Returns rates for motherboards (Update)

Using the same methodology as 6 months ago, we can today give you the returns rates for motherboards recorded at one large French online store. These figures take into account cards sold between September 2008 and February 2009, namely after between 6 months and a year of use. The statistics by make are based on a minimum sample of 500 sales, those by model on a minimum sample of 100 sales.

- MSI: 2.46% (against 3.9%)
- Gigabyte: 2.83% (against 4.4%)
- ASRock: 3.11% (against 3.6%)
- ASUSTeK: 3.5% (against 4.7%)

The first point is that there has been a real improvement in the rate of cards going wrong, with more than a point improvement from MSI and Gigabyte, and a little less from ASUSTeK. The improvement from ASRock is much more slight. This means MSI is now at the front of the field in terms of reliability, but of course a breakdown by model is needed to better understand the situation.

If you take a closer look at the returns rate by chipset, you can see that for the P45 Express, the top product over this period, classification is as follows: :

- ASUSTeK 2.69%
- Gigabyte 3.81%
- ASRock 4.22%
- MSI 7.28%

Almost inverse then! You have to say that over the period, over 62% of sales from MSI were of quite basic cards designed for integration, the P6NGM-L and K9N6SGM-V based on the GeForce 7050 and GeForce 6100 with a returns rate of 2.2 and 1%. This didn’t stop the P45 NE03-FR from coming in at 6.3% and the P45 NEO-F at 4.7%.

Gigabyte however have no model that predominates in terms of sales. The least best cards are the GA-EP45C-DS3R and X48-DS5, with returns at 6.4 and 5.1%. The Penryn1600SLI-110dB and its nForce 650i from ASRock continues its tour de force with 19.3%! We hate to say we told you so… Only one other ASRock card has a returns rate of higher than 5%, the P43TWINS1600 at 6.8%.

We finish up with ASUSTek, from whom the two best selling models, the P5Q and the P5Q Pro, have reasonable rates of 2.7 and 1.5%. These cards represent 15.9% of the manufacturer’s sales. The only problem is that at the same time there are no less than 11 other cards with returns rates of over 5%, with the top score, like last time, going to the P5NT-Deluxe (nForce 780i) at a rate of over 16.8%! Next come the Striker II Extreme (790i) at 8.6%, the Rampage Formula (X48) at 8% and the P5N-E SLI (650i) at 7.7%.