How A YouTuber Exposed A 10 Billion Company 1080p

Asus, the dominant motherboard producer, trusted by gamers for being premium and reliable, but they were wronging customers for years. This is how Asus was screwing consumers, and how one YouTuber caught them red-handed not once, but twice, and even confronted them face to face. Asus was at the top of the game. Of 37 million projected motherboard sales, 50 million were from Asus, with Gigabyte far behind at 9 million. Asus even held over 38% of the global market share and was a $10 billion company. And perhaps even stronger was their reputation. They were the enthusiast's choice. They were innovative, reliable, and had great performance. Their gaming brand, Republic of Gamers, is also huge. And Asus isn't just motherboards either. They compete across the full stack. GPUs, laptops, monitors, gaming handhelds, pretty much every product line in PC gaming. But soon, cracks in Asus's pristine brand began to show. In early 2023, users were noticing AMD Ryzen CPUs, specifically the 7000X 3D line, with physically bulging and charred. Users were, understandably, very alarmed. When investigated, the community found a common factor. Asus. Specifically, the Asus 7800X 3D motherboard. Customers began to compile more cases of this. What was going on? Well, that question brings us to Asus's worst nightmare. In the comments of one of the posts, a user asked if they could buy both the board and the CPU to investigate. This was GamersNexus, a hardware review and tech journalism channel. And soon, they revealed their findings. Here's what happened. In the Asus BIOS, or Basic Input Output System, there's an overclock setting called Expo, which allows RAM to run at its high advertised speeds, instead of the default slower speeds. Gamers often overclock their components to get the most performance out of them. When you overclock with a setting like Expo, the motherboard also needs to increase a separate voltage called SoC, which runs through the CPU. But Asus was setting this way, way too high. The BIOS on the Asus motherboard showed 1.35V, already high for an AMD CPU. But physically measuring the motherboard, Steve from GamersNexus showed the real number was between 1.39 or even 1.4V. Doesn't sound like much, but it was enough to physically burn the CPU. That's not supposed to be like that. And the reason to blast the SoC voltage like this largely comes down to laziness. It's the lazy way to ensure that there's wide compatibility without finer, deeper tuning to the BIOS in order to get the memory compatibility that they want. Yet Asus, somehow in attempting to fix it, was about to make the problem much worse. Asus sent out a BIOS version 1410, and users noticed something very strange. Asus does not give any warranties as to the suitability, compatibility, or usability of the UEFI, its firmware, or any of its content. That's right. While rolling out a fix, they quietly added that downloading it would avoid your motherboard warranty. Insane. But it somehow gets worse. Asus noted that any intentional manipulation can damage the processor, socket, and motherboard. They're technically right, but here they're referring to Expo. There's intentional manipulation, and then there's running Expo, a heavily marketed, widely used feature. Asus also quietly removed the older BIOS versions from their download page, so customers could stay on the original BIOS and risk burning their CPU, or install the fix and lose their warranty. Great. Either way, Asus wins. At least, that's probably what they thought. Steve also pointed out that if you did follow Asus' guidance to not use Expo, you'd see major performance drops. You know, on the big, fancy gaming motherboard you spent hundreds of dollars on. This follow-up video passed 1.1 million views in just one month, and soon, it began to spread. For those who dare, went from a live-love-laugh marketing tag to an actual threat. Awesome. I don't understand how Asus went from slightly more expensive but feature-rich and reliable a decade ago to overpriced gimmicks and missing out on important features. Massive shame. Asus used to be one of the brands I could trust. It was all falling apart, including Asus' prestigious reputation. The thing is, even with the burning socket, things could have been very different. So, what happened? Asus released a statement. We want to address the concerns that have been raised by our users about whether recent BIOS updates will impact the warranty of Asus' AM5 motherboards. They outlined that, contrary to their BIOS update, the warranty would cover the motherboard, including export use. Though, it doesn't seem like there was compensation for those who already had burned CPUs, and unfortunately, this was just the beginning. This, somehow, wasn't even the worst thing Asus would do, and guess who was about to catch them red-handed? But this time, it would be different, and would set up a long string of dominoes, ending with Steve confronting Asus face-to-face. If you're a developer, you know building real-time features like chat, video, and activity feeds is deceptively difficult. And when you finally deploy them after months, even more problems pop up. What happens when you hit 10,000 concurrent users instead of 10? It's months of build time and problem solving. And the worst part, people have already solved these problems. So, why build it all over again? Just use Stream. Stream gives you production-grade chat, video, audio, and activity feed APIs through one platform. Their SDKs cover iOS, Android, React, React Native, and Flutter on the client side. 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They've been providing powerful APIs for over 10 years, so they've already solved the problems you'd face on your own. If you're a developer building the next big app, use the link below to check out Stream's APIs for in-app chat, audio, video, moderation, and feeds at scale from day one. Start for free at getstream.io. Thank you to Stream for sponsoring this video. Something Asus is unfortunately known for is bad customer service. They will look for any way to void your warranty and even damage your device themselves. I sent my laptop for repair. The problem was fixed, but I received it back with new damages. There is now a dent on the back of the screen that wasn't there before, and there are slight bulges on the left and right sides of the trackpad. Not only are customers' devices treated poorly, but they also try to make customers pay for something that should actually be covered by the warranty. To be honest, the entire process feels like dealing with a fraudulent company that is trying to scam you. This was shockingly common, but there wasn't much people could do. They were negligent and slow, but Asus had all the power here. The problem, though, is that every now and then, you stumble onto someone who flips the power dynamic. Just one year after the burning CPU scandal, Gamers Nexus sent in a defective ROG Ally handheld. But unbeknownst to Asus, this would be an experiment, and they documented everything. In addition to super high-resolution photos, we also took microscope shots of the PCBs, the connectors, we logged the level of stripping on the screw heads, and we logged any damage of own to the plastics. We also removed our SSD, because our advice to anybody sending a device in for repair of any kind is to remove the drive. As soon as Asus received the ROG Ally, the red flags appeared. The same day, Asus emailed us with this, quote, we would like to inform you that your product in is out of warranty or judged as customer-induced damage CID, thus the repair charge shall be applied. Our service center will contact you with more detail. There was no way for us to respond to this. They don't have an option to reply. And in fact, the email was sent from a no-reply mailbox, which if you replied to it gets bounced as a failed descent. Asus claimed the device had signs of damage, which is not covered under warranty. So what was the damage? But it gets even weirder. There is no presented option to reject the unnecessary paid-for repair and accept only a free repair covered under their own explicit policy. Asus did not even acknowledge the real problem, the joystick issue, which was under warranty. And Asus said that if payment wasn't received, it would be sent back unrepaired and even disassembled. You would send Asus a faulty product, they would ignore it, void your warranty, charge you for something else, then threaten to send you back a truly unusable product. Many of these companies are breaking the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act. The way the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act works is the manufacturer must prove, the burden of proof is on them, when voiding your warranty, that you broke the device. They cannot have a warranty void if removed sticker. And they cannot say, well you replaced the battery on your MacBook, therefore no warranty when your CPU or GPU dies, which is very common if you own an Apple product. But what made all this worse was the time pressure. Asus will consider the customer to have declined the service if no reply is received, so you have three days to decide what do you want to do, whether you want to pay or not pay. And as you are going back and forth with Asus, that during that entire time period, they are not actually pausing that three days. Best thing about this piece of ---- garbage company here, is that they will not only send back the unit unrepaired, but disassembled, meaning that you will go from having a unit with a minor joystick problem, to a unit that is unusable. Asus, eventually after a lot of persuasion and confusing contradictory emails, finally fixed the product. But here's the bigger problem. Steve didn't just get unlucky. These are routine for Asus. Someone shared that a repair quote for an RTX 4090, which had just a tiny dent by the way, was 3,728 Canadian dollars. For context, buy the same card new for 2,799 dollars. In just one week, GamersNexus' video passed 1.5 million views. To date, it's over 2.3 million. Asus' fraud was blown right open, and everyone's eyes were on them. So, how did Asus respond? If you enjoy stories like this, with deep dives into companies like Asus, please subscribe. It's free, and we don't hit you with a secret repair fee down the road. Thanks. On May 16th, 2024, 5 days after the video, Asus issued a statement. A weird one. Currently, we perform a full analysis of devices sent for RMA, and send customers a comprehensive list of available repairs, free and paid, in our messaging to customers. We understand this may have caused confusion when a customer has only ordered a specific repair. We will no longer automatically offer repair quotations for cosmetic imperfections. We deeply apologize to our customers and the community for any confusion and frustration they might have experienced from this. Apparently, it was the customers who were confused, and Asus was simply and graciously giving consumers their options when overcharging for non-existent damage, warding your warranty, and threatening to send back your device unassembled. People weren't happy, understandably so. The backlash began to escalate. Soon on May 23rd, A more comprehensive overhaul to repairs. Promises of better communication, documentation, changes to repair prices, all of which were notorious before. But customers still weren't convinced. This is just a PR stunt to make it look like they care, and that they're doing something. They won't change. This is who they are. From now on, Asus goes on my warranties camera list. Was anything going to change, really? Two days later, Gamers Nexus released a warranty response kit. If real change was going to happen, customers had to make themselves heard. But not to Asus, to the Federal Trade Commission. The page details steps to file a complaint, along with everything a customer would need to know. And that's not all. We have begun the process of connecting with congressional and senatorial representatives, or contacting the Federal Trade Commission, and have begun interviews with experts and advocates for consumers on these matters. This was a big problem for Asus, because they had already been on the FTC's watch list. They were one of six companies to receive a warning letter about illegal warranty terms. In the meantime, however, Gamers Nexus was going to confront Asus face to face in Taiwan. In their promises of changes were just broad statements. What were they actually going to fix? Across two different discussions over three hours, Steve pressed Asus on answers and commitments to improve RMA to make them accountable. And while there were some breakthroughs, the results were mixed. At the very least, Steve twisted their arm into agreeing to a list of changes. Then, a month later, in July 2024, the FTC sent a new round of warning letters to companies about making warranties void, including Asrock, Zotac, and Gigabyte. Though, not Asus, although it had already received a warning from the FTC in 2018. And that brings us to Asus today. Has anything changed? There are signs of improvement. Asus opened a new email where And Asus, to their credit, went back and settled over 120 cases and reached out to over 300 customers who were incorrectly overcharged. A new repair center also opened in North America, instead of passing repairs to third parties at a lower cost. There's also more clarity, and any customer-induced damage cases have much more scrutiny. They've simplified the RMA search system and removed shipping fees for mixed repairs. A lot of good stuff to Asus' credit, but it's not perfect. It seems like a few things are slipping through. In December 2025, a customer sent a ROG RTX 5090 to RMA after random black screens. Asus declined the warranty due to a crack so small it was only visible under a microscope. They quoted $4,661 CAD to replace the card. Even though brand new, it usually retails around $4,059 CAD. Even after months of back and forth, the best they could do was a 50% discount, even though it should be under warranty at no cost. Customers are still nervous about buying Asus, and I don't blame them. The damage has been done. Asus betrayed customers' trust. They tried to cut costs and warranties wherever possible, and their reputation has taken a huge hit. They're still making money, of course, but dedicated fans and enthusiasts have moved on, and many will never return. It's going to take a long time to rebuild that trust, if ever. The crazy thing is that this isn't even the first time Steve from Gamers Nexus has gone head-to-head with a tech giant. If you want to hear about the new app controversy, check out this video. But until then, I'm Hari, and I'll see you guys on the next one.