Had a Gigabyte GA7N400 Pro 2 Motherboard fail on me a couple of weeks ago, the SATA/RAID controller died, it wouldn't recognise any SATA disks at all.

So I RMA'd it to overclock.co.uk

Status of my rma is 'received' which means, and I quote, your rma has been received and is in the queue to be tested.

Queue? How much money are these people making? And they can't afford to hire another engineer or two? Greedy, greedy people. One day they'll realise that good after sales service keeps their customers.

And it cost me £6.55 to send it back as well. I am not a happy bunny, I'll certainly think twice about using them again.

Are there really, really, any good online suppliers out there when it comes to after sales service?

I mean, they're all crap, aren't they?

Comments?

Here's a pic of my rma status:

i agree with you flops!

its true when buying on the internet if the products are faulty no company is good with dealing with returns or RMA's as they call them.

from my experience u have to keep chasing them up, but that costs money too. i rekon if its faulty they should at least pay for p and p!!!!

If the shops charged online prices i would never use an online supplier again, but the sad fact is you can get charged at least 10% more from a shop .

I've had my fair share of problems with online suppliers, and the key is persistance, keep hassling them, sooner or later they get ****ed off and think "ahh fook it" and things will move more quickly . (cmon, its the year 04, who doesnt use colourful language)

Though overclockers were on my safe list! I've probably spent around £400 with them, and i havent had a problem with the quality of the product or the delivery.

I'm ordering 2 sticks of Samsung DDR off them Tuesday, I just hope things go smoothly, i want them ready for Half Life 2 .

Anyway, good luck with the motherboard flopps, keep going at em!

An update on this one.

I phoned them this morning, on their technical support line (25p per minute) and got straight through.

Gave the guy my RMA number, waited a very short while and he came back and told me the board was on their workbench, they couldn't fault it. They'd even tried two Western Digital 120Gb SATA drives in a RAID 0 config to mimic my setup.

Quite odd, my onboard RAID controller wouldn't even see the disks on boot, but my other identical Gigabyte board would, when I connected the two drives to that one. I had latest BIOS, even tried a couple of previous ones, but still I had no joy. I also pointed out to overclock.co.uk that this board had been randomly not recognising IDE devices on boot.

'OK' the guy said 'We'll phone you back'. And ten minutes later, he did. And said they're sending me a new board and will keep the old one on test. What they intend to do with the old board, I have no idea. He also said one of the reasons they're sending me a new board was that I'd been kept waiting longer than usual.

So, there ya go, my faith has been restored Kudos to overclock.co.uk. My faith will be fully restored, however, when the new board arrives and I verify, through serial number, that they haven't sent me my old board back.

One question remains though, how come they couldn't find a fault?

One thing niggles me, perhaps my Antec Truepower 300W PSU isn't up to the job. Dunno, really, this setup had mostly run fine for 6 months or so then over the last month started giving errors, intermittently not recognising IDE devices and eventually not recognising the SATA drives at all.

The PSU is powering:

Motherboard
2 x Corsair 256 PC2700
XP2600
ATI 9800 Pro
Pioneer A106 DVDRW
Asus DVD ROM drive
Floppy Drive
2 x WD 120Gb SATA HDD's
1 x WD 120Gb IDE Drive
Total of 5 80mm fans
1 x 92mm fan

It is perhaps pushing it a bit for a 300W PSU, even an Antec.

But the fact it's run fine for 6 months would say otherwise.

Oh well.

Anyway, providing overclock.co.uk keep their promise (and I've had an e-mail confirming that promise) They have just become my number one supplier

Yep, could well have been under a lot of strain...



...and now the heart just gave out.


And you should know more than most ...

Chalk one up to OC

Aye, Mucks, perhaps you're right. I suspected as much myself, but, of course, was reluctant to admit it

And the system I tried the HDD's out in to verify they were OK had a 430W Antec PSU.

Hmm.

Damn, looks like I have to fork out a few more pennies then (about £70.00 worth of pennies).

I shall wait, just a little while. I'll see how new board shapes up.

Who am I kidding? I think I need a new PSU.

Overclokers have a tastey Antec TruePower 430W for £62 , or you could go all out and get the same model but 550W at £84.

Clicky Clicky

why dont you get that tasty looking 450w Xpro...looks awesome

X-PRO 460W Silent Power Supply (CA-001-XP)
- 12cm Blue-LED Cooling Fan Doubles Airflow with Half the RPM & Noise.
- Ultra Ventilation (Honey Comb Structure) Maximize Ventilation & Minimize Air Resistance.
- Serial ATA HDD power connector
- 8x gold-plated connector for 5.25" device + 2x gold-plated connector for 3.5" device
- PFC Environment Friendly Technology improves Energy Utilization to cut your Electric Bill in Half.
- Cable Management Kit makes your PC Tidy & Neat and Smoothes Airflow to improve Cooling.
- Anti-Corrosive Titanium-plated casing
- Over Voltage Protection
- Short Circuit Protection
- 100% Full Load Burn-In




Price: £46.00 (£54.05 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Gotta say, Chris, the Xpro looks desirable, but I've no idea what it's like. Could be another Qtec, for all I know. Any reviews anywhere?

For now, I'm going cheaparse and will swap PSU's between my daughter's machine and this one. She has an Antec Truepower 380W in there, that should sort my machine out OK. I'll put this 300W Antec PSU in her machine, it doesn't need so much power.

And this morning, my replacement motherboard arrived at 8.45am. It's definitey a new one, different serial number, different type of heatsink on the Northbridge and still has stickers on it. It came back in the same box I sent the old one back in, with all my old cables, CD, manual etc.

So, have to say, big thumbs up to Overclock.co.uk. Whooee, it's good to say something good for a change

I have an XP3200 to put in this board, have ordered 2 x Corsair Value 512Mb PC3200 to go with it, should arrive in the next day or two.

I'll let you all know how the rebuild goes.