Alternatives to RIVE without the ASUS hassle?

[bravegag]

Are there any good X79 MOBO alternatives you can recommend that won't have this hellish ASUS hassle of buggy BIOS, complicated RMA, lack of honoring the Warranty and horrendous support? I was just informed that my 1-pin bent MOBO was sent to ASUS Germany for inspection (I live in Switzerland) and it takes 3 weeks for ASUS to decide what to do. This is really a joke. So I will indeed claim the CC transaction and get my money back. I would have liked to buy a new RIVE but this would be like "feeding the dog that bites you" so I think it is best to buy another brand altogether.

Can you recommend good MOBOs at this feature level? I think good ones would be the Gigabyte Assasin2 or the EVGA one.

UPDATE: I think I might have found a good alternative the Intel BOXDX79TO or BOXDX79SI or BOXDX79SR LGA2011 look professionally made, the low end one for about half the price of the RIVE. Not that I care much paying high bucks for good quality. It doesn't have all the monkey features as the RIVE has but hey, the RIVE has some serious issues getting the basics right, let alone the "fancy" monkey features.

TIA

[GuzMonster]

Yes I know same thing happened to me. Board had some defective pins, I sent pictures and ASUS said the socket must have been damaged and did not honor any warranty claim. They did not even take the time to inspect it. I wish there was another alternative...

[bravegag]

The Intel BOXDX79SR doesn't really look like a compromise compared to the RIVE. Intel has very good RMA policy and of course excellent quality, these three series of BOXDX79 [TO, SI, SR] is the only X79 MOBO that doesn't have horrendous feedback in all reviews. I think I will buy the SR one, has all the features as the RIVE except the superficial monkey ones like the overclock key BS.

[Praz]

Seriously? A forum that is owned and the expenses paid by a manufacturer is not the place to be asking for recommendations of competitors products. If you need assistance with your RMA please don't hesitate to start a new thread. Thank you.

[Kipper]

You have to admit, ASUS allowing customers to vent on their support forums says volumes for them.

As the worlds leading and largest motherboard manufacturer with by far the largest number of sales world wide it only stands to reason that you will hear more complaints against them. I know for a fact that the so called expert builders and enthusiasts have buggered up boards and now with folks building their own system for the first time and tackling it with high-end, top of the line components it's no wonder we are seeing more complaints against the products.

I have reviewed a good number of the X79 boards from ASRock, Gigabyte, Sapphire, Intel, and ASUS and by far the boards from ASUS were the top performers. In my opinion the best of the best of the boards is the ASUS P9X79 Work Station, but then again thats just my opinion.

A friend of mine was reviewing the Rampage III BE when it first came out; this guy is one of the top reviewers and regarded as the "Go-to-guy" for motherboard advice and he managed to bend some of the pins rendering the board defective. To make a long story short I had him ship the board to me and I returned it to ASUS and for 125 USD they replaced the socket.

Anyways, if you can easily identify the bent pin you could try some good lighting, magnifying glass and using a straight pin possibly do the repair yourself.

I am not trying to defend ASUS, I have had a few bad moments with their Tech support myself but I try to remember that the majority of folks in that business are helpful and polite but with my luck I just happened to get their asshole of the day.