I don't really know where to begin with this. I've never had to RMA a motherboard, so all I can say is I hope this isn't normal because this has been a very frustrating week for me.
To start my build consist of:
AMD FX 8350 (cooled with H100i)
ASUS M5 A97 R2.0
EVGA GTX 660Ti sc
G.SKILL Ripjaws x 8gigs
Corsair HX 750
Corsair C70 case
I leave my pc on 24/7, Sunday May 18th, I wake up and my PC is off. I think the power must have blinked during the night so I go flip the switch on the powersupply and attempt to power up the tower. The red lights I have in the case and all the fans flicked but then nothing, I try this several times with no success at getting the PC back on. I immediately think it's my powersupply and go grab a spare to hook up, but when I don't even get the fan shudder or lights blink. just nothing. Just to rule out the powersupply 100% I go to my local BestBuy and purchase another Corsair 750 watt PS to test with, same results, fans shudders or lights blinking I just get nothing when I press the power button.
Moving on to the next step in troubleshooting I remove all the components from the case leaving the motherboard, powersupply and two case fans hooked up to different headers on the MB. Still get nothing when I press the power button, I then think it might be that my power button has gone out perhaps so I hook up the reset button to the MB, still get nothing. So after all this I decide it's the MB. I purchased this board from neweg about 45 days ago, so it falls under ASUS RMA coverage and this is where my nightmare begins.
Monday, May 19th I call ASUS bright and early and talk to a rep named Stephen. Stephen agrees with me in thinking that is in fact the MB that needs to be replaced.
Stephen says there are two options for the replacement: 1. I ship to them, they recieve, check, ship repair/new board to me or 2. advanced replacement (they ship me a new board, I ship old board back when I get new one. *catch I had to leave my CC info)
I ask Stephen, with his experience which is usually the fastest option (this is my daily machine and I have a summer class starting soon.)
He tells me the advanced option is, I say lets go with that.
This is were it gets really ****ty.
Stephen begins to tell me that ASUS, in-order to do the advanced replacement, needs to email me forms to fill out with my info and CC info, HAND SIGN them, and either fax them back or scan a copy of the printed, hand-signed documents and email them back. I'm blown away at how 2001 this system is but I say ok.
Then I wait until Wednesday, May 21st having not received the forms I needed to fill out I call again and speak to a rep who is able to get the forms emailed to me. I immediately print them out, fill them out, and scan/email them back, then I wait some more. Friday, May 23 another rep emails me to say I've only signed the forms once, not the required 5 times....
I find the error, ASUS uses red font color for "customer signature" and the corresponding line to sign on. My printer only prints in grey-scale so these didn't show up on the forms I printed. luckily I kept the originals and just signed/scanned them quickly to get them emailed back.
Now I waiting, ASUS says everything is going correctly now but this has been a very frustrating experience with a very backwards process.
I can't understand why Stephen couldn't secure my CC info over the phone on Monday and me have a new board in hand by the end of the week.
Only now have I read how terrible ASUS is with RMA's and support. I also find it interesting people seem to have great support from ROG center in California but with any other product the service is outsourced to Indiana.
Perhaps I just needed to vent, If anyone can add anything useful or offer words of advice I would appreciate it very much.
