https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher
It combines Epic Games Launcher, Amazon, and GOG game libraries, all into one free and open-source client that also works great on Linux! I don’t like Epic Game Launcher’s footprint, but like that they gave me GTA V for free. Heroic Games Launcher lets me download GTA V no problem on Windows, and it even hooks up to system wine on Fedora Linux!
I was updating my laptop’s TPM firmware the other day and was using the latest 11 Insider build. I disliked the idea of disk encryption since back in 2015 when it was confusing dealing with discard/trim and LVM on Linux, and never bothered with BitLocker by association.
It was only during that TPM update that the updater warned me about needing to suspend BitLocker; I don’t know what the alternative option was but I was more interested in actually checking if I had enabled it without noticing. It was automatic, and most importantly it wasn’t noticeable up until that point.
That is how disk encryption should be done!
I’ve been studying up on various methods for improving my home network security across devices, internet privacy, and encryption methods for a few months now (pretty casually though). After hearing about the awesome community-driven site privacytools.io, I decided to finally start trying to break some old habits.
The first objective I have is to break free of Google services, at least primarily. For the most part, I rely heavily on Chrome Sync, Google Voice, Gmail, Google+, and YouTube.
For Gmail, I figure I can simply just switch to another provider, and update email addresses accordingly. Two services I have in-mind are ProtonMail and Tutanota. ProtonMail seems to have a waiting list currently due to the a large volume of sign-ups lately, but Tutanota is instant-access. Both providers offer a free service, end-to-end encryption, and 1GB of storage. I don’t use email heavily for “important” matters, so 1GB should be more than enough (I’m only using about 0.6GB on Gmail currently). I want to give ProtonMail a go before deciding on which provider I want, but my short time with Tutanota was pleasant.
Update: One advantage that Tutanota has over ProtonMail is that it is open-source. ProtonMail’s waiting list is also apparently somewhat random when it comes to wait times. With both of those in-mind, I’ll accept Tutanota as my main email provider.
For a social network, I’m highly considering Friendica on a local, self-hosted machine. At quick glance, it seems all I would need is an Apache and MySQL server, and a general GUI setup process, which doesn’t seem too bad at all (I’ve set-up some WordPress and Joomla servers in the past), but I’ll have to figure out some more details on this.
I mainly used Chrome Sync for passwords, and I never really got into using things like LastPass. Two services that seem really interesting are Master Password and SuperGenPass. The idea behind those two services is that you take a “master password”, add some details to it (like a website name), and you get a hash-generated password to use. The generated passwords should be the same across all devices, and you don’t need to rely on a sync service or password vault (so basically, as long as you remember your master password, you’re good to go).
My browser of choice for a good while was Google Chrome, mainly for Chrome Sync, but also because it worked well with pretty much anything I threw at it. Firefox in-comparison has/had bad hardware-acceleration support and inconsistent video playback abilities on Linux. As I’m typing this however, I’m running Firefox 38 on Fedora 22, and my experience for the most part has been pretty good with minor issues. I may give IceWeasel a try in the future (due to some more questionable Firefox additions by Mozilla), but it being pretty behind Firefox in versions is somewhat concerning.
So pretty much, I’m in a planning phase currently. Transitioning data to new services and trying to get used to them will take a bit of time, but I’m sure it’ll pay off in the end along with being a great learning experience.
As for what I’ve done so far, I flashed my D-Link DSL-2750B modem from Verizon firmware to stock firmware. Verizon hasn’t updated the firmware on these modems since 2013, but D-Link does release updates occasionally for this device (the latest update being on 2015-03-25). Updates are nice and all, but generally speaking, I trust D-Link a little bit more than Verizon when it comes to modem firmware from a security-standpoint.
I’ve also blocked outside access to and from my Seagate NAS. I only use the NAS locally, so this isn’t a problem at all, but according to a reviewer, Seagate “reserves the right” to upload files from the NAS without consent according to the license agreement. Not sure on the validity of this claim, but better to be safe than sorry I suppose. I want to upgrade to a FreeNAS solution at some point in the future.
And finally, I’ve stopped using Windows as a primary operating system. I mainly used Windows because of gaming, but PC gaming is meaning less and less to me nowadays. I’ve been using Linux primarily for a bit now, and my distro of choice currently is Fedora.
There’s been quite a bit of fuss in the past about Intel’s C++ compiler and how it unfairly performs worse on non-Intel hardware, and it’s been proven in quite a few scenarios. The most popular discussion area about this is Agner`s CPU blog.
So out of curiosity, I decided to check if StarCraft II was affected by this. I installed VMware Player, installed a copy of Windows 8 (64-bit; didn’t have a 32-bit image lying around), did some minor tweaking, figured out how to CPU spoof (pro-tip: you need Virtualization enabled under host BIOS), and installed StarCraft II. Specific hardware and software testing conditions can be found at the bottom of this post.
I did three different tests. The first test was me first observing the framerate when looking right at the main base without moving the camera, and just selecting the nearest mineral node. The first test also included me creating 25 Zealots and moving them into a corner. StarCraft II had an unfinished update during this process, and I also had all my normal background applications opened on the host operating system.
The second test was the same, but StarCraft II was fully updated, and all background applications on the host operating system were closed.
The third test was me observing 208 Zerglings in a corner, with all background applications closed.
I chose those methods of testing because I wanted a simple test that was both consistent and reproducible without too much room for variance.
The framerates did vary a good bit between processors. The framerates reported on the graph is the average framerate. These are particularly interesting results, considering the Intel processor I was spoofing was actually worse than the FX-8350.
Now for the specifics. Here is the hardware and software present on the host operating system:
Graphics: MSI R7850 Twin Frozr 2GD5/OC (1120MHz Core, 1200MHz Memory, Xtreme-G 14.12 Omega drivers)
Processor: AMD FX-8350 (8 cores @ 4.5GHz, no Turbo Core)
Power Supply: Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W
Monitors: Acer S201HL (3x all at 1600×900@75Hz)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Technical Preview Version 10.0.9926 (64-bit)
Memory: G.SKILL Sniper 8GB (2x4GB, F3-10666CL9D-8GBSR, default speed/timings)
Audio: ASUS Xonar DG (UniXonar drivers)
VMware: Player (7.0.0 build-2305329)
And the hardware and software present on the guest operating system:
Memory: 3GB
Processors: 4 cores
Graphics: VMware SVGA 3D (1GB VRAM, 8.14.1.51 driver version)
Display: 1024×768
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro Version 6.3.9600 (64-bit)
CPU-Z Report for AMD CPU
CPU-Z Report for Spoofed Intel CPU
StarCraft II Specifics:
Version: 2.1.8.33553
Graphics: 1024×768, Low Texture Quality, Low Graphics Quality
Sound: 128 Sound Channels
Voice: Disabled Voice Chat
Map: $$$Fastest TvB$$$ v1.1 by truenoob
Test 1 Specifics:
– All background applications (Steam, Evolve, Plex Media Server, MSI Afterburner + RTSS, puush) were running on the host operating system.
– StarCraft II was playable, but had an incomplete update (was last updated in middle of December 2014).
– Test occurred during solo-play on the bottom-section of the map.
– Played as Protoss.
– First test involved selecting the nearest mineral node, centering the mouse cursor on it, and observing the frame rate. The camera was not moved at all.
– Second test involved creating 25 Zealots. I put all builders on the same mineral node, took one builder, moved straight-down from the Nexus, built 5 Pylons, and put 3 Gateways on the sides of the Pylons (6 altogether). Builder was placed in the middle of the buildings. I then created Zealots until I reached the population limit (50). All 25 Zealots were then moved to the bottom-left corner of the map until they spread out and filled the corner and the area like a triangle. Frame rate was observed for a few minutes.
Test 2 Specifics:
– All background applications on the host operating system were closed.
– StarCraft II was fully updated.
– Test was exactly the same as Test 1 after that (bottom of map, 25 Zealots).
Test 3 Specifics:
– Same as Test 2 initially (background applications closed on host, up-to-date SC2).
– Played as Zerg.
– Played on top-section of map.
– Had one geyser, 9 drones on mineral node, and 1 drone on vespene.
– 13 Overlords (all moved to top-right of map) for a population limit of 112.
– 4 Hatcheries each with their own Queen.
– Continued creating Zerglings from each Hatchery until population limit was reached.
So I recently picked up a Xbox 360 off of eBay (got a really good deal on it for $25). Has a tiny bit of cosmetic damage, but it seems to run fine. The console didn’t come with any cables however, but I had a spare HDMI cable and controller lying around. What I didn’t have was a spare power brick though, nor a regular ATX power supply with appropriate output power.
The Xbox 360 I received is a late-model Jasper unit (last unit before the Slim models). Mine also seems to be one of the rarer ones with internal memory (512MB of it), which is pretty nice. There was save data from the previous owner on both storage devices though, so once I got the console up and running, I did a factory-reset on it (more on that in a little bit).
So, the Xbox 360 was in good looking condition, but having nothing to power it wasn’t really helpful. I started asking some people about whether they had a spare power brick, and even ran downtown to see if a few thrift stores happened to have any (unfortunately all the stores I checked were closed). Eventually a friend of mine finds a relatively decent ATX power supply that I could borrow, so I ran down his place to pick it up, along with a game. The power supply ended up being a Antec EarthWatts EA-500, and has more than enough power to run the Xbox 360 (the Jasper unit needs at least 150W, 12A on the 12V rail and 1A on 5V).
I then did a little bit more research into how to actually hook the PSU up, and found that it was actually relatively simple to just use the power from the Molex adapters (preferably more than one so load can be distributed). You could also use power from the CPU power connectors, or the 20+4 cable itself if you know what you’re doing.
I used two molex connectors from the PSU, and made sure that both connectors were on separate cables. Since this wasn’t my PSU, I couldn’t just splice the wire, so I cut some female molex adapters I had lying around and used those.
Inside the Xbox 360 power port, you have a bottom row of three holes. Above that is another row of three holes. And on the top, you have two pins (at least on Jasper; I think early models have a single bar). The general idea is to hook the black wires on the molex connector to the bottom three holes, the yellow wires to the three holes above, and a red wire to the left pin. The right-top pin is unused (I’m unsure what it does, but similar guides seem to ignore it as well). For the six holes, jamming a thick wire into the hole should be all that’s needed for a snug connection. For the pin at top, I had to fold the wire over once to make it a little bit thicker, then I just pushed it in the space.
Since there isn’t an actual motherboard controlling the PSU on the 20+4 connector, you have to power it on via the pin short trick (aka the paper clip test method). It involves connecting the green wire to a nearby black wire.
So once everything was securely hooked up, I turned on the PSU (switch on the back), and then pushed the power button on the Xbox itself. No explosions, pops, or smoke were seen, and the Xbox powered on. Played a little bit of some Need for Speed game just to make sure the PSU could handle load, and it did without issue.
Overall, this mod turned out great, and was a nice learning process. I’m unsure how it will hold up overtime, and the general consensus from others who’ve done the mod is that such a setup shouldn’t be ran long-term for some reason. I plan on ordering a power brick at some point in the near future though, so I likely won’t keep such a setup long-term either, but it is nice to know that this is easily possible.
Now back to the factory-reset. After I verified the console works and I got it in an ideal location, I decided to try factory-resetting the Xbox, erase all content on the storage devices, and restore my profile onto it. Erasing the storage devices was simple enough. Factory-resetting however was a bit more difficult.
With a bit of searching, it seems you can factory-reset a Xbox 360 by pressing a ten-length button combination on the System Info screen. The catch is, it seems this button combination isn’t consistent between users and devices, so searching online for this combination is a gamble. May get lucky with the first combination you try, maybe the fifth, or maybe none at all.
The standard button combination begins with LT, RT, X, Y, LB, RB. The next four buttons after is what varies. I called up Xbox support and after verifying my account ownership and giving the representative my console’s serial number, I was provided with a button combination that worked (LT, RT, X, Y, LB, RB, Left, Left, Down, X; use the D-pad to enter arrow directions). I’m unsure what determines this button combination, or whether or not it changes over-time.
Once that was handled, I restored my gamer profile, and all was well after that. At some point, I plan on grabbing a copy of Warriors Orochi 3 and possibly Diablo III and playing them.
As for how I got the Xbox for $25, I decided to check eBay one day when I saw a friend selling his console, and wanted to get a general price on it. Was total luck that I saw the $25 listing, and was lucky I even got the order in for it (there was a quantity of 20 listed, I bought one, and then someone came by and bought the last seven). The seller claims he was trying to get rid of old stock to make-room for a new batch. This was the listing here.
I wanted to play a few classic games as of lately, and StarCraft was one of those games. I lost my CD key a while back though, but a friend was kind enough to allow me to use his.
In the past, Blizzard games had a normal CD key. With the new feature of being able to add classic games to your Battle.net account however, this introduced another key. And to make matters even more interesting, the keys are not interchangeable (so only the classic CD key could be used with the classic installers, while the new Battle.net keys can only be used with the digital download installers). The key my friend gave me was the digital download version.
I knew Blizzard allowed you to download some of their game client downloaders, so I went over to their site to look for StarCraft. As it would seem however, Blizzard doesn’t allow you to download their classic games unless you have them attached to your Battle.net account.
So the next idea I had was to just find someone who had StarCraft attached to their account, have them get the downloader, and upload it somewhere for me to use. This proved a bit difficult at first, but I eventually found another friend who owned it, and he was able to provide me with the downloader. Blizzard’s ownership verification seems to stretch far however, and I was unable to use the downloader. I’m unsure how they actually verify ownership at this point.
I was curious as to what the View tab had on the downloader, but once the Error message appears, you can no longer interact with the downloader window, and pressing OK or closing the Error window results in the downloader closing. So in order to see what the View tab had, I just opened up a downloader for a game I actually had on my account (WarCraft III). There was a Connection Info option and a Log option, and both ended up providing some useful information.
So lets start with the Connection Info option. There’s a couple of interesting addresses shown here. Most notable was the rouge.blizzard.com address, but following up on that didn’t really lead to anything useful. The important bit was the Download Hash. Searching that hash on Google pulled up some torrents for the WarCraft III download.
Next is the Log option. It was less interesting, but the important bit here was the tracker address.
So the next task was to just get the Download Hash for StarCraft. I noticed there was a little bit of delay between when the downloader opened and the Error message appeared. I figured the downloader did something internet-related during that period, so I had the idea of just slowing down my connection a bit in order to delay the Error message from appearing (was as simple as just re-opening WarCraft III’s downloader). This worked surprisingly, and I was able to get to the Connection Info section.
I searched StarCraft’s download hash in Google, and managed to find a torrent for it. I also added Blizzard’s tracker announcer URL to the torrent as well, and gained some peers from it, and so far, it seems to be downloading nicely.
Once the download completed, I verified it, and installed it without any issue.
Information:
StarCraft Download Hash (enUS): 59688D4CC5EA7E2186F2651C8E87987B273972C9
WarCraft III Download Hash (enUS): BB58D8C639601EAC07AA6D6273B0F443B2836FF9
Blizzard Tracker Announcer URL: http://us.tracker.worldofwarcraft.com:3724/announce
StarCraft Magnet URL: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=5Z6jEV9g
I’ve been making People Chow for about a week now, so I figure I’d just present how I prepare it.
These are the ingredients I use in order to prepare People Chow. Everything aside from the oil, salt, and corn flour was ordered online. The oil is Crisco Vegetable Oil. This recipe also uses water. To the right is a small scale and cup.
Once all the ingredients are in the container, I add some water, and then shake the container to mix the ingredients. I find that filling it about 1/3rd the way full gives an ideal smoothie-like texture. I use lukewarm water.
After shaking, I put it into the fridge and let it sit overnight. I find this helps improve the texture and taste quite a bit. It’s also nice to have it ready for consumption right in the morning.
I use a small, but wide glass cup (not sure on a specific name for it) for drinking People Chow, and just grab a cup of it whenever I feel like it.
If I got the calculations right, all of the ingredients shown above (minus the oil and corn flour) should last at least a month. The Whey Protein Isolate should last way longer than that. Would need about 5-6 bags of the corn flour per-month, but the price of it should be really good if you can pick it up in-store (emphasis on in-store; online prices are usually much higher, especially on Amazon strictly because of this recipe).
I recently bought a new container with a large lid opening, so that should make future batches much easier to make. It was about $4 in a local store, and it has a nice secure lid.
Here is a list of the ingredients I used and where I bought them:
MASECA Instant Corn Flour Masa Mix (Giant Eagle)
NOW Foods Whey Protein Isolate Natural Vanilla Powder (Wal-Mart)
GNC Men’s Mega Men Sport Vanilla Bean (Amazon)
NOW Foods Cal-Mag Citrate (Amazon)
BulkSupplements Pure Potassium Citrate Powder (Amazon)
Morton Iodized Salt (Giant Eagle)
Pure Choline Bitartrate Bulk Powder (Amazon)
Crisco Pure Vegetable Oil (Giant Eagle)
…and it was pretty messy.
I mixed up some of the ingredients last night to prepare for when I got the final ingredient I needed today (the Whey Protein Isolate) in a blender. I didn’t add any oil or water to the mix. This was the first mistake.
My blender only fits about 5 1/2 cups of liquid. Adding all the ingredients minus the water used about 4 cups of that space, and trying to blend through all that powder doesn’t work.
I added some water to the top of the mix, stirred as much of it as I could, then transferred a bit over to another container. I continued to do this until the container was about half-full. By that time, I was also able to use the blender to mix the remaining ingredients with some water.
I added a bit of water to the container, and shook it to try to mix the clumps that were in it, and then transferred what was left in the blender into it. The mix took up the entire container. So I transferred some of it back to the blender, blended it, and put it back into the container, and repeated this process a few times. A tiny bit of People Chow was lost during this process (a bit spilled over the side).
Eventually I ended up with what I believe is an evenly-mixed batch of People Chow. I sat it in the fridge to allow it to settle for a bit, so I’ll see how it turned out later; should be pretty interesting. It has a bit of a smoothie-like texture to it.
For the next batch, I plan on using a 2-gallon container; that should give plenty of room for shake-mixing the ingredients together, and allow me to experiment with different levels of water.
For anyone who doesn’t know what People Chow is, it’s a popular DIY soylent recipe designed to be nutrient-complete. It’s basically everything you need nutrient-wise (for the most part; body builders may want to add more protein, but you’re free to modify it however you want really), put into a convenient drink mixture. It’s designed to be inexpensive as well.
And for anyone who wants more information on official Soylent, you can check it out here. Once they get the handling time handled, I would love to order some to try it out.
I’m currently studying Japanese. I’m nowhere near good enough yet to understand Japanese media without subtitles, but I still like trying to watch in hopes that I’ll pick up on a few words or something.
I came across an archive containing what seems to be an unrestricted version of NTKTV, containing access to several channels. It’s coded in Java also, but it expects Windows, Command Prompt, and Windows Media Player to be present.
When I initially tried running the .jar file for the TBS channel on Linux, it refused to download the video. I couldn’t quite figure out why this was happening, so I figured I would try a different approach. I used some program to decompile the .jar, and after a little bit of searching, I eventually found a URL.
The URL in the TBS channel lead to http://61.172.249.113:8080/jptv24vod/TBS01.xml which contains a mms address, followed by a list of available video files. So with that in-mind, I just took the mms address + a video file, and put that address into VLC media player.
This method worked, but it was not reliable. Sometimes it would work, but most of the times VLC would complain about not being able to find the file. When it did work though, it would work without issue for a few hours. This also led me to create a playlist, and in this playlist, I queued up an entire day’s worth of video. Was relatively easy to do since the video files all follow a certain format (TBS01_20141022_1800.asf = TBS01 (channel) + YYYY-MM-DD + Hour). If I recall correctly, this allowed for seamless playback of media from NTKTV’s server. This method of streaming got more unreliable as time went on, and I eventually just gave up on it, and continued to use the .jar file on Windows for some time.
I decided to check a forum thread about methods for streaming Japanese TV again a little bit ago, and saw that someone mentioned they had gotten NTKTV working on OS X (but they didn’t bother to post how). I replied to another post about why it didn’t work on Linux, and an idea hit me.
The way NTKTV works is, it downloads a small chunk of the video from the server to the OS’s temp folder, opens up Windows Media Player, and then continues to download the rest of the video in the background, while WMP plays it back. The issue on Linux however was that the video refused to start downloading at all.
When starting the .jar file in Terminal, I noticed a os_temp: line (which I somehow missed months ago). This line by-default led to /tmp/. My user account however does not have RW access to this folder, and I imagine this is the reason why the .jar couldn’t initiate the download. So the idea here was to change where Java should throw temporary files.
With a little bit of searching, I came across this page, which mentioned the command java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/path/to/tmpdir. I simply added that to the command I was using, and lo and behold, NTKTV’s app downloaded files just fine.
 |
| Playback is fine with mpv 🙂 |
My next objective is to figure out how to get my Chromecast involved. Was easy in Windows; just relied on VLC’s browser plugin, casted the tab, and threw the .asf into Chrome. Now that NPAPI plugin support is gone from Chrome in Linux however, the plugin no longer works.
Edit: Videostream seems to do a great job. It can also handle video files that are still downloading in the background too.
And for anyone curious, the full command I use to set the tmp directory and launch the .jar file is: java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/home/espionage724/tmp -jar ‘/home/espionage724/Videos/ntktv/Kantofixed/TBS.jar’
This is my first attempt at doing an RMA with ASRock, and it may very well be the last time I do business with them.
A couple of months back, I was looking to purchase a new motherboard, as the BIOSTAR A880G+ I had was starting to show it’s age, along with not having too much room for future upgrades. The main features I was looking into when deciding on what motherboard to purchase were:
– UEFI
– AM3+
– Support for AMD’s highest-end FX processors (at the time).
There was a decent motherboard from MSI I had my eye on, but due to reviews, it seemed to of had mixed reviews on higher-end FX processor compatibility. So that’s when I settled for the ASRock 970 Extreme3 motherboard. At the time of purchase, this motherboard on ASRock’s product page had listed support for the FX-8350.
So I get the motherboard, and all is well for a couple of months. I finally got enough money gathered up, and decided I wanted to get that FX-8350 I planned on buying. I wanted to see how good this motherboard was with overclocking higher-end FX processors, so I went to check out some reviews from other people. That’s when the problems began.
To my surprise, there were plenty of mixed-results about how the FX-8350 performed on the 970 Extreme3. There were reviews ranging from the processor working fine at stock clocks, throttling under load, not having much overclocking room, down to the motherboard just not posting at all (to be fair, I’m pretty sure a BIOS update could resolve posting issues). I also noticed a review that said that ASRock removed the processor support note for the FX-8350.
I had to see it for myself, so I went over to ASRock’s product page, and sure enough, the FX-8350 was no longer on the support list for the 970 Extreme3. I didn’t think ASRock would originally list support for that processor without first checking it for themselves,so I decided to contact their tech support and inquire more into the matter.
The tech I spoke to was pretty helpful. He explained that the FX-8350 draws a large amount of power, and thus generates a good bit of heat. Depending on the environment, this could cause the VRM chips to overheat, and cause the processor to throttle. He also recommended that if I were to buy such a processor, to put a chassis fan over the VRM area to help prevent such overheating. So, turns out the processor would “work”, but not as ideally as I was originally led to believe.
I asked if I could exchange the motherboard for one that had true FX-8350 compatibility, and was told that customer support would contact me within 24-hours. Sadly, that’s the extent of how great ASRock’s customer support seems to be.
Five days have passed, and I haven’t heard from customer support yet. I send an email to the tech I was speaking to stating I would call up customer support later that day, and asked if he had a reference number or something. He said to just let them know I already spoke to tech support so they don’t redirect back to them. Seemed slightly sketchy that they don’t just communicate better, but alright.
Called up ASRock’s customer service, and eventually was able to speak to a person. I explained my situation fully along with mentioning I spoke to tech support already, and was told that I would receive an email with instructions to begin the RMA process. No problem; got the email a short time later, filled it out (once again detailing my situation fully), and also asked that the replacement motherboard be a Fatal1ty 990FX Killer (may of been a bit greedy with that request), but also said that it was ultimately up to them to decide what I get. At the least, I expected the 970 Extreme3 R2.0 board, which does advertise FX-8350 compatibility.
Two days go by and I haven’t heard anything. I call up customer support again, and can’t get a hold of the original person I spoke to. Was able to talk to another representative though, and I re-explained my situation. He then told me to email him a copy of the RMA request form along with the invoice. I sent it over, and waited a bit, but since I didn’t hear anything with the first request, I decided to call-in again just to confirm they can receive the emails. Was able to confirm they got the email that time.
Later on that day I get approved for the RMA, and get sent instructions as to how to send the motherboard. I send off the motherboard, and it gets to ASRock about six days later.
Three days pass, and I haven’t heard anything more from customer support, so I send them an email. Didn’t hear anything back that same day, but the next day I call them up and ask about it. Was told that it would take some time to test a new motherboard to verify it works, and was also told that I would be emailed when they shipped it out with a tracking number. I thought everything would be fine after that, so I just decided to wait until I got my new motherboard.
Eleven days pass now, without any updates from ASRock as to when they would ship my new motherboard. Getting concerned, I decide to try to call up ASRock today and ask what was going on, but was only able to get their general mailbox (during office hours). I went off to do some other things, and to my surprise, a package from FedEx arrives. Checked it out, and it was from ASRock. Was strange they didn’t even bother giving me an email that they shipped the thing, but that was fine, because I finally got the motherboard.
I open the box up, and noticed the motherboard looked awfully familiar. Looked at it up and down in full detail, and confirmed it was the same model (but not the same exact) motherboard that I sent in originally. I was baffled by this discovery, but then I thought that maybe ASRock just modified the board in some way to meet my original request (which was to get a new motherboard that could truly handle the FX-8350 processor). I called up ASRock once again just to see if this was the case.
The customer support representative I spoke to wasn’t entirely helpful, just said that I should have received a replacement motherboard. I asked if it was modified in any way, and she offered to transfer me to the tech that handled the RMA request. I accepted the offer, and was put on hold for about 5-10 minutes before the customer support rep came back and said that the tech was busy, and asked if I wanted to wait (with no ETA), or just get a call back from the tech. I took the latter, and went off to do other things.
Got a call back later in the day from the tech, and explained my situation yet again. The tech however didn’t seem to care, and along with stating “the FX-8350 won’t work on that motherboard” also threw the assumption that I “just wanted a free motherboard”. Seriously? Why was my RMA request even accepted if it wasn’t even going to be honored? He also said I could just pay the difference for a new motherboard, but wasn’t aware of any pricing or anything. I re-explained the situation again, and he put me on hold to talk to customer support. Was on hold for about 5 minutes before a customer support rep came on the line and without apologizing, told me that they could do an exchange for the 970 Extreme3 R2.0 board, but I had to send the original customer support rep I spoke to my new motherboard’s serial number (you would think they would just know). Was also told that I had to ship the motherboard I received back to them first too.
I’m not made of money. I paid to ship the motherboard to ASRock originally, and expected them to honor my RMA request, and they didn’t. So along with wasting my time, I now have to pay for shipping once again to give them the motherboard back? I sent the email with the serial number, and also requested a prepaid shipping label, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they denied such a request.
There is some serious lack-of communication down in ASRock America’s office, and it’s not something I would want anyone to have to deal with. I’ll still be keeping in-contact with ASRock to get this ordeal settled (and will update here accordingly), but I won’t be purchasing from them in the future, or recommending them to others. This was probably my most frustrating RMA process yet.
Update: I have detailed the rest of the experience over on reddit and pastebin. It’s been a bit of time since the ordeal, so I’m not certain I can really detail how the rest of the experience played out like I did here up until now without essentially copy and pasting. To quickly sum-up as to what happened though, ASRock sent me a prepaid label (with some difficulty), dropped contact for a while once again, then told me I had to pay $50 to upgrade my board out of nowhere. Ended up calling back later to decline, and they told me they couldn’t do the paid upgrade anyway, so there was wasted effort all around. Got the BBB involved (led nowhere except another negative mark on ASRock America’s BBB profile), and Newegg involved (with a bit of pushing, they agreed in the end to refund my motherboard, but I had already gotten rid of it).
My advice is to not buy products from ASRock. They don’t check their hardware to be fully compatible with components they state, and they clearly don’t have the customer’s best interest in-mind. I can also say the two motherboards I’ve owned from ASRock were pretty questionable quality-wise too. I had a Fatal1ty H97 Killer (relatively newer board), and the board was incredibly flexible in the middle.