Are there any reputable vendors out there nowadays? I hope to keep my EVGA 3090 for as long as possible, but don’t know where to turn when I eventually upgrade… Maybe just buy a card from another vendor and re-do the thermal paste myself?
So here’s the thing, really: there’s a lot of companies that make good hardware.
The problem is there’s not a single remaining AIB that has above shit-tier support if something goes wrong. They’re all fucking awful to deal with, slow, and just suck. See: the recent ASUS support kerfuffle, except it’s not just ASUS so much as every vendor in those same spaces.
EVGA is missed because their warranty support team was fucking stellar in a universe of otherwise wet diapers.
Asus made me handwrite a note with a picture of the card in the computer in frame, and the box and receipt, just to register the warranty.
Assholes.
Gamer’s Nexus is pushing for ASUS to have better support across the board. Their theory is if a leader in the industry does it, everyone else must naturally follow. I’m personally praying for their success.
Yeah, I hope they do, but I’m hardly confident they will.
Part of ASUS’s (and most everyone else’s) problem is they don’t do support, a 3rd party they contract with does.
So you have the stupid shit that happened, where the 3rd party company tries to get extra money out of you for repairs you don’t need, because it’s directly going to help their bottom line.
It’s some fucked up priorities: ASUS wants the cheapest vendor, and the cheapest vendor is going to try to find any other way to get extra money beyond contracted rates for repairs.
People will recommend this brand, or that brand, but I haven’t heard any consistently good stories about any of them like I did with EVGA.
My brother had an MSI AMD card and got denied an RMA because the HDMI port was supposedly burned out, which makes no sense to me. They sent a picture to us, and to me it looked like someone jammed a soldering iron in there or something. 🤷♂️
I think you’d be fine just repasting whatever card you go with. My spouse has an EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3, and I have an MSI RTX 3080 Gaming Z Trio. Both cards have been fantastic for us. If I stick with Nvidia, I might try a different brand but so far I’ve been very happy with MSI.
I have no experience with AMD cards, but I’ve heard that Sapphire is highly regarded, probably great like EVGA.
Intel I don’t trust yet, so I’ll wait before I consider their Arc cards.
