I have seen some people on here telling others to avoid MSI products based on personal past experiences (which is fair enough) My question is what MSI product let you down and how long ago, because based on recent reviews from their laptop, GPU's and motherboards they all seem to be quite positive now. Have MSI perhaps had a shaky past? and recovered from it. I'd love to know.Motherboards... many of them that are MSI have been troublesome. I got burned on a socket 478 and socket 775 motherboard.

The socket 478 board had an issue where it would randomly lock up completely or become selectively unresponsive such as I can open task manager and see that the CPU is showing 4% in use of the Pentium 4 and it changed to 8% and 3% and 7% and 10% and 5% etc so it was running and options in task manager worked. Other functions of Windows worked too but launch browser or a video game and its almost as if you never told it to start. memtest86 showed all was well. Hard drive also was healthy. Power supply was swapped out thinking maybe there was an issue even though voltages were all good and no change problem remained. I finally returned it for RMA and got a replacement board after having to pay shipping fees to return it out of pocket. The replacement board had USB issues. It would disconnect and connect devices on its own. I sent this back RMA again. 3rd board new issue. BIOS would not hold settings. Battery a strong 3.12V and jumper not set to clear cmos. Every boot the system was rediscovering its configuration and going back to January 1st. Went to return it to get a refund, as told they could only do a swap for same board unable to return it and get money back or credit towards a different motherboard. Took the $75 loss and just used this board in a system as a server where it doesnt reboot and upon reboot it will go back to new years day. Called this system BadYear as a result of it being such a piece of junk.

Socket 775 Board... I figured maybe I just got bit by a specific bad run with a specific model. How can a company stay in business if all products were trash and so I bought a socket 775 board for a Core 2 Duo build. And once again problems. This time the integrated NIC was having issues where it would disconnect and reconnect on its own. Uplink would come and go. Swapped cable, swapped port to switch, swapped drivers to a newer driver and problem remained. Sent it back RMA and got next board. Next board didnt even post. Sent that back and got 3rd board. This 3rd board had an issue where only half the RAM of 2GB was showing 1GB instead of 2GB. Board supported dual channel and had 4 slots i had slot 0 and slot 2 stuffed. Swapped RAM sticks between slots and still only 1GB. Popped Ram out and looked at the memory slot and all finger pins were ok looking. Borrowed known good RAM from another system and got same results. Moved the RAM to slots 1 and 3 and the system wouldnt boot it gave a RAM POST beep. Run the sticks one at a time and fine, memtest86 showed all was ok with each stick. Stuffed the RAM into slots 0 and 3 and then got 2GB RAM, but lost my Dual Channel configuration because I wasnt able to get slots 0 and 2 or 1 and 3 to work together. Tested slots 0 and 1 for single channel and POST Beep. Ok, so slots 1 and 2 are junk and slots 0 and 3 are ok, so I used RAM with 1 stick at either end in single-channel and got my 2GB. I kept this build just like this because I knew from past history that if I sent this back I am going to get another piece of junk back from them with probably a worse issue.

MSI Laptops ... many of them have been troublesome more recently.

Lots of unstable laptops, lots of poor quality issues, and lots of overheats. I never board a MSI laptop but I have seen peoples complaints in feedback online and it sucks to be them locked into a lemon product and out that much money and having to pay the shipping fees with each RMA to where that $20 you thought you were saving by not buying a better brand that was $20 more is lost quickly in the headache and shipping fees.


I avoid ASRock, ECS, and MSI products!

I got burned by ECS thinking maybe they would be ok for making 3 like system builds on the cheap to make loaner computers to loan to people while I service their computer. They were a total loss. I was not going to give a customer an unstable piece of junk to borrow, and so I ended up buying 3 refurb HP Business Class systems for $120 each instead and loaning those out to customers who cant do without a computer while theirs is serviced.

ASRock I was given a gaming build project by a kid that wanted to save money. The board didnt post. I removed the motherboard and was looking it over and tiny solder balls were falling off the board and rolling around on my workbench. Upon further inspection the board was loaded with tiny little solder balls which are the result of a issue with the flux on the board when it was wave soldered and the lead spits up through the barrels in the board and fall back to the surface and stick and cool, and cause short circuits where they bridge IC legs of surface mount chips etc. Sent this board back and got another. The other board started off fine. Build was not overclocked or anything that STRESSED the board and the VRM smoked on the board in 2 days after the build. Board supported 95Watt CPU and a 95Watt Phenom II was installed. No overclock and no over voltage. Got RMA replacement once again and this time no problems. Then 11 months later the board died after starting to act up freezing up etc.


I Like Gigabyte, ASUS, and Biostar. Biostar I havent had any problems with and I have been buying their boards for inexpensive builds since 2008. If I am building someone a system though I generally buy Gigabyte or ASUS boards as for the computer performance affects my status as a good system builder and I dont want to build people lemons and lose credibility and so that is what I stick with for motherboards.

For video cards I go with EVGA, ASUS, Gigabyte as the top 3 brands.

For RAM I go with Corsair, Crucial, and Kingston as the top 3 brands, however I have also had good luck with G.Skill, Patriot, and some other brands for cutting corners in price.

For power supplies Corsair, EVGA, Thermaltake with 80Plus.

For Hard Drives primarily Seagate, however if Western Digital has a sale I MIGHT buy theirs instead. I have had issues with Western digital drives before and lost data and far lesser issues with Seagate.

For SSD Hard Drives I go with Corsair, Samsung, and Crucial. * Intel is good too but I cant pay the premium for them.I have no experience with MSI. My limited experience is that motherboards ate the most complex piece of electronic equipment have ever seen. One would think tghat a bad manufacturer of such a product would not stick around long.
From Google:
Here's a list of some motherboard brands.
Asus. Accepted as the world's largest motherboard manufacturer, Asustek Computer International is planning on expanding sales by 20% this year and is planning on achieving 50% of the global market by 2014. ...
Gigabyte. ...
MSI. ...
ECS. ...
Intel.
Source:
A List of the Top Computer Motherboard Brands - Bright Hub
As for MSI, the above reports that MSI is the maker of many other ystem motherboards besides their retail boards.
Quote from: Gypsy_Joker on September 01, 2016, 08:24:54 PM

I have seen some people on here telling others to avoid MSI products based on personal past experiences (which is fair enough) My question is what MSI product let you down and how long ago, because based on recent reviews from their laptop, GPU's and motherboards they all seem to be quite positive now. Have MSI perhaps had a shaky past? and recovered from it. I'd love to know.