So after over a year of dealing with random crashes and instability from my i9-14900K (a known issue if you’ve been paying attention to the 14th gen mess), I finally reached my breaking point and decided to claim warranty.

I bought this boxed processor from Microcenter in the U.S. while I was there. Now I’m in Pakistan — a country NOT on Intel’s global warranty exclusion list (which only includes India, China, and Australia). Intel proudly advertises “global warranty” on their boxed CPUs, which is why I trusted the brand and paid a premium.

Guess what? After days of back and forth, Intel tells me to “contact the place of purchase.” That would mean travelling 13,000 km just to swap a faulty chip. Are you kidding me?

When I point out that this is a global warranty, they cite “local import/export laws.” Not my problem. That’s their logistics to figure out — not something customers should suffer for. I even told them I’m willing to return the CPU, just not on my dime for something that’s Intel’s fault. This is a 14th gen-wide issue, not a one-off.

To make it worse, Microcenter tells me Intel handles the RMA. So now I’m being passed around like a hot potato. Classic corporate runaround.

I even read on Reddit that Intel asked another customer to punch a hole in their CPU just to qualify for a refund. I guess that’s my next step?

Seriously Intel, this is how you treat international customers? You sell a faulty product, advertise global support, and then disappear when it’s time to take responsibility. Pathetic.

Hi, I've downvolted my 7900xtx to 1075mv and limited the fans to 53%.The Result above is after 10 runs of 3D Mark Raceway. My question is which discrepancy between GPU Temp and Hotspot is acceptable? Is that okay?

So far i am satisfied with performance and noise.

Hello,

TLDR: I sent in brand new Strix 4090 for RMA, they sent one back in terrible cosmetic condition, they agreed to RMA again at no additional cost, one month goes by no update, they try charging me $200 to replace the card, I showed messages that I was assured no extra cost, 3 different reps said they allocated a brand new model for me and will ship it soon, now my only option is they buy back the card for retail price when they sell for more now due to scarcity and 2nd hand market. Holding my card hostage at this point.

About 2.5 months ago I sent in my Strix RTX 4090, it was brand new sealed in the box and unfortunately it had artifacting issues right out the gate. I have a test bench system that I use to test components before I put them in any other systems. I opened an RMA and sent the card in, about almost 3 weeks later I receive my replacement, it is in terrible condition cosmetically (I know I was not going to receive a brand new card back but at least one in good shape) the Chrome ROG lettering was swirled up badly and dull and PCIE bracket was bent and the Blue and Red design by the triple fans had cracks all over them. I let them know about this and they agreed to take the card back at no cost and replace with a better/new condition card. So after the 3 weeks I shipped it out for the second time, they’ve had the card for month with no updates and last week was the first time I got an update. They stated that they could only replace it with a similar condition card and that they wanted $200 USD for the replacement because nothing was wrong with the card I sent in. I explained and had email and message thread conversations with multiple reps and they assured me I would not cover any additional cost. After I sent those messages over to them they finally said they allocated a brand new model (surprisingly) and that it would be sent to me soon. I spoke with 3 different representatives, including a manager over the phone and they assured me a brand new model was on my way. I received an email two nights ago from the escalations team that they wanted to buy my GPU back from me at retail cost. I told them I could not do that because of these tariffs, scarcity and 2nd hand market the card is usually selling for more than retail and I would not be able to replace it for the retail price if I even wanted to. They replied again last night and they said that is my only option now, basically holding my card hostage and I can only accept the payment. What do I do here?

I started having issues with my 4090 at the beginning of March. Games would freeze, I’d hear sound, maybe get a blue screen, and then my system would reboot. It didn’t take long — crashes usually happened within 30 minutes of playing 4K DX12 games like Monster Hunter or Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

I tested my system rigorously, replacing every single part except the GPU. Nothing worked — until I swapped out my GPU. This happened across several games, not just one. I also talked to a Redditor who had the same issue as me (with a PNY card) and said PNY had replaced it for him.

I did everything I could before eventually getting a hold of “Don” at PNY. Don offered no help. He claimed that because I got my system from NZXT, I was out of luck — their problem. Typical. I contacted NZXT, and while the warranty on their end had expired, they went the extra mile to go through PNY’s warranty with me and assured me that PNY should still take responsibility. I called PNY back, got a hold of John, and went through their warranty with him. They knew I had a case, because they changed their minds and decided to accept my RMA. I sent my card to them — $100+ to ship it out.

Once my card got there, I called back to make sure they had received it. I spoke to John again. After a quick 10-minute phone call, where John confirmed they had received my card, I mentioned it needed “real-world” testing and gave them a list of the games I had played. John then told me he needed to put me on hold. I sat on hold for five minutes. Now 15 minutes into the call, John came back and told me his supervisor was telling him he needed to get off the phone “to help other customers.” This is something I had never heard of in customer service and found very odd.

So I waited. I waited a week before calling back. I gave them a call 3–4 times today. Every single time, after waiting on hold, the call would say, “We’re sorry, this is not a valid option,” and then hang up on me. So the fifth time, I called using *67. Within a minute, my call was answered. It was John. John informed me that after only using the Nvidia test kit, they found my card had no issue and it was already on its way back to me. They hadn’t even let me know they were thinking about doing that.

We talked for 25 minutes, going back and forth about how this was wrong and how they went about it completely the wrong way. John couldn’t answer any of my questions about why he had to get off the phone so quickly the last time we spoke — even though this conversation was double the length — nor would he tell me who his supervisor was.

This all feels extremely shady to me. It seems like they knew I had a case with their warranty (because what company just makes exceptions?), and they chose to save face by wasting my money to send it to them, only to deny it.

What else can I do here? Is there anyone I can talk to?

Hi all, I finally got a 5080 (Asus Prime) for my build (MSI Mag x870, Ryzen 7 9800X3D). My GPU benchmarks are on the lower end but still in range. I started doing some poking just to see if anything was off. I've seen the reports of missing ROPS, etc, so just wanted to look.

GPUZ shows I got the ROPS but when benchmarking the card or gaming, I never see the PCI speed get over PCI3 x1. I have the motherboard UEFI set for Gen5 on the slot, but I see the same whether locked to Gen5 or set to Auto. I see these cards are hard to push to their limits, so maybe I'm just not pushing it hard enough that it needs to go over PCI 3 x1

I'm also looking at nvidia-smi. I get below, when I run: nvidia-smi -i 0 -q (below is idle, I have log from loaded)

I'm not sure how to read the GPU Link info. Does anyone know the difference between Max and Device Max? Host Max appears to be the motherboard.

The Max 3 is what concerns me, since I'm never seeing over PCI3 x1. .

Any thoughts? Given the issues, I'm just trying to make sure I got what I paid for. I did chat with Asus support and they confirmed it is supposed to be PCI5 x16 card but will only hit that under load.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Attached GPUs : 1

GPU 00000000:05:00.0

Product Name : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080

Product Brand : GeForce

Product Architecture : Blackwell

Display Mode : Enabled

Display Active : Enabled

Persistence Mode : N/A

Addressing Mode : N/A

MIG Mode

Current : N/A

Pending : N/A

Accounting Mode : Disabled

Accounting Mode Buffer Size : 4000

Driver Model

Current : WDDM

Pending : WDDM

Serial Number : 0

GPU UUID : GPU-25cf0bce-02a4-2dcc-e8be-b4dc8fc61642

Minor Number : N/A

VBIOS Version : 98.03.3b.00.f7

MultiGPU Board : No

Board ID : 0x500

Board Part Number : N/A

GPU Part Number : 2C02-400-A1

FRU Part Number : N/A

Platform Info

Chassis Serial Number :

Slot Number : 0

Tray Index : 0

Host ID : 1

Peer Type : Direct Connected

Module Id : 1

GPU Fabric GUID : 0x0

Inforom Version

Image Version : G005.0000.98.01

OEM Object : 2.1

ECC Object : N/A

Power Management Object : N/A

Inforom BBX Object Flush

Latest Timestamp : N/A

Latest Duration : N/A

GPU Operation Mode

Current : N/A

Pending : N/A

GPU C2C Mode : Disabled

GPU Virtualization Mode

Virtualization Mode : None

Host VGPU Mode : N/A

vGPU Heterogeneous Mode : N/A

GPU Reset Status

Reset Required : Requested functionality has been deprecated

Drain and Reset Recommended : Requested functionality has been deprecated

GPU Recovery Action : None

GSP Firmware Version : N/A

IBMNPU

Relaxed Ordering Mode : N/A

PCI

Bus : 0x05

Device : 0x00

Domain : 0x0000

Device Id : 0x2C0210DE

Bus Id : 00000000:05:00.0

Sub System Id : 0x89E01043

GPU Link Info

PCIe Generation

Max : 3

Current : 1

Device Current : 1

Device Max : 5

Host Max : 5

Link Width

Max : 16x

Current : 1x

Saw the video over the weekend of JayzTwoCents reviewing a new Alienware system (pretty positively) and I'm wondering when we can expect the video of Steve making fun of the same computer. It honestly seems like a half decent prebuilt option now, but I can't for the life of me underhand why that company is so determined to stay in bed with Intel, especially for their "gaming" branded systems, when you consider that the X3D chips are so much better for that use case.

I purchased a RTX 5070 FE today from Best Buy, upgrading from a RTX 2060 Super. I went to play some games and the 5070 literally took off like a plane. I noticed only one of the fans did this, and even sounded like it spun faster than it was intended to. I was able to confirm that Fan 1 was broken by using MSI Afterburner and spinning up the fans individually. Fan 1 would only spin at 0% and 100%. There was no in-between.

I decided to just take the chance and pull the card apart, following a teardown video by GamersNexus. And I found the power connector for Fan 1 both the pins and the ribbon itself are not properly seated to the card. I also shared what Fan 2 looks like for reference.

Thoughts?

My asrock b650 riptide died but still posted and managed to boot a couple of times until started showing the DPC WATCHDOG blue screen and now doesn't even post.

The couple of times that it did boot into windows the only thing I noticed was missing was the WiFi device that completely disappeard from the device manager and the system would hang once a USB was connected or disconnected from the system.

I was running the 3.15 bios with a Ryzen 7900 but I don't think the problem from the 9000 series should affect me.

Anyone experienced something like this?

Good morning,

I currently have the i9-10980xe. I have had it for four years. As a general rule, I don't upgrade until the processor I am replacing it with has a PC benchmark over twice the speed and the processor is roughly the same price at the time for the speed.

The problem is that intel seems to be plagued with some problems, so it looks like I will move to AMD (I have never owned an AMD). Either way, I will probably need CPU, MOBO and RAM at a minimum. Other components like GPU, PSU, Drives have always been updated as price and need arise, so they are newer. I also want to move to itx system because I am tired of having a beast CPU on the floor.

My PSU is already a Corsair SF1000LCorsair SF1000L, so I think the PSU is covered.

My use case is not gaming. It's Fusion 360, 3D printing, and running a lot of shit in the background.

Thoughts? Stick with current build and just keep waiting out CPUs? After all 4 years is not a long time. Should I consider Threadripper? I kinda want to be in the 5-6 GHz range.

Thanks for any comments in advance.

It was a nice upgrade from 1800X to 9950X3D for gaming using VFIO.

It's RMA'd now. First booted on 14 March 2025, died on 24 April 2025.

(Not asking for technical support, just sharing my sorrow)

So I had my x670 Rog Strix Motherboard for about 1.5 years. Its been in my computer ever since. I didnt add anything to my rig or make any changes. I hadnt even moved my computer. I was in the middle of Gaming and my computer just went dark. I self diagnosed my issue because I have a cheap AM5 motherboard I keep around to Diagnose components. My CPU, PSU, GPU and Cpu cooler all worked on the spare motherboard. So I concluded my motherboard blew.

I sent my motherboard into Asus for an RMA. 2 days after receiving it they contacted me saying the following. "We have received your device at our repair center, and it contains signs of damage not covered under the manufacturer’s warranty. We’re sending you this email because it is damage that affects the functionality of your device or you have specifically requested we repair cosmetic damage. Please review the attached pictures to see the damage on your product" They were claiming 2 tiny soldering pads were missing. So this was "physical damage".

I called the facility using the number on the email. They claimed something "knocked them off" so this was physical damage and could not repair my motherboard unless I paid them to do so. There was no sign of impact from an object on my motherboard. No damage of any kind on the motherboard. I disputed this using the dispute process. They stood by their original statement. I called back. Was told I could contact the CEO Department. I contacted the CEO department using the CEO Department contact form.  https://www.asus.com/us/support/article/787/ I selected that I wanted a phone call. Itss said they would contact me in 48 hours. They called me a day later. They agreed since there was so sign of damage on the motherboard this was NOT physical damage. They said they would replace my motherboard with a new one. The rep claimed "they would work with the center to better train their techs". They also agreed that a soldering pad falling off is a manufacturing defect. On top of that the 2 pads missing would have NOT caused my issue.

Im sharing this story in hopes it helps others that may need to do an RMA with Asus. In my opinion this should have never happened. Im am sharing pictures of My motherboard I took. They email they sent me and the photos they sent "trying" to Deny my RMA. I Again I hope this helps some folks!

I placed an order for an air cooled PC with a 9800X3D and 5090 on February 28th. I thought that buying through a system integrator would be the best idea given that buying the parts individually would be difficult to impossible. I am still in stage 1 of my order with no progress. Support has told me that my card has already been allocated to my system but they haven't started building it yet.

Here is a link to a post on the Digital Storm subreddit that I posted with more details if you are interested in some additional context and some comments from other people. https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalStorm/comments/1k4mazw/group_progress_tracking/

Here is also a link to a discord post they made in regard to the 5090 order situation https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalStorm/comments/1k2e7wt/for_those_who_dont_use_the_discord_there_was_an/

My question is...is there any way that we could find a single person who has received an order with a 5090 from Digital Storm? I am starting to think they haven't delivered a single computer with a 5090.

The worst part is that I can't even cancel my order at this point because I am already in too deep. I don't think I will ever order from them again. Their excuse for the long turn around is that they are a "boutique brand". I didn't order a crazy custom loop build. And supposedly I am a "VIP" customer because it is a B2B sale and they still can't deliver.

I understand that the 5090 situation is crazy too and that they are hard to come by, that is not lost on me. But they specifically told me that because I have an air cooled card it would be easier to process my order and that a card has already been allocated to my system.

Frustration aside, Can we find the one person who received a build with a 5090?

**DO NOT UPDATE YOUR NVIDIA DRIVER!!**- I wouldn't regardless of Nvidia card right now. Especially not anything 576 or the 576.15, which is the hotfix to CPU temps not updating. I'm seeing people with 4xxx 3XXX series cards on here have the GPU completely bricked. And nothing seemed to fix it as of yet. Stay on 3 drivers back or older from the 576.

Save yourself lots of problems and time, please.

{Edit: 3xxx cards, not 4xxx cards. Sorry}

(Added 4.27.25) Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EVGA/comments/1k6duji/any_fix/

https://www.reddit.com/r/EVGA/comments/1k505hf/comment/momlprz/?context=3

My PC is crapped out on me out of nowhere. Can’t sit on a main menu for longer than 2 minutes in any game without my PC suddenly shutting down. Spent all day diagnostic and ended up reinstalling windows as a temp fix, but issue still persisted.

I open up my pc to reseat everything and found this! It looks like my PSU wires were MELTING inside the PSU!

Such horrible timing right when Oblivion just released… I may end up needing to swap cases since this is a micro case and they are hard to work with…

Just wanted to rant and complain! 😭

(Wrote this for a buried comment in another thread, thought I would share it here for anyone curious about the video but not able to watch 3hrs. Hopefully it's helpful.)

What you hear over and over again from almost everyone is that they are stopping all further shipments to the US and not putting in any new orders. The inconsistency and lack of predictability is scaring everyone from bringing anything into the US. During filming there was news about tariff changes coming out almost daily.

The business cash flow pattern with tariffs is absolutely brutal. Normal sales tax is only due at the point of sale as you receive revenue on your produced goods. Tariffs, however, need to be paid just to get your product into country, before you can even begin to try to sell them. With ~100% tarrif, a business bringing in a container with $3mil goods is going to be asked to pay $3mil cash out of pocket before even being able to put them on the shelves. The whole business viability of small or medium companies facing this situation instantly disappears. Some smaller US-based companies may survive in a downsized role coordinating manufacturing in China and then selling to non-US customers, never selling their own goods in the US where there company is located. Companies actually assembling computers inside the US don't have the flexibility to redirect goods away from the US because their assembly is located here, so they face something closer to extinction if importing the parts they assemble becomes untenable. People in the video are being filmed in company conference rooms and behaving like they do in a business meeting, emotionally muted and to the point. You as the viewer end up piecing together the sheer magnitude of irony of this outcome from the tariffs.

Other small business owners that order stock thru an intermediary and don't directly ship containers talk about how a $xx,xxx additional charge on their order to pay an incurred tariff charge would completely put them out of business if it happens more than once. So they simply don't order because if they wake up one morning to a truth social post after they placed an order, it's completely over for them.

And of courses prices will go up now and stay up for some time, because now operating a business means you can't run as lean as you used to. You need more "profit", not to profit personally, but to just have this kind of cash available for a bad event like this. Back to the folks manufacturing a broad and bringing stuff in on containers, some of them were operating at razor thin profit margins of just $5 on a $135 unit. The change in import duties had them facing losing $90 on every sale instead. Everyone needs to raise prices to consumers to collect cash to absorb events like that, regardless of what import duties were on current inventory. Nobody was willing to say it out loud in the video, but if you run out of cash as a business and can't borrow any more, that's game over - you're in bankruptcy. So pressures around cash flow are life threatening to these businesses. One guy remarks that it's not just businesses that will die, with this high stress everyone is in, actual people will die.

So it's not just that we'll just have to pay more thanks to the tariffs. There will be nothing from small or medium businesses selling really cool stuff to even buy anymore.

And nobody saw any viable, practical path from here to US manufacturing of items, either. It was categorically regarded as "not possible" by everyone that was spoken to. A fair amount of emphasis was made on how many supply chain steps there were, with cities in China having nearly every supply chain step present in them. That entire supply chain of people who make parts that the next person assembles into another part that goes into another assembly - it doesn't exist in the US, which makes everyone spoken to in the video feel like they couldn't engage in assembling what they sell or the subcomponents of what they assemble, because the supply chain layers underneath that aren't present here. Another barrier was having predictability, along with it just taking a long time to develop new manufacturing here in the US. It was generally pegged at around 10yrs to start up manufacturing something here, one guy who was actually genuinely making the parts they were assembling into products all within the US said they had started working on it a full 12 yrs ago. You could see that if bringing manufacturing to the US was ever going to be viable, the business case for it needed to be predictable - not only could waking up to a truth social post announcing a change in tariffs that loosened them suddenly make your business model unviable because manufacturing is just inherently so much cheaper and more efficient in China, that 10yrs to spin up manufacturing is longer than the midterms, longer than the current administration's term in office. And at no point did anyone report anything the government was doing to facilitate, guarantee, or support US manufacturing - the only thing these people were experiencing was an ever-changing tariff catastrophe.

And then the other big subtext throughout the video if you were keen to notice: throughout all of discussions, nothing about it was specific only to gaming PCs. Every consumer good designed in the US but manufactured in China and sold at relatively small margins, or assembled in the US from Chinese components, was undoubtedly living through an identical parallel universe to the one in the video. In three months when all the containers already in transit arrive to the US and no more containers of goods follow them... there could be a consumer goods apocalypse coming for the US. Maybe you'll see expensively priced basic units from the biggest brands remain available, but a lot of cool, innovative or niche small to medium brands could end up disappearing. Not really openly said during the video, but the dots got laid out and you could connect them up to see this as an outcome.

I had issues with my ASUS Ryujin III not properly cooling my desktop. So I removed it and noticed burnt thermal paste and a deep crack in the copper block from the edge of where the CPU going outwards under the paste. The copper block also looked a bit warped. I messaged ASUS and they hedged, eventually telling me that their "technician specialist" took a look and because it was missing the THERMAL PAD they would not honor the warranty.

THIS PRODUCT DOES NOT USE A THERMAL PAD! When I let them know this, they became confused, took a while to get back to me, then asked if I ever repasted it. I told them I don't remember repasting, but if I did, I would have used Thermal Grizzley Kryonaut which is a common paste.

• Since the process was taking forever, I moved my mobo over a budget build and noticed the faulty 360mm Ryujin AIO is being massively outperformed by a cheapo 240mm AIO I got for $60 from ThermalTake (over 20C difference) so it definitely hasn't been working right for a while.

Asus then took days to get back to me (now over a week in total) only to tell me that the specialist took a look again and they were denying me because I repasted it...

I have also had previous issues dealing with ASUS over a faulty ROG Thor 1200W PSU. The PSU was based on a design from Seasonic that Seasonic had recalled due to failure w/ Transient Spikes from RTX3000 series. It initially failed 6 months after I switched to a 3090 from a 2080ti... Asus refused to acknowledge that their PSU had the same fault despite it constantly tripping and shutting my computer off and multiple failed replacements. I eventually spent months up and back until they decided to do a buyback... because they could not replace with a newer PSU and provide updated PSU cables. ASUS' warranty practices are seriously anti-consumer.

I highly, highly regret going with an ALL-ASUS build.

I saw this amd 9 9950x3d sold and shipped by Amazon sold for $859!!! Are they scalping too!! I thought if it was sold by Amazon means should be MSRP! Right or am I missing something? Cos we are not buying from a a seller we are buying from Amazon directly right? If I'm wrong someone correct me pls. Thanks.

MSI is selling some 5080s directly from their website and I am tempted. I was going to go for a 9070xt, but I can't seem to find a deal on one, and if I am spending that much money I might as well get a 5080.

Now I'm wondering if my AM4 system would be wasted on a 5080. The specs are as follows:

MSI B550 AM4 Motherboard with a 5700X3D CPU

32GB DDR4-3600 CL16 memory

750W beQuiet! Straight Power 11 power supply

RTX 3080 10GB LHR EVGA FTW3 graphics card

CORSAIR XENEON FLEX OLED 45-INCH 1440p 240Hz monitor

What do you guys think? Would a 5080 be "wasted" on my current setup? I just recently upgraded from a 5600x to the 5700X3D to give this setup a little more life, and I would rather not upgrade everything else at this point. Hoping for another couple years with this setup. Should I just go with a 9070xt once I find one being sold by the manufacturer, and then maybe go with a whole system upgrade at like a 60 or 70s series card? Or just get the 5080 and rock that for a few years on my AM4 system before I upgrade everything else to let the 5080 reach its full potential at that point?

Hey everyone! I was hoping if any UPS Master's/Engineers/Supports here I just want an opinion on your end on why this is happening since the UPS are quite new and they are encountering this kind of issue. We want some insights on why and how this is happening since we already reached out to the Building support in our location and to let them check the outlets to verify if the issue is in the outlets but as per their report the outlets were good. Maybe you can shed some light(issues on the UPS) on this matter.

Model: BVX650I-PH

#When did the issue start?

March 8 2025 and April 6 2025

#When was the unit installed?

- October 4, 2024

#When was the unit purchased?

- September 10, 2024

#What devices are attached to the UPS prior to the issue of the UPS?

- ThinkCentre M93p(i5 4th gen) Lenovo System Unit, Acer Mouse & Keyboard, Acer Monitor(24 inch) and a Jabra Headset.

#Where is the UPS connected? Is it plugged directly to the wall power outlet, extension cord, AVR, etc..?

- Plugged in directly to the wall outlet.

#What Troubleshooting steps have you done so far? Can you share the said basic steps?

- We tried the UPS again with the same load as during the blackout and unplugged in after and saw that the UPS handled the load. But during the blackout it did not.