Maximum PC

Just have to get this gripe out...

I love Asus. As far as I'm concerned, they make great stuff at good prices. Of all my system builds, the mainboard has always been an Asus. One time I got two faulty motherboards in a row but Asus replaced both for free, no questions asked, so I'm happy overall.

My current system uses an M3A78 mainboard. Socket AM2+, 140W CPU support, AMD 770 chipset, and pretty sturdy. Right now I have a Phenom X4 9950 plugged in and I wanted to upgrade to a nice, power-efficient Athlon II X2 255.

I'm sitting here with that very processor in an unopened box for the past month, and the last BIOS update which included new CPU support for this motherboard was 14 months ago, and there appears to be no sign that Asus will release further BIOS updates to support the slew of new processors AMD has released since then. Infact the last BIOS update for my motherboard was released before the new year, a beta version addressing a completely obscure Windows 7 WHQL bug.

Meanwhile, all the numerous derivatives of this model of motherboard - M3A78-VM, M3A78-Pro, etc. - can handle all the latest Athlon II and Phenom II processors released so far. They see regular BIOS updates every few months, it would seem. Sometimes every few weeks.

It's like Asus has completely terminated support for this base model of motherboard, despite it only being 2 years old and still widely used. At this rate if I want to use my new processor I'll have to buy a new motherboard, which will then also force me to buy a new copy of Windows 7 (thanks to their new ridiculous terms of use). And I just can't afford that right now.

I must say that I'm very disappointed in Asus for the first time. And the first time always hurts the most... (cue "Love Hurts" by Nazareth)

C'mon Asus! Update this BIOS already. Shouldn't be too hard a task; it seemed pretty easy for every other M3A* motherboard you own!

That sucks. I recently had a mediocre experience with Asus support. My P5Q3 died and I emailed their support and got an RMA. Sent it in, two weeks later I got the exact same board back, same serial number, same product number. I figured they repaired it... and when I fired my machine back up, it was exactly as it was before. I called their tech support and he offered to Cross-ship a new motherboard and pay for shipping. They sent me the shipping label but the RMA never came through. So I called again, pretty frustrated at this point, and asked for another cross-ship, which was granted. This time it came through and my new board has been solid so far.

Asus, while making some good/great hardware, lacks heavily in support. I hate it since I go to them for my first thoughts on hardware, but their support ideals do belong in the pound.

It does seem that anything that's over two years old falls off their "to fix" list. I mean, the 45-series chipset isn't old by any means, but is impossible to find anything new for them at this time. Neither is the 770 line from AMD, so you'd think they'd want microcode updates to allow newer processors like your 225 or perhaps X3 425.

That board has the last BIOS of 1802 (Beta) in Oct 2009, almost 8 months ago. The 770 chipset is capable, but both of the above (225/425) are not supported. We can wait and hope for the best, but with Asus...you're usually left without hope for 2yo boards. Good market idea, but bad business plan. If we upgrade boards alot, we're blind to it. But if we upgrade within sockets more it's very apparent of this sort of thing over time. I like continued support of a product, and it's not asking too much to support discontinued. End Of Life should be longer than 2 years, not the product's End of Availability.

The period on this is a P6T Deluxe. It's probably a year old now, and it's done with updates already. P6t Deluxe V2; you have 4 months to live.

Wow that stinks. I've got a story about their technical support. About two weeks ago, I contacted Asus Technical Support by e-mail saying that my recovery dvds were defective (which I found out by myself that they weren't). I e-mailed that question two weeks ago, and I haven't seen a reply since. They said that it was their policy to reply "Within 48 hours" uh...I think it's been longer than that, A LOT longer. Turns out my problem wasn't the recovery dvds, which I figured out myself, so I guess I don't really need them anymore. But I'm still very disappointed in their service, I was not expecting this, they seemed like a great company for the quality and price of my laptop (ASUS UL20A-A1). Anyways, besides the bad service, my laptop is working perfectly, so I can't really complain about product quality, even though it must be very frustrating for you.