Why I'll NEVER buy another MSI product again.

Back in March of 2008, I spent over $200 and purchased a motherboard in anticipation of my next (Phenom II X4 940) build. It was more than I had ever dreamed of having before. It was the MSI K9A2 Platinum v1.0. It had the awesome AMD 790FX northbridge and although it only had the ATi SB600 southbridge, it was the only 790FX motherboard that had its PCI-Express x16 lanes arranged so that it could hold 4 double-wide Radeon cards. I purchased this board with confidence that such a high-end board would be extremely durable and long-lived as long as I didn't try anything like overclocking. Well, to date, I have NEVER OC'd my X4 940 because I never felt the need to. It's still plenty fast for anything I've ever wanted it to do.

Well, in early July, my system started acting up. It had intermittent problems with posting and those intermittent problems became so common that they became the norm. The computer would also freeze while being used which led me to have to press the reset button which again made me have to try several times to get it to post again. Of course, I never dreamed that a once-flagship motherboard would be the problem, especially since I took such good care of it. I originally thought that my OCZ Z-Series 1000w PSU was the problem because the system would turn on by only flicking the back switch on the PSU, without pressing the power button. I contacted OCZ and they said that the behaviour my system was experiencing was not PSU-related. I tried switching my PSU to another one of my systems and sure enough, the problem ceased. It wasn't the PSU, so I thought maybe it was my computer case.

My case had 2x120mm Thermaltake adjustable fans (Some of the most powerful case fans that money can buy) and an 80mm fan in the side panel. I made damn sure that heat would not be a problem for my system, especially since I use Radeon HD 4870s. I changed my case from that PowerUp gaming Mid-Tower to the massive Ultra Black ULT-40670 Full-Tower case because I reasoned that the relatively cheap power wiring in my PowerUp case was probably the culprit. Well, after luckily finding that huge (and beautiful!) case on sale at a Tiger Direct outlet store for $130CAD, I was certain that my problems would be over. I couldn't have been more wrong. After spending the hours switching my system over to the new case, I turned it on. There was no change at all but it did post, twice in fact. Little did I know that those would be the last times that my K9A2 Platinum would ever post.

I was in shock. I'd never had a motherboard fail on me that quickly before and I've been building systems since 1988 (at the age of 12). I still have an old ECS PM800-M2 with a Celeron D as my fileserver running in my basement and an old ASUS P4P800 with a P4 2.4 running as my HTPC. Both of those boards are almost 10 years old and they're still running flawlessly. I even gave my old ASRock 4Core Dual-VSTA motherboard to my cousin so he could have a PC that runs games and that one was running a Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz Conroe, it's also still running perfectly. I wondered what to do next since I knew that this sort of thing must have been pretty rare.

I still didn't fully believe that it was my motherboard but rather than pay Tiger Direct over $50 to diagnose it, I spent $50 on a cheap ECS A780GM-A motherboard with an AMD 770 chipset. I was limited in my choices due to the fact that the Phenom II X4 940 is not an AM3 CPU and so I had to get an AM2+ motherboard. I couldn't find ANY that supported Crossfire so I just made sure that the one I got could hold my 8GB of DDR2-800. As soon as I moved everything over to the new motherboard, all my problems ceased. It had been confirmed, my MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard had failed 3 years and 4-5 months after its initial purchase.

I realised that it had only been 4-5 months since my warranty expired and so I contacted MSI support. I thought to myself "Sure, it's only a 3 year warranty but MSI wouldn't want a customer to be burned on one of their flagship boards by having it fail essentially right after the warranty ends." I didn't expect a replacement but I thought "Maybe they'll send me a coupon that I can use to get a discount on another MSI motherboard to replace this one." Well, their answer was "We are sorry, but your warranty expired in March of this year." which was basically the same as "Get lost kid, ya bother me!". I didn't even know what to say in reply because I didn't anticipate that response.

I just wanted to let everyone know about this and I can guarantee you that I will NEVER buy another MSI product again. It's such a shame too because before this happened, I was absolutely THRILLED with my motherboard's performance and had even updated the BIOS so that it could recognise Thuban. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

*rant over*

 

yea mobo's can be crap sometimes, but gpu's are good.


I guess you just had a really Really bad luck.

 

Ye, this is why I stay away from MSI boards, they don't last that long. Sucks to hear that you had to go through this.

I've heard their GPUs are good, maybe they are but seeing how badly their motherboards are, I don't want to touch their GPUs.

deltatux

 

You're probably right but the way MSI reacted (at least they could have had SOME sympathy) really put me off. I only buy XFX GPUs anyway for their warranties. Unfortunately, there are no lifetime motherboards.

Well it's a lesson learned. With GPUs I stick with XFX. Guaranteed forever, you can't beat that.

 

Ye but RMAing GPUs with XFX costs me $30 + customs since it's in the States so it's a pain. Plus right now my Radeon HD 6870 has a BIOS issue which they're investigating. Hopefully they come up with a solution before I need to exchange the card with another card and pay the difference.

deltatux

 

I have heard alot of bad things about MSI's motherboards. I had a KT7-Delta and it was a fantactic board, i then got some board from MSI high end for a Pentium 4 and it crashed massive vdroop unstable as hell. And i have had a MSI K9A Platinum which is still going. But their later boards i have been hearing their mosfets failing and even exploding/catching fire. Mate you are better off not getting a MSI board. Gigabyte and ASUS boards are way better. I have only had one ASUS board fail on me and to be fair it was a nVidia 680 chipset, heck i had gone through 3 from diffrent companies so i can't really blame ASUS.

 

cant say ive had any issues with msi mobos. maybe im one of the lucky ones. i still have my 980fx-gd70 and nf750-g65 boards that still work. ive had more problems with gigabyte boards over the years than anything really. asus makes some good boards too. the mobo im using now is pretty sweet. still getting use to the UEFI bios but overall this is an awsome board.

 

It's MSI's newer boards that have problems really, the all in one mosfets, with VRM and drivers they are very problematic.

 

I am not sure about Canada, but in the U.S., eVGA does, but no AMD.

 

MSI board wanted to die twice on me, black screen of death... however I somehow managed to revive it.

Got by far less problems with Asus and Gigabyte.

 

That's true about the $30 but that's a small price to pay for a new card if you're replacing one that's 5 years old...lol I hadn't heard about the BIOS issue but I'm still (well I was before this whole mess happened) sitting pretty with 2 HD 4870's. Sure, they don't do DX11 but that's not really an issue yet and they still have a TON of horsepower for DX9 and 10.

I've never owned a Gigabyte board but I have owned ASUS and that board is still working after 8 years. I've been very lucky with ASUS, ASRock and ECS Elitegroup (believe it or not).

Yeah something tells me that the 790FX-GD70 fixed all the problems that the K9A2 Platinum had. The problem was that at the time I bought the Platinum, the GD70 wasn't out yet and the first AM3 Phenom II's that came out were dramatically slower than the mighty(at the time) X4 940. I had to use DDR2 with it and so the choice was easy at the time. The GD70 also would have been an extra $100 which really blew my budget all to hell..lol

Yeah I'll be checking the VRM tomorrow. I'm almost positive that's what happened.

Yes, you are correct. EVGA mobos are lifetime warranty but damn, you sure do pay for it and yes, EVGA is not even on my radar. I don't buy Intel.

Glad to hear you managed to revive it and yes, I've heard many great things about ASUS and Gigabyte. I think my next board will be the ASRock 990FX Extreme4. Everyone I've ever known to have an ASRock board swears by them (myself included). I just bought the Plat for the 790FX chipset. ASRock's roots in ASUS probably have a lot to do with this. I like the 990FX Extreme4 because it also has something that I can use that the other 990FX mobos have omitted. It has an IDE header and I have 2 IDE DVD-RW drives. That's $40 I can put towards the FX-8150 instead of towards 2 new SATA DVD-RW drives.

 

Think you must mean swear AT them..?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but ASUS have nothing - I repeat - nothing - to do with manufacturing Asrock boards, they don't use any of the same parts afaik.

Asrock is simply a subsidiary company owned by Asus,that's all.
Furthermore, the gap in build quality between both brands is wider than the Grand Canyon.

You are right about ASUS tho, it is a company renowned for high grade hardware (and a piss spoor RMA dept..) Asus has many loyal customers.

And Asrock...well - they're just Asrock..
Sadly Asrock sits at the other end of the spectrum as a low cost, no frills board maker.....whose consumer market is concerned with price above all else.

MSI have always had problems, at least for the last 6 years anyway.
Hardware compatibility issue is MSI's middle name, their boards were often second rate along with their help forum where the admins seem to know less about hardware than my cat does. (sorry any MSI owners).
I thought the newer models might be an improvement but seems that isn't the case.

Gigabyte boards offer good value for money, come with a lot of features and don't cost the earth to buy....
Abit and DFI were two other names that made excellent motherboards, unfortunately both companies went south some time ago...

 

There was an EPOX once lol.

Well I own the same board, nearing the time you've had with it. It runs 24/7. I did overclocking from time to time but nothing serious. Since I never used raid, i didn't have any problems with this board yet.

As for, 790FX-GD70 solving "our" board's problems. Believe me that board and it's brother gd45 are famous for catching fire.

 

I have had a few msi boards and ya know what they all failed after 6months-1year so never bought another again. Guess they just make crap mbs lol ... btw I really like the gigabyte mb's.

 

Back in the Pentium 4 days, two Intel boards died on me between 7 - 11 months. Thats why i never bought an Intel board again.

Stick to Asus or Gigabyte

 

This is pretty much the response I would expect from every other vendor in your case

 

according to my experience the only msi good board was the platinum series don't know if they are still produce.

 

Best mob i had was an Asus. Worst was a Gigabyte. My MSI loves overclocking and is an unbelivable bargain.

 

I've had 3 ASRock boards so far, and not a single issue out of any of them. MSI on the other hand....I've had 6 of their motherboards.... Asus, similar boat....6 boards (2 currently functional, 1 has faulty PATA controller that ASUS refused to RMA the board for). I've had MSI boards lose VRMs, Bios roms, harddrive controllers, northbridges, southbridges.... My first MSI product (MSI GeForce FX5600XT) was actually recalled due to excessively high failure rate. I had 4 Gigabyte boards...all of which suffered from VRM failures.

 

wtf do u do to them? I've never personally had a motherboard failed on me before, both ASUS and GIGABYTE. I only repair machines with faulty hardware and most of them turns up either OEM or MSI (sometimes Foxconn) lol.

deltatux