 and am2 back then that looked like them

9

Those bitching and hating is something from the past....

in the past Asrock wasn´t realy a good make... it was a low budget make....

todays days its better, you can see it also at the price.

Boards with the same chipsets and same fuetures, of all makes, are allmost identical priced.

There is a bit diffrence somethimes, but mostly not much.

the only negative thing i readed about a 970 extreme4 is that the board failed afther 6 months, with a overclocked 8150 on it, it had burned vrm´s

but that was only one revieuw.

Every mainboard, can fail... 

I say its all about feeling, if you feeling right about a Asrock Extreme 4 then buy it!

 

 

 

10

I've never had good luck with them. 1DOA and another worked but the bios was limited.

11

@MisteryAngel The dumb shit must not have read that ASRock boards are shitty when it comes to power phase, making them teriible overclockers. You cant just throw a bunch of components together, then OC everything and expect it to work. I give no credence to stupid fuck reviewers like that.

@Tungus Again, ANY hardware component could be DOA. I just read a review on Newegg  for the XFX XXX 650W PSU and one person said that it came DOA. He was so pissed that he said he wouldn't buy XFX products anymore. XFX make top quality products and people love them. The stupid fuck obviously didn't accept the fact that it may or may not be DOA.

I took a pretty big chance with my monitor  with 30% of the reviews being shitty, but it has turned out to be the nicest one I have owned yet. I take what people say with a grain of salt, because there are a lot of dumb shits out there that think they know everything. I have read dozens if not hundreds of reviews for each component I am going to be using in my PC so I can have a pretty good idea of where I stand. A person should never take the advice of just one other person. They should get dozens of advices(sic) from lots of different people, and then go from there. I will go so far as to say that while I respect what Logan says, for a number of reason, I wouldn't buy a product just because he recommended it. I would check with a lot of other people first. When you are talking dropping a $1000, you can't afford to make fuck ups unless you Steve Ballmer.