Is the demand for Computer hardware hurting Quality?

[Kapone33]

There has been an explosion in Motherboards, RAM, SSDs, NVME, Fans, Cases, Keyboards, Mice and smartphone variety from a consumer standpoint.

I bought an Asus X470 motherboard and it worked great until I had to update the BIOS. It bricked the board. I got a replacement board and it worked great until guess what. I tried to update the BIOS. There are clear instructions on how to update the BIOS on AM4 and I followed them all. Needless to say that board was also RMA.d. They finally sent me a new one but I did not trust Asus anymore to use the board.

X470 launches and I get the Gigabyte Gaming 7. What a beautiful board. I think that it is the most feature rich (in terms of hardware) X470 board you can buy, however the board decided one day to give the 00 readout and would not boot in single, dual or selective, even though the board has BIOS switches.

I replace that board with the X470 As Rock Taichi (not the ultimate) and am loving it. The board is great but the wireless is meh. I actually replaced the wireless card on the Taichi with the one from the Gigabyte board

Currently AMD have A320, B350, X370,B450,X470 Intel have X299,Z370,B360 and probably a few more. How many companies sell SSDs; even the suppliers are selling SSDs on the consumer market. How many smartphones are made a day? How many different memory speeds are avaialble to the consumer in DDR4 2133 to 4600 from a myriad of different companies? How much demand has China put on global computer parts supply. I know that China is where a lot of the manufacturing of these goods has gone but there are still fabs in Taiwan, South Korea and other places. With the demand and supply glut that we have has anyone else noticed the quality of brands that you trusted has gone down. I have an Asus 990FX Sabretooth board and I can tell you that board survived a lightning storm and still works. The replacement board lasted for 6 years and lives in a computer I gave to one of my brothers. Is it that that they don't make them like they used to or am I just imagining it?

 

[OutThereSomewhere]

It's all about profit these days.
Not sure if the designs are sometimes know to be flawed but as long as the tills are ringing they don't seem to care. Buy it now, RMA it later.
Then I guess many on crappy incomes in the factories don't give a damn about quality either.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

There has been an explosion in Motherboards, RAM, SSDs, NVME, Fans, Cases, Keyboards, Mice and smartphone variety from a consumer standpoint.

I bought an Asus X470 motherboard and it worked great until I had to update the BIOS. It bricked the board. I got a replacement board and it worked great until guess what. I tried to update the BIOS. There are clear instructions on how to update the BIOS on AM4 and I followed them all. Needless to say that board was also RMA.d. They finally sent me a new one but I did not trust Asus anymore to use the board.

X470 launches and I get the Gigabyte Gaming 7. What a beautiful board. I think that it is the most feature rich (in terms of hardware) X470 board you can buy, however the board decided one day to give the 00 readout and would not boot in single, dual or selective, even though the board has BIOS switches.

I replace that board with the X470 As Rock Taichi (not the ultimate) and am loving it. The board is great but the wireless is meh. I actually replaced the wireless card on the Taichi with the one from the Gigabyte board

Currently AMD have A320, B350, X370,B450,X470 Intel have X299,Z370,B360 and probably a few more. How many companies sell SSDs; even the suppliers are selling SSDs on the consumer market. How many smartphones are made a day? How many different memory speeds are avaialble to the consumer in DDR4 2133 to 4600 from a myriad of different companies? How much demand has China put on global computer parts supply. I know that China is where a lot of the manufacturing of these goods has gone but there are still fabs in Taiwan, South Korea and other places. With the demand and supply glut that we have has anyone else noticed the quality of brands that you trusted has gone down. I have an Asus 990FX Sabretooth board and I can tell you that board survived a lightning storm and still works. The replacement board lasted for 6 years and lives in a computer I gave to one of my brothers. Is it that that they don't make them like they used to or am I just imagining it?

I hope not , time will tell though.
I have not experienced any failure's not inheritantly caused by me, Rip crosshair V ,X38quad gt evo ,samy 850 pro and a few more but i killed em.
Own up dude

 

[R-T-B]

Bad luck of the draw. If you ask me quality has gone up, not down.

 

[Kapone33]

I hope not , time will tell though.
I have not experienced any failure's not inheritantly caused by me, Rip crosshair V ,X38quad gt evo ,samy 850 pro and a few more but i killed em.
Own up dude


I hope not , time will tell though.
I have not experienced any failure's not inheritantly caused by me, Rip crosshair V ,X38quad gt evo ,samy 850 pro and a few more but i killed em.
Own up dude

LOL I wish I was a noob. I have been building PCs since 2006 and have owned a computer since 1982. My Dad was a electrical engineer so I know my way around a electronic device.

 

[R-T-B]

LOL I wish I was a noob. I have been building PCs since 2006 and have owned a computer since 1982. My Dad was a electrical engineer so I know my way around a electronic device.

I think the noob accusation wasn't necessary. As I said, I think you just had a bad instance of luck.

In other news, ASUS is heavily investing in automated (no humans) board assembly as of late. Maybe that's not all it's cracked up to be. *shrugs*

 

[Durvelle27]

Could be just user error

 

[HossHuge]

It's all about profit these days.

These days? I'm pretty sure it's always been about profit.

 

[Salty_sandwich]

They do the same with software, put it out broken, fix it later, the main thing they care about is making sure the product is on the market, making money, (Zuckerberg's product standards) they can fix the problems once people come across them, its almost like everything is sold in beta stage these days, but on a business level I guess it starts the money flow sooner for the share holders..

 

[MrGenius]

Bad luck of the draw. If you ask me quality has gone up, not down.

Agreed. It's like I've said before. They just don't make 'em like they used to. They make 'em BETTER than they used to!

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

LOL I wish I was a noob. I have been building PCs since 2006 and have owned a computer since 1982. My Dad was a electrical engineer so I know my way around a electronic device.

I was'nt insinuating noob, and it doesnt take noobness to kill hardware so much as the next benchmark run for some, I am an electrical engineer an old one like your dad no pun intended.
plus some stuff just breaks shrug, i dont think its more though your just unlucky imho

my post before was a light hearted jk at the end ,sorry.

 

[Deleted member 50521]

Were you updating BIOS when your CPU and system was overclocked?

 

[Bill_Bright]

Is the demand for Computer hardware hurting Quality?

What demand? PC sales have dropped in recent years much in part due to consumer migration to hand-held devices. W8 sure didn't help either.

But I agree with R-T-B - quality of all consumer electronics has (of course, with some exceptions) gone up. In most cases, electronics, whether computers, TVs, cell phones, or whatever get retired and upgraded to support new technologies before actually dying.

 

[Easy Rhino]

No.

 

[bonehead123]

well, all I can say is that my last build was in 2016, with some new and used parts, and it is still running strong to this very day, and I see no reason to think that it will fail me anytime soon (mainly because the only moving parts in my rig are the fans!).

Maybe I'm just lucky or something, but generally speaking I think that A) the quality of pc parts is somewhat better now than a few years ago, and B) most companies are more motivated by milkin da cash cow than anything else nowadays, so that may negate the recent advances in technology and sooner than later that will cause a significant drop in quality...

 

[XiGMAKiD]

Definitely bad luck, just like how all of my Seasonic PSU (Platinum 460W Fanless and Titanium 650W) always died within a year but my experience with cheap PSU like VS450 is nearly flawless

 

[Kapone33]

What demand? PC sales have dropped in recent years much in part due to consumer migration to hand-held devices. W8 sure didn't help either.

But I agree with R-T-B - quality of all consumer electronics has (of course, with some exceptions) gone up. In most cases, electronics, whether computers, TVs, cell phones, or whatever get retired and upgraded to support new technologies before actually dying.

While PC sales have dropped in Western Europe and North America we never had to worry about Chinese consumers. Look at the Steam charts and you will see today that almost 75% of all users on Steam are now Chinese. I did also mention smart phones in the original post and even if they are a small form factor smartphones are computers so essentially use the same hardware as PCs. There is also the fact that there are more chipsets today then before. You can still buy brand new LG775 boards from Ali Express.

 

[jaggerwild]

Your dad could be a rocket scientist doesnt mean you are, the"00" is a corrupt bios usually of course you knew that.

 

[John Naylor]

Im not seeing it. I am rarely excited by a new release or anew product ... just "more of the same". One thing i will see is when I read user reviews on newegg these days, there are way way to many people tackling "building their own" who should not be attempting this .

Best laugh of the month - user upgraded from a CLC to a LOC type AIO pre-assembled at factory with **real** copper / brass custom loop components. User complained that the radiator was "rusty" and ranted on how cheap and deceitful the vendor was for supplying in inferior / damaged product. Brass / copper does not rust, it's natural color is much the same as rust however.

Most common complaint - I completed the build and it worked find but then I 9insert bonehead move here] and now it won't boot. For whatever reason (can anyone guess ?) this seems to be more prevalent on AMD boards. Fiddling with memory perhaps ?

The plugged PCI cable into EPS socket and other silly mistakes that they made and blame the manufacturer for are just too much.

Quality has been all over the place. Average RMA Rate for Mobos as reported over last 5 years. Seems to have less to do with MoBo manufacturers than inhow much of a change there is chipset wise. The Z87 / Z97 years provided a substantial bump there.

10/05/2013 = 2.0175 %
30/04/2014 = 2.0513 %
19/05/2015 = 2.7288 %
13/05/2016 = 2.0675 %
01/08/2017 = 1.7350 %

 

[Bill_Bright]

While PC sales have dropped in Western Europe and North America we never had to worry about Chinese consumers. Look at the Steam charts and you will see today that almost 75% of all users on Steam are now Chinese. I did also mention smart phones in the original post and even if they are a small form factor smartphones are computers so essentially use the same hardware as PCs

Sorry but that is so wrong on many fronts.

1. Chinese buyers are, by a wide margin, buying mobile devices (smartphones and notebooks) more than big, space hogging, power hungry PCs (defining the "PC" as a desktop or tower computer that remains stationary on the desk, floor or shelf).

2. Smartphone hardware is not essentially same as that in a PC any more than microwave oven hardware is essentially the same as used in a smart TV or smart wristwatch. They all use digital and computer technologies, and even have basic computers integrated in them. But they are not essentially the same.

A smartphone is much more akin to a two-way radio, in fact, that is exactly what it is.

I did also mention smart phones in the original post

Then maybe you should have made the subject title, "Is the demand for electronics hardware hurting Quality? " if your intent was to lump together every device with a computer in it.

 

[Kapone33]

well, all I can say is that my last build was in 2016, with some new and used parts, and it is still running strong to this very day, and I see no reason to think that it will fail me anytime soon (mainly because the only moving parts in my rig are the fans!).

Maybe I'm just lucky or something, but generally speaking I think that A) the quality of pc parts is somewhat better now than a few years ago, and B) most companies are more motivated by milkin da cash cow than anything else nowadays, so that may negate the recent advances in technology and sooner than later that will cause a significant drop in quality...

I had a Sandisk Ultra 2 960GB drive that failed

Sorry but that is so wrong on many fronts.

1. Chinese buyers are, by a wide margin, buying mobile devices (smartphones and notebooks) more than big, space hogging, power hungry PCs (defining the "PC" as a desktop or tower computer that remains stationary on the desk, floor or shelf).

There are over 200 million gamers in China. That is over 6 times the population of Canada. If even 2% of them use desktops that is still 4 million users.

2. Smartphone hardware is not essentially same as that in a PC any more than microwave oven hardware is essentially the same as used in a smart TV or smart wristwatch. They all use digital and computer technologies, and even have basic computers integrated in them. But they are not essentially the same.

It may be smaller but a smart phone is still a computer. And yes other devices like Smart TVs, Ovens and fridges also contain mini computers but you cannot game on any of them. The wafers (transistors, resistors, capacitors) are manufactured in the same factories. Who makes the wafers for Apple phones. Who makers the chips for Android phones? Do not the same companies supply CPUs, Memory and NAND flash. Of course I am talking about Samsung, TSMC, Hynix and Micron.

A smartphone is much more akin to a two-way radio, in fact, that is exactly what it is.

If you meant a regular cell phone yes. You can use a laptop or desktop to make phone calls too you just need the software. Does Skype work any differently on a smartphone, laptop or desktop? Can you run Skype on a cell phone?

Then maybe you should have made the subject title, "Is the demand for electronics hardware hurting Quality? " if your intent was to lump together every device with a computer in it.

Anything that is "smart" has a computer built into it

I was'nt insinuating noob, and it doesnt take noobness to kill hardware so much as the next benchmark run for some, I am an electrical engineer an old one like your dad no pun intended.
plus some stuff just breaks shrug, i dont think its more though your just unlucky imho

my post before was a light hearted jk at the end ,sorry.

No probs I did not mean to come across upset

 

[R-T-B]

Chinese buyers are, by a wide margin, buying mobile devices (smartphones and notebooks) more than big, space hogging, power hungry PCs (defining the "PC" as a desktop or tower computer that remains stationary on the desk, floor or shelf).

Yes but that does not change the fact there is a rapidly growing market for PC parts in China, primarily driven by icafe gaming.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Anything that is "smart" has a computer built into it

True. But that does not mean all computers are essentially the same hardware. A big Peterbilt, a Toyota Corolla, a Golfstream G650, and a Sea Ray L550 are all vehicles. They all carry people and have engines that transmit power for propulsion. Does that mean they are essentially the same? Are AMD, Intel, VIA, Qualcomm, Motorola, Sun, ARM, and Cyrix processors interchangeable? Not even close! While you can argue man Intel and AMD processors do the same thing (run Windows), it is not in the same way.

Who makers the chips for Android phones? Do not the same companies supply CPUs, Memory and NAND flash. Of course I am talking about Samsung, TSMC, Hynix and Micron.

So? Rolls Royce makes engines for cars and for jet airplanes. Does that mean they are essentially the same hardware? No! GE makes big turbines used in train engines, and they make washing machines. Does mean they are essentially the same hardware? No.

But it really does not matter how you want to define "computer" or computer hardware. The answer to your question is that electronics, all electronics in general, have become much more reliable.

Not to take anything away from electrical engineers, but they deal with theory. And the theory is the same as it has been since the beginning of time. That is, the properties of electrons flowing through a conductor are dictated by the Laws of Physics, not by how the engineers design them.

As a certified electronics technician (as seen via the link in my signature), it has been my job for the last 45+ years to maintain and repair electronics hardware. And it is easy for me to categorically say, with authority, electronics have become much more reliable.

Yes but that does not change the fact there is a rapidly growing market for PC parts in China, primarily driven by icafe gaming.

That is true but gaming is still just a small portion of PC sales. And I note as more and more Chinese are becoming more affluent, the computer industry as a whole is rapidly growing, not just gaming PCs or the PC parts industries.

Either way, as a "PC" user willing to give up my full sized keyboard, mouse, 2 x 24" monitors and surround sound speakers only when I am dead, I am glad to see the PC parts market is still alive.

 

[E-Bear]

The ancient aliens theorists say...YES!

 

[jaggerwild]

Always been a demand for cutting edge tech, so im not sure where the explosion came from.......