Asus improves board warranty: Memory OC and beta BIOS covered

Asus responds to controversies raised around motherboard voltages and warranty terms

Recently, a controversy has flared up on the web surrounding Asus motherboards. It is related to the issues of Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs killed by excessive VSoC voltage, which was previously set too high by Asus boards (not just Asus ones though). Asus received further complaints after providing a fix as a beta BIOS update that was not officially covered by warranty. The company has now responded by changes that should improve things quite a bit.

Asus has been criticised for releasing BIOS updates addressing the dangerous voltage problem, that were labelled as beta releases and accompanied by a warning that beta BIOSes are not covered by warranty or even that they void the warranty. That’s quite the unfortunate approach if the patch is fixing a problem that might cause a failure that could very easily put you into a place where you sorely need that warranty.

Some youtubers and similar commenters then came up with various other criticisms that were often not directly related to the original issue. It seems Asus probably got more flak than it deserved for the actual issue, with emotions getting the better of people often.

Beta BIOS or XMP and memory EXPO don’t void the warranty from now on

But this has probably prompted Asus to make the move announcing basically two things. Firstly, the company has officially announced that beta BIOSes (including the updates in question) do not and will not void the warranty. This has always been a bit of a grey territory, so it’s good that the situation has been clarified (and in a way that favors the users).

Of course, this policy doesn’t have to last forever and it is possible that one day, Asus will choose to exempt some particulat testing, semi-official or beta BIOS releases from warranty. Nevertheless, this sets a certain standard for now.

There’s another change coming at the same time that should represent an improvement over the long-standing situation before all this drama. Namely, in the same press release, Asus says that it also recognizes the warranty on the operation of boards with memory overclocking via XMP or AMD EXPO profiles. This is something that both AMD and Intel actually explicitly consider to be beyond the scope of warranty because it means operating the product out of spec. In practice, this has likely not affected RMA claims very often. At the very least, if you don’t tell anyone that your hardware failed with XMP memory profiles enabled, you probably won’t get burned when RMAing.

But it is good that at least one board manufacturer has acknowledged the ubiquitous use of XMP and EXPO profiles and started to consider them legitimate usage. PC gamers have these profiles enabled virtually all the time, so any other approach (insisting this functionality can void a board’s warranty) is bad. Hopefully Asus’ move will lead to the situation being straightened out in general and some better “legal framework” being established for these methods of memory overclocking.

In addition to XMP and EXPO profiles, overclocking using DOCP (Direct Overclocking Profile), which are preset profiles directly created by Asus, is also directly proclaimed to be covered by the board warranty, according to this statement.

The ASUS AM5 motherboard warranty also covers all AMD EXPO, Intel XMP, and DOCP memory configurations.

It should also be noted that the press release that clarified  – or announced change to? – the warranty terms only explicitly talks about AM5 platform boards. So, it’s possible in theory (but unlikely in practice) that this will be a bit of a privilege and will not apply to older AM4 platform boards and Intel platform boards. But in practice, the company’s approach probably won’t be much different. Moreover, in Europe, RMA claims will often be handled by the etailer where you buy the board anyway, so what Asus considers unacceptable for warranty to be honored may not even be relevant in the end.

Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme (Source: AMD)

The press release also states that all newly released BIOSes already follow the guidelines and limits set by AMD for CPU power supply and will therefore not exceed safe voltages. This is apparently in response to reports that even after BIOS updates, VSoC voltages were sometimes measured to be above 1.3V, as claimed by some youtube videos for example.

All recent BIOS updates follow the latest AMD voltage guidelines for AMD Ryzen™ 7000 series processors.

But according to Asus,those reports were probably merely a product of measurement errors. It seems that in these cases, the voltage was measured at a certain point before the processor after which the circuitry still incurs additional voltage drop (due to resistance of the wire or other components) before reaching the actual processor die and it’s relevant areas. And due to that, that the critical voltage in the processor is actually correct, despite the measurement performed earlier in the wiring path indicating otherwise. The higher voltage at that point is there on purpose to compensate for the later voltage drop. Both Asus and also Gigabyte warn that physical measurement on various points of the motherboard isn’t a realiable way to check the voltage. What is an actual relevant source of voltage info are the very precise SVI3 voltage sensors directly on the processor die that report their data for example though HWiNFO64.

Source: Asus

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš


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