What is the best 1156 motherboard? My board failed under warranty I send it in for RMA to GIGABYTE got it back today. Tested board today and it was broken! Board keeps restarting in restart cycle mode over and over again, can’t even get in BIOS screen. I wanted an explanation called GIGABYTE customer# on the phone lady said “Oh we just reseated BIOS and send it back.” She added that sometimes when board can’t be fixed in some cases they send that broken board back to a customer. I was like why do you even have a warranty service if you’re not going to fallow it!? She says “Well in your cause we reset BIOS and I issued a prepaid label +new RMA#. Go ahead and send it back to us.” I waited two weeks, paid for S&H just so they can reset my BIOS! I’m mad. I don’t know if I want to wait two more just so they fail me again.
Yes they do that. ASUS too, unless it's something that can't be remotely linked to the BIOS. Probably 90% of boards they receives as RMA is due to a failed BIOS update. And usually they have something special to run a diagnostic. Like a plug they attach to the board to test, and it just happen to pass. Probably the test doesn't detect the problem you are having (as remember these test are circuit test (does current pass from A to B), not software that start analyzing stuff). Note: I said probably. When I sent back my ASUS board, which was in mint condition as I take extra care of my hardware, I got back a super duper dusty and super scratched (like badly with a screw driver), board, with one of the Ethernet port not working. Clearly I got someone else RMA. ASUS took so much time (over a month, no laptop at the time... I was using my old Pentium 3, which somehow worked, with Win 98 during this time) to do my RMA call (not to mention all the long distance calles I had to do, to ask where my motherboard was, and no one knew), that it ended up being out of warranty, and now they are like: too bad! We don't service it anymore as it's discontinued. Yea thanks... Lucky the dam thing has 2 Ethernet ports, and I only ever need to use 1. I bet you, they were out of the boards as they miss measured the percentage of failures, and instead of them paying the costs it needs to solve the problem for their mistake... they sent me someone else board. I bet the other guy has my board. Poor guy, it didn't even come close to boot. Man I paid A LOT to get my board fixed with ASUS. Oh and I had to pay shipping to the states (pricey), plus had problem at the boarders, probably because I put value of the product to 0$ and also had to buy a box and so on, as the RMA e-mail said that if the motherboard is judged to not be packed well, that the warranty will be voided, and to not used the box that came with the motherboard in. That will also void the warranty. So obviously I can't take any chances, as they might find anything to not follow the warranty. More money spent. At least yours was free. Now ok, maybe my experience was... special... but nope.. friends also had their ASUS broken, and the same story occurred to them. Their motherboard replacement wasn't as bad as mine, but it was duty and still didn't work. ASUS was unable to help. One of my friends sent it back, my other got so frustrated in waiting (2 months or almost), that he broke the board in 2, and bought an MSI. As my other friend who sent back for a second time, paying AGAIN shipping, they said that the Intel CPU cover was damaged, so it was returned to him, warranty voided. He didn't see any problem with the cover... another call, ASUS said send it back.. but he gave up, and got a Gigabyte board. Lucky for my friends their CPU Socket motherboard was still in production. For me, I had the Socket 939 from AMD (Athlon 64 X2 4400+).. so that meant, new PSU (to get it to the last version of ATX to support newer boards), new RAM, new CPU, just to get a computer up and running. So, ASUS is a big no no in my list. So far, Gigabyte and MSI, I can't say, as I have no problems to report, so never experienced their RMA service. Based on your experience compared to ASUS, you got a lot better service, and to some extend, it's understandable why they just did a BIOS update. I admit that they should have done a real test. Not hard to do. Plug the basics, set BIOS to load optimized defaults, and see if it posts, and boots an OS. If you don't want to send it again, I would give a spin with MSI and see. And if that one sucks... well.. eVGA I guess? Then Zotac? Then you are getting out of options.. I guess Intel... but don't expect anything from extreme performance and such, as Intel boards are aimed at businesses and home market, not at computer enthusiasts.
I had basically the same thing with a Gigabyte board. Wouldn't turn on at all, apparently got repaired, and then failed again in 45 minutes. You'd think board manufacturers would take a little more care in their repairs. Oh and to answer your question, MSI P55 GD65 is probably one of the best. I have one and I love it, far better than my old Gigabyte UD2.
Yeah your story's made me feel some what better lol. Maybe I'll give them another spin. Than it's a trip to MSI.
3! That's how many I had to go trough! Well GIGA replaced my motherboard but it failed again. I'm on my 3rd RMA! Customer service is bad, real bad (or maybe I just got a bad rep). Regardless ASUS is starting to look pretty good by now
Gigabyte boards are buggy. I also didn't like the fake PCIe 3 con. If you want good RMA and support it has to be EVGA. My EVGA Cheesecake 1156 died during the final few months of it's 3 year warranty. EVGA issued a replacement. EVGA are active on their support forum as well so if you are unhappy with something in the bios you can request they change it. I decided to go back to Asus for my new 1155 setup because EVGA don't have a PCIe 3.0 board. Already I see how poor the asus support is compared to EVGA.
