ASUS A7V600: Feature-Laden – Value-Priced
by Wesley Fink on August 17, 2003 10:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ASUS A7V600: Tech Support and RMA
For your reference, we will repost our support evaluation procedure here:
The way our Tech Support evaluation works is first, we anonymously email the manufacturer's tech support address(es), obviously not using our AnandTech mail server to avoid any sort of preferential treatment. Our emails (we can and will send more than one just to make sure we're not getting the staff on an "off" day) all contain fixable problems that we've had with our motherboard. We allow the manufacturer up to 72 (business) hours to respond, and then we will report whether or not they responded within the time allotted, and if they were successful in fixing our problems. In case we don’t receive a response before the review is published, any future responses will be added to the review, including the total time it took for the manufacturer to respond to our requests.
The idea here is to encourage manufacturers to improve their technical support as well as provide new criteria upon which to base your motherboard purchasing decisions. As motherboards become more similar everyday, we have to help separate the boys from the men in as many ways as possible. As usual, we're interested in your feedback on this and other parts of our reviews, so please do email us with your comments.
ASUS' RMA policy is pretty straight forward, as follows:
"Please provide the following information so that we may process your request for warranty repair service. Once we have obtained that information from you, we will issue an RMA # and provide the proper shipping instructions. Please read and provide all of the information below. We cannot complete your request, if all of the information below is not
PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH:
1. THE MODEL & SERIAL NUMBER OFF OF YOUR PRODUCT model (name of product) serial# (10 digits/characters long, no dashes).
2. YOUR FULL NAME/NAME OF COMPANY (Only provide company name if the shipping address is to a company).
3. YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS (no PO boxes please).
4. YOUR DAYTIME PHONE/FAX NUMBER.
ASUS Computer International (USA) is a warranty repair service center. Please contact place of purchase for credit, refund, upgrade, or advance replacement. Asus does not provide these services under any circumstances.
ASUS Does not cover physical damage. Please refer to page 2 of your users manual. There is a $15.00 fee to replace a broken socket. There is a $40.00 fee to repair all other physical damage. If a product is not repairable, the product will be sent back to the customer. If a product is sent in with physical damage and is not accompanied with a payment, the product will be rejected and customers will not be reimbursed for shipping charges. A payment can be made by check, money order (payable to ASUS), or a credit card#. The payment must be sent in with the damaged product. Customers from Canada must make payments with a credit card#."
This is a fairly straightforward RMA policy, with nothing unusual that stands out. As is the norm with motherboard manufacturers, you're required to provide quite a bit of information in regards to exactly what has to be RMA’d. Everything else is self-explanatory.
Even after their web site redesign in the past few months, ASUS still hasn't listed any real type of RMA policy on their web site. Anandtech has been critical of ASUS on this issue for months now, but still, nothing has changed.
ASUS' tech support response time did not improve from the last time that we looked at an ASUS motherboard. At that time, ASUS had missed our 72-hour deadline. The same pattern was repeated this time around, with ASUS completely missing our 72-hour deadline yet again. After so many missed tech support emails, it's clear that your expectation with ASUS should be this: your technical problem may get a reply some day! We'll let you know how long it takes ASUS to respond to this email. Hopefully, ASUS won't take more than 11 days to respond, like they did the last time we tracked an email to conclusion.
UPDATE 8/22/03: Asus finally replied to our Tech Support email request 18 calendar days after it was sent.
While ASUS' RMA policy isn't too different from other top-tier motherboard makers, their tech support is still severely lacking, if not the worst in the industry. We sincerely hope that Asus takes these issues seriously, and finally, make efforts to fix a problem that has driven away many potential customers.
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Wesley Fink - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
#6 My parents resisted naming me Rat. I'm grateful! My ancestors apparently were very proud of the last name since they did not change it to the literal translation of Finch. The only advantage I've found is it's hard to forget.Jeff7181 - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
Does anybody actually own these motherboards that are being tested? I don't know anybody with any of these. As I say is never AMD motherboard review... where are the boards that everybody knows? The A7N8X Deluxe, 8RDA+, etc... I want to see how the KT600 compares to THOSE.sprockkets - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
I don't use flash due to the stupid ads it brings. Other than that, it's a nice board. A bit slower but has SATA. Wish someone on the AMD side would release a uATX SATA board built on the southbridge.Anonymous User - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
Wesley Fink, what a weasel name. I bet ur a slimy and sleezy as they come! Either way nice review :P.Anonymous User - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
A nice review on overall. But I would hope that Anandtech looks into the use of exaggerations when using words like 'mediocre' or 'shocked' at rather inappropriate times. I know, it's a problem with the use of the english language in general these days as we are suffering from some news headline syndrom. Just try to not to go with the flow. Since I'm nitpicking I would like to point out that a few percentages of practical performance certainly isn't 'much' either.Can't wait for your Abit KV7 review. :)
Anonymous User - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
I'm beginning to think that the resources of these chipset companies are being spread too thin. Intel only builds for Intel processors (obviously) and NVIDIA only builds for AMD processors (at the moment). Each company is focusing their chipset development on one platform, optimizing it, and consequently delivering top performance for those platforms. VIA, SIS, and ALI are trying to develop chipsets for both platforms. Their Intel chipsets usually share common technology with their AMD chipsets such as memory controllers and southbridges. While this is more cost effective for these companies, it may explain the lower performance of those chipsets because they are not being specifically designed for one platform.Anonymous User - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
AAAAAAAAH damn... caught my own spelling mistake... abomination :(Adi
Anonymous User - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
"The ASUS A7V600 fortunately provides six IDE slots for expansion cards."Hahahahha ! Plase correct this abomication...
Adi
Anonymous User - Monday, August 18, 2003 - link
Nice Review,but is the Flash Hell here to stay ?Anandtech always had the best print layout,
why ruin it ? :(
ruxandy - Sunday, August 23, 2020 - link
Well, hello from the future! As it turns out, in 2020, this board is EXTRAORDINARY and nobody really cares about nForce boards anymore :-) Because, even though VIA is 5% slower on average, it more than makes up for this in features and compatibility (ehem, DOS sound, CPU speed throttling, etc).