ASUS P8P67Pro Troubles; On Second RMA

[GZFant]

Hey Anandtechers,

I just wanted to make sure I was on the right path here with dealing with this Motherboard.

About two weeks ago I RMA'd my ASUS P8P67Pro. One day, all of a sudden (I was listening to music and hanging with my girlfriend), my computer froze. Ctrl-alt-del didn't work. Windows came up and said could not access OS..

I restarted and during boot up, the BIOS came up and said no boot devices were detected. I have a WD640 and WD500 (both black series for what it's worth), and a Lite-On DVD Burner. Well, no devices were detected. I turned everything off, cleared the CMOS, unplugged SATA cables, put everything back and it booted up with everything being detected. I said great, boot from primary drive. It started boot up and when it was about to load Windows it said "Error could not detect boot device". Restarted to BIOS, nothing detected again. Well this went on a couple more times until I finally got into windows. When I got in, I started running AntiVir for virus and about 5 minutes into it, Blue screen (which showed there was a memory dump of some kind) and power. Devices were not detected again. RMA'ed to ASUS. 12 days received the RMA and motherboard still will not detect devices. So, this will be my second RMA.

I guess my big question is, does my motherboard have that Sandy Bridge bug thing? The ASUS Techie said there was a bug with the Sandy Bridge Chipset and that the new mobo they send me will not have it. I have my doubts though..

I am hoping to get some clarification or maybe some pointers before I RMA this back out that I might be able to get in Windows and email myself some crucial work files. Also, I don't have another computer handy to throw my HDDs into at the moment, so that sort of testing for HDD issues is kinda out the window at the moment.

Thanks to everyone who replies yadda yadda etc. etc..

 

[mrpiggy]

The P8p67Pro has 6 Intel SATA ports and 2 Marvel SATA ports, and two eSATA Jmicron ports. If one of the controller sides died for any reason, there's a good chance you could attach your boot drives to one of the other controller and boot the PC to get your files. I'd still RMA the MB, but give it a whirl.

 

[bankster55]

the first mobo may have had the B2 bug but the RMA surely did not. So that means one of those 2 old HDD are ready to go into toilet or PSU has bad SATA power cable/output

Freeware CPUID on the mobo tab will tell you rev # of mobo - should be B3

Run memtest 86+ from booted CD one or two runs
Run WDC Drive Diagnose to test drives
Run HDRegenerator 2012 free trial to check for bad sectors
Try dif PSU
Try newer HDD

 

[GZFant]

the first mobo may have had the B2 bug but the RMA surely did not. So that means one of those 2 old HDD are ready to go into toilet or PSU has bad SATA power cable/output

Freeware CPUID on the mobo tab will tell you rev # of mobo - should be B3

Run memtest 86+ from booted CD one or two runs
Run WDC Drive Diagnose to test drives
Run HDRegenerator 2012 free trial to check for bad sectors
Try dif PSU
Try newer HDD

What is silly about ASUS right now with this warranty; they are claiming that to go from my current B2 Revision motherboard (which is the RMA mobo they sent me which came today) is an upgrade which they will not honor. So I says, "Don't you think sending me another motherboard with the B2 revision will just have the exact same bug down the line?". Guy says, you have a year and a half of warranty left so probably not. Haha oh ASUS. If I had a bazooka for everytime you were an idiot.. I'd have a lot of bazookas!

Thanks though, I will be running those programs in the morning.

 

[bankster55]

What is silly about ASUS right now with this warranty; they are claiming that to go from my current B2 Revision motherboard (which is the RMA mobo they sent me which came today) is an upgrade which they will not honor. So I says, "Don't you think sending me another motherboard with the B2 revision will just have the exact same bug down the line?". Guy says, you have a year and a half of warranty left so probably not. Haha oh ASUS. If I had a bazooka for everytime you were an idiot.. I'd have a lot of bazookas!

Thanks though, I will be running those programs in the morning.

They sent you back another dif B2 mobo?
That is incredible
ASUS sold 20.6 million mobo last year
I guess they just dont care.

 

[Rvenger]

I have been hearing very bad things lately about Asus customer support. I was going to purchase the P8Z77-V Pro that was on sale at newegg last week for $189. I decided to go with the Asrock Z77 Extreme 6 and I am glad I did.


OP, I would keep calling them, they are responsible and not owning up.

 

[GZFant]

Thanks guys, really appreciate the support and understanding.

Here is a fun little update:
I called them on Wednesday of last week and told them that the 4 SATA ports are still not working and furthermore, I ran all of the diagnostic tools that bankster55 mentioned (thank you btw); My hard drives passed with flying colors =). Anyhoo, I plugged my OS HDD into the 6gb intel port (I think it's Intel, have to check) and my backup HDD into the other 2 SATA ports. I was able to boot into Windows albeit a very strange and long OS load time.. Unfortunately,I can't plug in my DVD drive into any of the other SATA ports because the Mobo is finicky and won't recognize any other SATA ports. So, it is solely that configuration that allows me to boot into Windows. Anyway, I told them this and they said, "OK, what we'll do is cross-ship a motherboard when we have one in stock in the next 24-48hrs. We will email you a shipping label, you ship your mobo and when we get tracking, we ship ours." Saturday rolls around, I get an RMA email stating: Please send your motherboard in for repair service.

I call immediately, they say they don't have stock and want me to call back in two weeks when they get stock and that they might have a motherboard to send me (they won't email me or call me on this one, up to me..). Again, I reiterated, if I send it in for repairs, your "engineers" are once again going to find nothing wrong (I don't think they tested it in the first place) and send back my broken motherboard. Guy gives me the corporate CSR speak about how they do their best to fix it and giving me another motherboard of the same value and how the newer revision B3 motherboard without the critical Sandy Bridge bug/error/virus/whatever is considered an upgrade and that is not part of ASUS' policy...

Long story short, they are really not doing anything to help improve my situation =(

I will definitely update as this insane, asinine, ridiculousness progresses..

Thanks for any and all support fellow Anand-techers!

 

[Hazaro]

My P8P67 PRO (Rev 3.0) just died out of the blue an hour ago. Not happy.

 

[gizmo7]

My P8P67 died in January of 2012. It took 4 months to get a replacement which I am still yet to be able to test as I sold my other 1155 parts in the meantime. For a three week period, I had UPS confirmation (which cost me $72 to package and ship) that Asus in Indiana received my motherboard, yet they claimed that they never received it. Magically I get a call one day saying it was found and they would get things taken care of for me.

Two more months go by, and finally I get my original board returned to me.


Thank you Asus for helping me develop into the staunch EVGA and Gigabyte fan that I am today.

 

[nattylite]

Agreed. Bought a MA79XTD EVO last first which started to randomly freezing (not BSOD) and eventually so POSTing similar to what was described on the newegg review. Tested with my spare parts to make sure its the mobo's fault, it was. Did a normal RMA, they sent me a broken mobo with 2 dead memory slot A2 and B2. Did AWT or AWP RMA, they sent me a second with 1 dead memory slot. I mean really that's a simple test. And this RMA they were suppose to send me my replacement once I give them the tracking number and it is in transit. However they didn't sent me the mobo until after received mine even though I called them twice during "in-transit". I think Asus is "too big" now so they don't care anymore, as demonstrated by their Transformer Prime fiasco.

Seriously QA that shit. Pardon the language.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Geez. . . . . I never heard so much trouble over a 2-year-old mobo and chipset. I AL-MOST . . . BOUGHT . . . THAT BOARD!

And I totally went against my rules-of-thumb to get the P8Z68 within a month after initial release.

Here's a tip if you want to invest money.

If you're not buying Raptors or Samsung 830's, consider buying two of the drives you use as boot HDD -- or get a smaller one in the same model line. Spend $35 on a Startech SATA drive bay and caddy. Get a license to Acronis Disk Director, or find a good, solid, reliable disk-cloning software utility that can be run from an optical boot disc -- that is, the utility should create such a disc.

With the nVidia chipsets, you could buy a more expensive or later model board, like a 780i, and boot drive created by a 680i or 610i chipset so you could change the chipset drivers. I would hope this is the case with P67 in an upgrade to Z68 or Z77. I just can't confirm it at this point, but it seems perfectly logical.

That's a moderately costly option never mentioned in the Z68 reviews last year and P67 forum posts: "Should I replace my P67 with a Z68?" and the trade-offs. People had been advised to go with a Z68, but it wasn't worth swapping out a 3-month-old P67 to get the newer board and chipset.

However, at this point in the accumulating cost comparison columns, you may just have a reason to do it. It's been as much as two years since the chipset release; that board model has given you troubles; you're going through a tizzy over RMA procedures and indiffierent customer support. But you must accept any "losses" as sunk costs -- about which you can do nothing except to remove the material item that creates more risk.

I used ASUS tech support once -- to replace a 680i motherboard for Conroe/Wolfdale cores. It didn't get complicated. But if it did, it would be a difficult choice between the stellar board I now have versus another make and model, and any expectations that customer support would be a swamp where you need solid ground.

[The hardware makers must pay someone a full wage just to stick all over this website and forum like maggots on a dead bunny rabbit. Maybe ASUS is listening. "Kineechi-wa? Nie-Hauo? Yo! . . ASUS USA?"]

 

[Hazaro]

Just wanted to chime in again and say I had a CPU failure, and it was not the P8P67 PRO that failed.

I tried everything to troubleshoot except CPU since I did not have one around.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I own a ASUS P8P67 PRO 3.0 coupled with a 2600K, and have been using it pretty much every day for about 14 months now. No issues for me. The first months I used much stresstesting on it, as I was overclocking pretty often. The last couple of months I've pretty much been running my 2600K at a mild 4.4GHz and about 1.3v under load.

Very happy with it. Running ASUS GTX 670 Direct CU II SLI now, which is awesome.

Sorry to hear about all the troubles with the board, and bad customer service from Asus...

 

[borisvodofsky]

OMGGG.. Now i'm super worried for my asus z68 pg3..

At least I know I have the phases configured right for longevity, You must use Extreme phase setting because the temp prob is bullshit and unreliable.

 

[vailr]

My advice: move on to a Z77 board. Maybe from a different brand, such as: Gigabyte, Intel, Asrock, MSI, etc.