MSI sucks!

[Frank]

My pc broke down yesterday, after some strange error messages the last few days.

Well, ok, it's about 20 months old, socket 754, Sempron 2600, 1 GB, X850 GTO. Hm. Upgrade time! And, as I had my own internet access again today as well, I decided to go shopping instead of ordering online, and enjoy all my new and fast toys tonight.



After some browsing, I decided to go for an AM2 motherboard, with an Athlon X2 and a X1950 Pro, 2 GB and a better PSU. And all the harddisks and DVD burner from the old one.

Well, I normally only buy Asus, or other brands I consider AAA. But the only Asus MB available in the shops that met my specs was a bit expensive, and had the heatsink from the chipset cut out to make place for the videocard. It looked like a tight fit. Hm. And they all (but one) recommended me the MSI K9N Ultra or SLI (available in all but one of the shops).

"I don't like MSI, I really want an Asus board."

"MSI is fine, we never have problems with them. This one sells well. And you get a lot for your money."

The SLI did have the best specs, and was the cheapest as well.

The same went for the videocard: the cheapest was the MSI RX1950Pro, VIVO (?) and it came SLI ready.

"Well, for a videocard the brand shouldn't matter very much. Most manufacturers (except for the AAA ones) use the same reference board anyway. They all told me that MSI is fine. And it goes well with the SLI motherboard."

So, I bought them.


When I had assembled the pc, it didn't work. HM. I swapped the video card first, and with the old card (Asus X850 GTO), the pc booted fine. I installed Windows, rebooted a few times and all was well.

I replaced the videocard for the new X1950, and the pc was dead again. The fans spin up, the network led lights up, but nothing else happened. Just like the first time. Not even beeping.

"Grr. The videocard is DOA. Ok, I'll try to swap it for a new one tomorrow."

So I replaced the videocard again for the old one, and the pc is still dead. I swapped everything else as well, but still nothing.

The worst part is, that I bought bits and pieces in three different shops. And they probably all will (of course!) tell me that they will send the parts to the manufacturer for repair.



I never have had any problems so far with Asus stuff, and the first time I buy MSI (against my own better judgement), it does break down immediately. GRR!

So, the moral of the story: Buy Asus, and don't buy MSI!

 

[swaaye]

I'm wary of all of the PC manufacturer's, honestly.

MSI scares me cuz of my K7T PRO debacle way back in the early Athlon Tbird days. I know of 4 or 5 boards that just plain died after maybe a year of use. They would just turn off one day and that was that.

Abit has built some boards that pretend to be enthusiast boards (KW7 and NF7-S2, for example) but are totally not that at all. And their capacitor bull nonsense from back in the day was unreal too.

Soyo Dragon K7 series was a hyped up POS lineup.

ASUS seems ok, but I don't have a lot of experience with their stuff. I liked Shuttle mobos for a while cuz I had two great ones from them. And they were no frills and cheap. But the company stopped making mobos.

IMO, the "deluxe" models of mobos are guaranteed to be the most problematic. Those extras are never high quality.

 

[Mize]

I've had great MBs from:
MSI, Asus, Abit, ASRock, Iwill and DFI

I've had bad/flakey ones from:
Asus, Abit, Biostar and DFI

You win some you lose some.

 

[nutball]

To follow on...

I've had great MBs from:
MSI, Asus, Abit, ASRock, Gigabyte

I've had bad/flakey ones from:
MSI, Asus, Abit, ASRock, Gigabyte


Like Mize said, you get goodun's and baddun's from all these companies. Sometimes it's just sample variance, other times it's crappy design, chipset, drivers, etc. No way to tell from small number statistics.

 

[Frank]

MSI, like ABit and brands like Sitecom that started out being the cheapest ones available and worked their way up to A-status with the salespeople still have lots of issues.

When I had my own IT company, I worked with people who swore by those brands, simply because they were a bit cheaper and made them more money in the long run. Especially because faulty ones only cost them time, but no money. MSI being the best, ABit for the "performance" crowd.

And the good brands aren't that expensive to start with: Asus is about 10% more expensive than the really cheap ones.

I sold a bunch of AsRock (cheap Asus daughter) boards as well, and I had to return about 10% of those due to them being DOA. But I never got one back from a customer.

And I did hear and experience a lot of problems with MSI, ABit (I had one myself as well for a few months) and the other ones.

As an example: Sitecom (cheap trash five years ago) is now the recommended brand in most shops over here for networking equipment. Last week, I installed a Sitecom router for someone. After quite some reboots and fiddling with the settings (change: reboot, put back: reboot), it finally worked all of a sudden. With the exact same settings I initially configured.

Wow, that causes a lot of confidence!



But I agree, that all the brands (even the best ones) make flukes. That's why you have to do some research (browsing) up front in any case.

But I rather pay more than having all that hassle. Although I do want a good product for a good price, just like anyone else.

Then again, most people don't care and simply want the cheapest with the best specs. And as long as the amount of broken parts and the service in replacing them doesn't cause too much public noise, the cheapest ones sell best.


So, Mize, do you go for volume over quality as well?

 

[Rolf N]

When it comes to graphics cards, I've always been very pleased with MSI. When they went custom, and they did it a lot, they often had the best (quiet, efficient) cooling solution on top of a usually great software bundle and a very competitive price.

On the mobo front I found it shocking how they just didn't get the whole K8 concept for such a long while and built mobo after mobo with memory-vs-cpu layouts that anyone could have told them after just a cursory glance would be a nightmare to get working stable (and they were a nightmare to get working stable). I think they fixed it after a couple of years or so

The era of good mobos is over anyway. The PC market is so affixed on the [strike]ricer[/striker]enthusiast segment that every junk board has SLI and worse maladies. Nobody seems interested in building something just sensible anymore. It's either ultra-low cost or completely absurd designer shite.
*hugs ASUS M2V*

*ahem*
IOW I don't have much confidence in MSI mobos either, but not in the "they really suck" way. They just build the same marketable bling-bling as everyone else.

 

[Frank]

I've got it all working now (although it was a major hassle and took me about five hours to get the MB swapped), and it's actually pretty nice. The only thing I don't like is the single IDE connection. ALthough it has 6 SATA, I would really have wanted a second IDE as well. Otherwise, the specs are great.

I'll hope it will keep on working swell!

But I'll buy Asus next time.

 

[Mize]

So, Mize, do you go for volume over quality as well?

I used to go for the most tweakable I could find - loved overclocking. Now I tend to go for better layout and stability since I don't have time to reset my cmos all the time I used to have one of those piggy-back chip holder things for the EPROM so I could switch from one to the other in case I fried one

 

[poopypoo]

Hmmm... yeah, i've been a diehard about branding since I started building PCs a decade ago, too. However, recent failures have opened my eyes to the need to stay alert and listen to people in places like B3D and others whenever I need a motherboard. They're such vital components and the business is apparently too cutthroat for even Asus to maintain high build quality or even reasonable BIOS support (got one of theirs last year that refused to boot without a BIOS flash) -- it's frustrating, but I think this sentence is just going to have to stay grammatically incomplete (i'm lazy!).

At this point I love my DFI so much (and boy was I a hard sell on DFI -- couldn't let go of the idea of them as budget-budget builders) that I'll definitely start looking there when I need a new mobo, but, basically, you have to read up on every individual model. All my favorite brands have pretty much let me down -- I've still never gotten a bad Abit, but they've made so few boards in the categorries I've bought in the last couple of years that they've become a non-factor for me (ditto epox). good luck! For the record, I've had some really sweet MSI boards before and generally find them worthwhile, although I did have one really embarrassing incident buying one for a customer (in an emergency -- they had no time to wait) a few years back and having it ship DOA.

 

[Flyordie209]

I have only had 1 MSI Product....
MSI Radeon X1650GT

Never have had a problem with it that is the cards fault... lol

 

[Mize]

holy mother of thread resurrections!

I still maintain that manufacturer alone will never dictate MB quality...had bad and good from most...even had an Abit that was defective (torn trace) that was one of my best ever after 5 minutes with a silver trace pen. My latest MSI MB has been running for almost 4 years now flawlessly...although I like the Gigabyte running my q6600 better.

Read review sites, read newegg reviews, click and cross fingers.

 

[Skrying]

Don't read Newegg reviews. Half the users don't even on the product they're reviewing, it's really rather sad. That's the main problem I have with consumer reviews that are websites like Newegg. There is no method to prove you've actually used the product, it should do something like check it against your purchase history or such. There should be something also that yells "Just because the one you bought failed doesn't mean they all will." It's so annoying to read someone saying "Bad product, was DOA."

 

[Mize]

I don't mean read the rating, but the reviews. You can quickly throw out the dweebs.

 

[Frank]

Well, I'm pretty happy with the replacement. So I might buy MSI next time.

 

[NovemberMike]

Don't read Newegg reviews. Half the users don't even on the product they're reviewing, it's really rather sad. That's the main problem I have with consumer reviews that are websites like Newegg. There is no method to prove you've actually used the product, it should do something like check it against your purchase history or such. There should be something also that yells "Just because the one you bought failed doesn't mean they all will." It's so annoying to read someone saying "Bad product, was DOA."

Newegg is useful if a product has a large number of reviews and you take out the lowest ones.

 

[Skrying]

Newegg is useful if a product has a large number of reviews and you take out the lowest ones.

Except there are reviews of merit that give low scores, and then you're into a circle.

 

[NovemberMike]

Except there are reviews of merit that give low scores, and then you're into a circle.

If you are looking at a relatively low percent of low scores, then there usually isn't a problem. You have to look out for things that are consistently rated bad, not something that has 500 good ratings and 20 bad ones.

 

[Fu3lFr3nzy]

Don't read Newegg reviews. Half the users don't even on the product they're reviewing, it's really rather sad. That's the main problem I have with consumer reviews that are websites like Newegg. There is no method to prove you've actually used the product, it should do something like check it against your purchase history or such. There should be something also that yells "Just because the one you bought failed doesn't mean they all will." It's so annoying to read someone saying "Bad product, was DOA."

Actually, they have an indicator now under the reviewers name if they had purchased the item [via newegg] so it filters the fake reviews from the honest ones (/sarcasm? )

 

[Skrying]

If you are looking at a relatively low percent of low scores, then there usually isn't a problem. You have to look out for things that are consistently rated bad, not something that has 500 good ratings and 20 bad ones.

Then you have people who think those $80 headphones they just bought are great but they're not. Finding good reviews for anything is hard to do, but looking to the consumers is one of the worst things I can I could do for reviews.

 

[Davros]

completely absurd designer shite.
*hugs ASUS M2V*

so true i just wanted a basic no frills mboard but because im limited to buying from brick+ mortar shops
i had to settle for

being able to flash without loading an o/s
being able to play audio through the pc speakers without switching on the pc
dolby digital encoding
more types of dolby decoding than you can shake a stick at including
-Dolby Prologic IIx -Dolby Virtual speaker
-Dolby Headphone -Dolby Digital Live
plug and play no configuration raid
an infra red remote control
crossfire
firewire
wi-fi
external sata
the ability for the pc to switch itself on at a certain time and play a specified track on a cd as an alarm (seriously wtf)