So would you still consider him as a “trusted” dealer??

TE market section seem to be on fire one way or the other but this time it involves a dealer. If people haven’t read/don’t recall, this is somewhat a follow-up of my previous blog post “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!!!” and yes this time amarbir (owner of lynx-india.com) is facing a lot of gunshots from more than one member- this time making sure that everyone states the fact and backs it up with facts, screenshots and scans of their invoices.

me_ankit made a thread over here (need to sign up to view the content) on 7 Feb 10, 12:06 AM and I quote the following words:

A have been a member of this forum since a few days now though I may have not been active. I saw advertisements of lynx-india.com in the dealer section and decided to order a Razer Mako 2.1 Speaker system . I thought that as the dealer was listed and was advertising on these forums he would be reliable.

I made the payment against order Lynx-3631 on 16th Jan of Rs 17760/- in his ICICI a/c and sent him a sms on the same day. I had made the payment after confirming that the system was in stock on his helpline no.

The order status was showing Still Awaiting payment when I checked on 18th Jan. I called him on 9815000133 and told about the order status still showing awaiting payment. I asked if it was necessary to sms him again the refused and told me that he would take care of it.

When I checked on 21st Jan, my order status was still showing awaiting payment. I called him again on the same no. and he talked in a very rude way and told me “You guys dont know how to follow instructions” re: the sms which I had sent and called again to confirm. He asked for a few more hours of time. He also stated that according to his policy he will ship the goods after 15 days.

Finally the site showed that my payment was received after 3-4 days more.
It is 6th Feb today (21 days since I have made payment) and my goods have not been dispatched yet.

The worse part is that I was buying the product on my friend’s behalf and I had myself suggested purchasing through lynx after seeing advertisements on the forums. I am worried that I may have lost the money. I have never really encountered such a dealer and would have gladly purchased from another shop even if I had to pay more if I knew I would have to go throught all this headache just to buy a speaker system.

Keeping the usual rants aside, Amarbir has replied (with loads of BS comments- and please excuse his idiotic antics of using capital letters for every damned word):

I Am Also Have a Major Issue With Delhi And Bombay People Who Are Online Mostly ,As They Have Thier Own Unions And Work In Bunches Which We Small City People Cannot Handle As We Do Not Have That Fan Following ,Due To this Pressure I Am Not Very Regular In TE ,I Hardly Post And Create Threads And Cordinate Here ,The Only Thing I Am Doing Is Replying To PM After Few Days Now .Secondly Each thing Purchased From Me Is Never discussed And Thanked Over Only 1 to 2 Deals In a 100 Orders that Are Delayed Due To Many Factors Are Discussed And That Too In TE Feedback Area even If The Product Was Not Purchased Here And Done On My Website .I Am Not Trading Much Here And I Do That On My Own Forums Now And Cordinate Quite Well with The Small Bunch Of Community People I Have There .Once I Solve The Customs Issue In Delhi [ I Will Have To Go There ] I Might Revive Some Threads .So Please Relax And Sit Back I Already Am Aware Of this And i Am Trying My Best To Solve This .

Sadly, dealers have fanboys all of a sudden and dealers like Amarbir will just stoop to any level to take advantage of the situation to claim himself as “innocent”. Its even more sad that people who pay for their products and don’t get anything out of hooting around for their favourite (and corrupted) dealers:

gokufan was the first example in that thread and I quote:

amarbir is a really helpful i had ordered recently a wd blue 640gb hdd which also got backordered .but he sent it as soon as he got it and packing was good.

(Un)Suprisingly, Amarbir responded not more than approx 5 minutes to that post and replied:

Its Not That Its about A Bunch Of People The [ Union ] At Work Here .Sometimes WE As Resellers Just Cannot Help It .Sure Like You There Are Thousands Of People Who Get Material And Have Been Getting Material .Our Current Order Is More Then 3800 Orders ,Its Not a Joke To Sell That Much ,From My Side i Try Now Sometimes I Deliver But Rarely Sometimes I Can Fail Too Like Many People [ its Pretty Human ]

The guy is very prompt in taking money and charging VAT, but very prompt in hogging any way of pretending to be “innocent”. It doesn’t end over there. asingh, although he has said that he is not being a fanboy, said the following on that thread:

Well, I had ordered all my equipment from Amarbir. Not being an Amarbir-fan-boy here. But he is quite good. I remember my deal clearly with him.

It was clearly obvious that people don’t know what’s happening and seem to be temporarily mesmerized by his “charm” and his big speech of being a small fish in a big sea (but in really, the small fish is actually a piranha). What did Amarbir say, well?

Thank You ,Now Prannas Friend Amol Patel will Also Comment Wait And Watch ,I Told You There Is a [Union] ,This Fellow Blamed Me For Not Acknowleding His Payment Though Issue Was With His Bank And He On The Second Attempt Managed To Pay Me ,But Util He Is Alive He will Just Blame Me again And again .

Yeah, he termed the people who stated facts and vented their genuine frustrated as “The union”.  Asingh continued and said “It seems like a case guilty until proven innocent.”

Shripad made a post on 12th feb that the OP finally got the speakers and closed the thread. If Ankit did not make a thread, would you be suprised if he taken if longer time? Consider it as a speculation if you want to, check lynx India’s post sales section. Now before Amarbir acts too smart of himself and deletes those threads (hey, he stooped to this level already as it is) I have taken few of the screenshots of the complaints:

—-
It didn’t just end it over there, it went on but on chip. mundu, a member who joined chip forums given a price quote of corsair vx450, to which I responded:

Word of advice, many had problems with the way lynx india does business. I have my own reasons to be skeptical about lynx and theitwares. Stick to prime, theitdepot and such places. Go to http://primeabgb.com, shoot an email and get a quote and about payment options.

How can warranty be honoured if no serial code of the product is not mentioned on the bill itself? I loled at point #2 under terms and conditions. WTF does it mean by “principal policies”. Define “unless otherwise stated”. The warranty is honoured by the manufacturer which is taken care by the distributors and/or service centres, not the dealers. Shady bills/challans with weird terms and conditions would make one look somewhere else. People don’t usually concentrate on such points, but these points are necessary because of such colourful words, replacement takes a lot of time.

And then I put up a post with someone’s bill saying that he simply doesn’t mention the serial number. Asingh was also in that forum and he said the following:

Oh..crap…! ya..! Need to check mine now. Sh**

I didn’t follow up with asingh at that point of time because I knew the next time amarbir would on the limelight, he will be facing lot of angry people and he did. nash8789 made a complaint on TE (again) over here. I quote the entire post:

I hav feedback regarding lynx-india (amarbir) which I feel would be useful to all Techenclave members.

so on the 13th Feb I decided to buy the Head Direct RE0 earphones(lynx order id 3947 from amarbir singh.
Before I could go and finalize the deal I had a online chat with his employee regarding the product.
Here is the feedback regarding that conversation
1)employee changes his stand after every 30sec if he has or doesn’t hav it in stock
2)zero knowledge about the product
got in touch with amarbir regarding this

My observations about amarbir before the deal(before a transaction or deal)
1)sir this is best product
2)pls transfer the money and I will send it to you in 2 days
3)very polite and responsive

so on 17th I order my head direct earphones from his website.It takes him another 2 days to process my order.so on the 19th I make the payment through ICICI bank account and after an hr call amarbir to let him know about the money transfer

amarbir reply=>”sir plsss dont put pressure on me ,am busy and please do the forum registration first”

at this point he could hav well said I can check and get back to u
all he kept saying is I do not work under pressure

so i did the tedious forum registration on his site which requires a new user-name and password and created a new topic with my lynx order id and payment details for the same

had an online chat with amarbir regarding when can this order be shipped

Amarbur reply=>Sir I do not work under pressure, and I cant give you a timeframe(this is a change in stance according to what he said before the deal)(he tends to be very rude for which he says he has his own rules that he likes to follow which make him look loud and rude on the phone).

my order finally reached today after forcing him to ship it ASAP or reporting this to techenclave

so here is his feedback in brief:
1)whether you like it or not you are very rude to be classified as India best computer shop (or whatever),I personally dnt care what you claim to be.

2)When you claim that you can handle 20,000 orders a day more than what other dealers in Techenclave do
I as a customer am least interested what your turnover is .moreover it is disrespect to other dealers in the community by saying something like that.
also all of us know u need Techenclave and not the other way around

3)when I pay for something it is my right to call you if the amount reached you or not

4)If you promise before deal for time frame regarding a shipment you cant tell me it will take 15 days or 4-5 days like most orders.
Please dont say 75% of are shipment is released in 2 days and rest in 15 days
Stick to yr commitment!!!
this puts an impression you never had the product in stock with you.

5)respect the Techenclave community (dont say I have my own forums so I will work according to my way)
Then I guess u shud’nt be advertising your product in Techenclave
nor am I intrested to see how many members your forum has in comparison

6)have respect for other dealers in community like itwares and mediahome and other dealers even if they have the same product as yours at a lower price band
as a customer I am always entitled to the best deal.

7)and last but the most imp one for the deal gone dirty which you accused me of is you saying
“Please dont put me under pressure.I dnt work in this manner”

for this I suggest never promise your customer any timeframe
and Please make that as a tag line and part of every product terms and conditions that(amarbir singh does not work under pressure)

I would like to ask the mods with regards to what sort of rating am I entitled to give after this experience.my product in comparson has reached me on time.but this has to be my last deal with him.I prefer KMD anyday for such products!!!

–

I highlighted the part where he said that one will have to register on his forum. I simply said:

Why do people dealing via TE have to register on his (lynx’s) forum? Why do people have to post over there when people who dealt via TE has such problems? Pretty simply, amarbir can remove all the threads and posts that display the negative feedback, whereas in TE, one can’t remove it unless mods/admins delete the thread, which they will not do it.

Our forum’s admin Renegade made a comment:

If he is asking you to register on his forum for support then you can clearly say no and report back to us. If you are buying something which has been advertised on TE, currently audio products, then you are supposed to get reply to PM and threads here on TE.

That means every ignorant buyer out there joined his forums? Are they idiots? Did none of them did not have a bulb over their head to think that if they are buying via TE through a registered dealer, why does he have to join some other forum for service?

I pmed Asingh on TE and the conversation went like this:

Okay, so does that mean that even Asingh is the part of “The union”- I don’t know. I ain’t commander shepard .

Asingh has made a point about most of the contents on the bill having any serial code of the product whatsoever. dOm1naTOr, a literal dumbass (pardon my french) and apparently a lynx fanboy said the following:

Amarbir is a great dealer, and as said above, you will have to learn a new level of patience. And if you are patient enough, there is no better dealer. He even ships before payment, or could ship a better and expensive product than we asked for after informing us beforehand even if thats not what we want sometimes. But that says> he not upto double crossing anybody. Maybe there is spome other source of great mental stress for him, seriously affecting his business.

To that, ultimabasher simply says “Cut the crap!!” Would he? No. There’s a level to fanboyism with dealers but some people never fail to be a retard to the core. Dominator continued on:

btw, as he is a reputed TE member, we are kinda assured he doesn’t go off the limit too much at times, coz we can always start a case against any dealers and they gotta fix it before its affects his reps.

What do you mean by “we are kinda assured”??  What do you mean by “we”? Do you work for him or do you get money to be his advertising agent? Agreed, its good to defend dealer/friend/human being- but you are doing anything but backing up with facts. So where the hell is the fact??? The market feedback section itself has about what? 2-4 complaint threads about him? And he only delivers after someone makes some noise!! End result? Metalspree had to take his case:

Don’t you get there are enough cases against him where he has failed to delivery items as promised ,no to mention again about the customer service and his stupid rules like join my forum create thread and all ??

I said it before and I will say it again because the more antics like this get highlighted the more they prove me right- You can’t make horse out of donkeys. Dominator, if you are reading this, next time, think before you type and have basic form of responsibility of what you say- rather than babbling like an idiot.

IIRC, dominator is the same chap (( I think) who was under the impression that his biostar board’s backplate was carbon fibre . Most of his advice goes way above my head and I pity the people who takes his advice seriously. If you don’t know anything, why do people comment and screw people’s happiness? Good God!!! How do such people end up getting an internet connection?

Coming back to the topic, amarbir called Nash as liar over here, without quoting his previous posts. Most likely he is calling “the union” as liars too. Amarbir had to bite his tongue as tntin, a new member, scanned couple of his bills and put up on the thread. He said and I quote:

I just saw this thread. I have purchased online from lynx-india website on two occasions in OCT 2008 and FEB 2009. I received three bills and none of them have the serail numbers  and all are hand written. Items purchased are HD4850, Corsair VX450, Corsair Twin Ram DDr2 4GB Desktop, Corsair Twin Ram DDr2 4GB for Laptop, 2GB MicroSDHC. I have uploaded the two invoices you have send and the third one i couldn’t find it right now. This is one of the reason i stopped ordering any more with lynx-india.

These are the scans of the bill:

Amarbir “tried” to justify the reason for mentioning the serial number and he says:

The Serial Numbers On The Product Sticker Not The Box Sticker But the Actual Product Sticker ,All Of This Has The Serial number Anyone Can Check Anything Anytime ,No One Is Running Away Or Something Here ,you All Have My Phone Number and All the Details I Am Pretty Good In your Approaching Me Also .Earlier We Use To Sign the Product And Add Some Sticker ,Latest We Have started To Write Serial numbers And Stopped signing ,It’s Very simple ,There Is No Hanky Panky At All ,Anyone Trading With Me Ever On This Forum Can Check This .I Have No Problem In This Matter As i Have Done Nothing Wrong With Anyone .I Repeat We Are Not Cheats Shitting Here .

My dear friend, with respects, companies do not RMA based on your policy, but based on their policy that they have put. Besides, just how hard can it be to mention the serial number of the product? You do charge VAT and tax right? Where’s the value?

Just so that people will know, I am not considering those chinese earphones like soundmagic because they don’t have any serial code on the product, but I am considering those products which do- like rams, motherboard, power supply, etc. I confirmed with dealers (prime abgb, lamington road and desktop computers, bandra) and with Tirupathi enterprises. Tirupathi enterprises that there are times that they RMA products without asking for a bill, but if they can’t trace the serial code, without the bill, they will simply refuse to RMA it.He is a newbie buyer with Amarbir. By the looks of Amarbir’s itrader ratings, out of so many ratings, 164 was postive and only 1 was negative which was about delays- and that was from hatter (well he changed his nick so I don’t know who he is, maybe mohitprett but I am not too sure). Amarbir has a bad habit of making sad excuses and he brings anyone from his family or relatives to gain sympathy and keep people’s mouth shut. I prefer not commenting whether its true or not, but I will only say that others also have family, a job and a life. There are also people who study as well. Phoenix has a family and I think he’s studying his masters if I am not mistaken. Other dealers have a family too, so obviously there will be family issues. If you really did have family issues, how hard can it be to put up a thread (or tell the mods to put up a thread) to say that the shipments are delayed. I mean you had time to put up sale threads but not to inform people? Please stop making excuses. But truth to be said, if you see those screenshots of his support forum, he said that his shipments is not yet cleared by his customs. It’s hard to believe what is true. I won’t say anything more. The guy prevents dealing via ebay unless he has good stocks because that’s the only platform where ebay ensures that he gives proper service else no money.

Keeping all this crappy points and his irritating language aside, he said that he “gave his resignation” to renegade. Rest remains to be seen but damage is already done. Who is to blame? The idiots who gave him a postive feedback right up his ass.

I will say about the people who rated him in such a manner. Try to understand that there’s a difference between privilege and right & when a right is abused/exploited by the person, there are consequences. This is a consequence. I won’t exactly blame amarbir- I mean, he is a certified idiot, but no1 even highlighted any of this to the mods at all. TE is not responsible, infact nobody even told the mod/admin that amarbir made people from TE register on his forum. Were they sleeping? The more buyers do this, the more sellers will stop at nothing to take advantage of such people and even innocent and newbies will be trapped. You have a right, use it wisely. If you people are whining around the price/service difference between here and in U.S. and want to have the same/similar, then show the same/similar attitude that the buyers over have when you get bad service, you give negative rep.

Edit (Update 27.02.10 8.42 AM): Renegade has closed the thread and said that he received his “resignation”. That pretty much closes the story however people who dealt with amarbir via TE have to deal with amarbir directly.
Edit 2 (Updated 27.02.10 04.41 PM): Renegade made the logical choice and decided to keep a 1-on-1 public post over here. Its pretty obvious by now that admins and moderators are looking into this matter but if they want to take actions, they want to take actions for the right reasons. However, some people came in between and decided to crap the thread. Reason enough to believe that amarbir failed to prove himself innocent. As history speaks for itself, trollposters and fanboys in TE have a habit of crapping the thread with useless mud-slinging so that mods and admins will lock the thread. As ultimabasher says, I agree and I quote:

Everyone needs to see this. New people join TE because of the amazing deals they get from dealers and many of them land up with amarbir, have a bad exp and then spit in the name of TE too. I request you to consider this cause 1 can be wrong, heck 5 can be wrong, but not this many people who claim to have dealt with amarbir can go wrong at the same time.

If people want to crap that thread, then its them who need to be infracted/ banned. Way too many people suffered doing business people with such tactics. I love TE and will try to help in whatever way I can for that forum. I’ve learnt a lot from people over there and I ain’t turning my back for such people to take advantage of one of rare Indian tech forums. Not one more!

Edit 1.10.10: I published this article on 26.02.10. Many agreed and regretted, many had 2nd thoughts and others decided to go for it (based on their/their friend’s experience or just taking the plunge or simply because there’s no choice in Chandigarh) & well his fanboys came to the rescue. What I simply wanted to do is simply set the facts in one post for people’s easy reference. Personally, I didn’t like him giving empty threats to a broadband forum admin and being rude to people like a spoilt brat. If he/his service/his “exotic behaviour” is accepted by most of his people (well atleast he stopped typing first letter of every damned word in caps- although I wouldn’t be suprised if he hired someone to take care of his online persona just like how KMD did) and has improved significantly, its obvious that it will reflect eventually. If you have trouble to read collection of his feedback you can read it here.

But remember one important thing that irrespective of who the dealer’s feedback you are viewing, there’s simply no way to prove that those are aunthentic customers. If people are hired for power leveling for MMORPG, then I don’t see how a guy can be hired to create a legitimate looking member with fair amount of posts counts & reps to give “positive feedbacks”. Remember- online dealers (especially in such forums and EBAY) influence and attract customers with good products alongwith high positive feedback- so its possible.

Commander Shepard+ cake= win!111 (spoiler warning)

For those who love to taste wine as you drink, you are better off not reading anymore.

I played mass effect 2, l4d2 and bioshock 2 these past 2 lazy weeks- I started with mass effect 2 and then with bioshock 2, which I ditched in the middle just like bioshock 1. Bioshock is boring for me and playing mass effect 2 raised my expectations. Bioshock is a failed attempt of first person role playing action (yeah your actions sorta makes you choose a side but its crap). I ended up playing mass effect 2 using mass effect 1′s game save 3 times in a row and I never got bored of it. Its one of the few role playing games I enjoyed playing (and I couldn’t remember playing any role playing games before- maybe its diablo 2) and want to play more. Just how many games are there which makes you play over and over again?

In the mass effect universe, I had “exotic encounter” (pfft) with Ashley Williams and ditched Kaidan Alenko to die at the Saren’s base. Convinced Wrex to be alive (if you don’t Ashley shoots him in the back without asking you and I am sure wrex is an important character in ME3) I saved the citadel council. So if you are seeing a character leveling in such a manner then in pretty obvious that captain anderson will be recommended for the council.

End result? At the start of ME2, when Shepard was spaced all thanks to the collectors and their big ass ship. When he comes back alive and becomes Cerberus’ dog. First thing I did was get the scientist because nothing help more than upgrades, right? After rescuing archangel (Garrus) I went to the citadel. What do I find? The council left me for dead and acting all “high and mighty” and reinstating the spectre status. Also they dismissed the reaper connection and blamed on Geth because of  “lack of evidence” and concluded that even Geth could have met sovereign and manipulated Saren. Anderson backs you up but only when the council indirect accused you of treason by associating with cerberus. Ashley hates you, Tali is skeptical to join with you when finds about cerberus, jack freaks out about seeing a cerberus ship docked when he was trying to escape- the entire universe hates them.

But I managed to get an apology letter from Ashley later on . No I decided not to romance with any me2 characters. So I am guessing this is what pretty much will/should happen in ME3, assuming you have every me2 character’s loyalty and made sure everyone lives:

# Council will act like an ass and dismiss reaper’s story till they crap their pants when reapers invade.

# Ashley might become the captain/admiral of the alliance, so that settles army from human’s side to handle the reapers.

# Garrus might go back to the Turian army, convince his higher-ups to join the fight against the reapers.

# Tali (assuming she is not exiled/her father is not blamed for treason in ME2) might become an admiral, or else she will use her title as one of the saviours of the galaxy to convince the admiralty board to join Shepard’s war against the reapers.

# Wrex would finally merge the entire krogan clan and make a mighty army and maybe grunt as his general!

# Mordin might cure the genophage/ Thane’s sickness or round-up his sources in special task group.

# Legion will play an important role to convince the entire galaxy that the Geth are not the bad guys and the heretics are re-purposed. Clearing Geth’s name might make the people question council’s claims about citadel’s attack and weaken their control. Anderson might step in as the sole leader of citadel space.

# Jack would become the leader of the mercenary group, most likely batarians or maybe biotic based.

# Kahlee sanders (characters are there in 2 mass effect novels) might end up being the brains behind Shepard.

# Cerberus hunting down shepard, might use Zaeed against you.

# Samara might rally up the troops, whereas Liara might end up taking over Mordin’s job aboard the normandy.

# The rachni (assuming you let them live in ME1) will join you in Shepard’s war against the reapers, assuming you will help them earn the council’s respect.

# Thane is on the verge of dying. Might live if he’s cured or else his son might aid you.

# Miranda and Jacob will still be at your side, but most likely Miranda feeding intel to the illusive man. Jacob re-joins the alliance.

# The illusive man might try to gain prothean technology by trying to revive any prothean tech left in Illos, using the same lazarus experiment as he did on ME2.

Will I play bioshock 2, I am not too sure.

Re-badging and the relabeling: The old wine in a new bottle (or vice-versa) funda!

It’s not a new concept. They all do it- even your milk man does it! The branded stores do it as well! So, do you know what you’re buying?

Its not a new concept as far as hardware is concerned. Bikey made an epic post in a thread which ended up being a sticky about it over here. Nvidia rebadged 8800gt and made it to 9800gt and then 8600gt which ended up being 9500gt. Let’s also not forget that Nvidia’s chipset manufacturing antics is no different. Story starts from back in 65nm days (as far as I can remember) when e6600 processors ruled the world, extreme series for the rich and the spoilt and 45nm e7xxx series was filled with high hopes which IMO served its royal subjects well, few people bought 680i boards were favoured before intel’s p35 boards literally hogged the limelight. Now nvidia has broken another barriers of relabeling by calling northbridge as System Platform Processor (SPP) and southbridge as Media Communications Processor (MCP). Boinkers? Yeah well its pretty..retarded.

Just for that one knows, 780i and 680i is practically the same. There is simply no difference. Only difference is that 780i can do 3 way sli and use pci express 2.0! Some might call (oh well, nvidia fanboys and forum whOres would) it innovation, but it not so different from putting a mod chip in your playstation or xbox. They put this new chip called the NF200 exactly below the northbridge which handles the tri sli and pcie 2.0 works. It’s still mentally retarded as far as price is concerned as one would be better off with a p35 board and if you put more cash, I think you can get x38 chipset boards. It’s also mentally retarded that because of introducing this new chip, the board will be radically altered. Once that is done, just how much space would there be between the second and the 3rd pcie slot? Or how many other pci slots have to be sacrified? Besides they are just another recycled garbage.

End result? Intel and AMD’s chipset has capitalized the essence of some/pure honesty in their business, which led to nvidia shutting down chipset manufacturing business. Now some might say (hello again- nvidia fanboys) that sole purpose of rebadging was to clear old stocks. I would like to tell them-, “oh!! I am sorry I was thinking through a consumer’s point of view- my bad!!!” (sarcasm intended). Moral of the story, if you are a consumer, buy the best performer for the money and with good service record not based on hype. Why do you want to waste money for something that needs performance to satisfy your needs and not others? If you are not, then it is you who is responsible for making the manufacturers fool even more people.

Coolermaster is another “God” of such epic acts, but they are also good when it comes to cost cutting. Just so that readers might know, cm 690 show signs of colour around the front grills coming out after some months of using it. I was under the assumption that it happens only where the fan sucks in the air but:

Colour does come out on other grill sections.

Although one would say “It doesn’t look that bad” or “repainting will fix it”, remember you’re paying 4k for this, and for many that’s a lot for a case with such defects. Not everyone prefers the re-paint and the quality and method of the paint application really matters or they might end up with same issue, or simply block it because of thick paint.

cm extreme 600 is rebadged (some say it’s chopped down version) of a seventeam 500. There was also an article about cm extreme 650 which made an article on a french review site that cm 650 is also the same (it was written on the pcb board) but they were “politely” asked (Read: legally) to pull down the article and so they did.

There’s more where that came from, but frankly once the facts are stated, why would anyone discuss about junks, let alone even remotely considering that option to buy?

-

Oh yeah, BTW! Follow Terry Makedon on twitter. He is the guy behind catalyst and now very well-known for fixing the eyefinity’s bezel compensation. Terry gives away a lot of keys for games- beta and final. Elite bastards have done a really good 1-on-1 interview with him. Anandtech made couple of articles about the 10.2 and 10.3 drivers and about the RV870 story. Semi accurate doing a pretty good job at kicking nvidia in the groin. It starts from their article about GTX480 being unmanufacturable and then being continued on the forums.I don’t know about you guys, but it seems that many review sites out there really want ATi to bring in the heavy guns! I wouldn’t blame them. Nvidia is all talks and still no legit benchmarks about their future release. Don’t be surprised if they end up being rebadged to the core with “minor” updates.

So why not msi?? Tell me what’s wrong with it?

Someone (who knows how to overclock but prefers to stick with stock voltage) asked me this question when he got a quote of 7k for this board, MSI p55-GD55?

I say (usually) when you get gigabyte p55-ud2 for similar price why do you want this/more expensive board? MSI usually makes pretty okay boards (they have their own set of issues) but for this price point you’re getting a better option. He ignored what I said and decided to go for the board. I remember some people from techenclave, talked/recommended this for overclocking (no suprise, it was the same TDF junkies) over the UD2.  I wish the review from xbit labs for this board came out earlier but better late than never.

Their conclusion?

We began to write our review of the MSI P55-GD55 in a positive tone. It made the impression of a rather simple, but not expensive, product with all the functionality you need from a modern mainboard. We were not set aback by its drawbacks but were pleased with extra features. Unfortunately, those drawbacks proved to be quite serious while the extra features, although exciting, were not so necessary after all. This mainboard did not allow us to overclock our CPU normally, which is an unprecedented occurrence in our overclocking practice. MSI’s slogans omit the fact that only senior mainboard models from MSI are equipped with numerous technologies and features (even though you may not need them all the time) whereas junior models, potentially popular, are deprived of them. We prefer Gigabyte’s approach when BIOS updates are issued for the entire series of mainboards, endowing all the models with the same functionality.

MSI P55-GD55 has a lot in common with Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R and this comparison can be furthered. The mainboards have almost the same specs except that the Gigabyte one has two SATA ports more thanks to an additional controller and its CPU voltage regulator is not so simplified. Gigabyte mainboard also has digital audio outputs on the back panel. Of course, Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R lacks such features of MSI P55-GD55 as OC Stepping but it does not really need them, being able to start up at any frequency you set without any tricks. Considering that Gigabyte product is only $10 more expensive, MSI P55-GD55 loses in this comparison because Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R is much better at overclocking CPUs and memory modules.

MSI P55-GD55 would be interesting if it were alone on the market. With lots of more exciting alternatives around, you might as well go for something else.

Wait? Did I check the board out? Yeah I was called in because of the headers and the bios. The headers did not have any markings or any indication which header is for what, let alone coloured indications. Although msi did make an effort to put it up on the manual (not a proper description btw), how hard can it be to imprint it on the board? FYI, they have mention it or usb, sata and IDE. At first I thought it might have been in case in engineering sample (and usually most of the review sites who end up getting engineering samples don’t get getting retail samples and/or don’t update their old reviews if the correction is made) but retail was the same. One has to assume that what xbit labs got was a boxed retail piece.

There were 2 problem- OC genie adding too much VCORE and the 1600MHZ problem. The processor was i5 750 and g skills 4GB 1600mhz cl9 kit.

Gigabyte’s overclocking utility does not turn off EIST AND C1E, same for asus’ overclocking software (not too sure about biostar as far as p55 chipset is concerned), but MSI’s software seem to be turning them off. I remember xbit labs mentioning it somewhere that there was a 0.250V increase, but frankly it was 0.320V and BCLK was bumped to 150mhz more (on overclock clock speed)- that’s it. I overclocked manually by giving a bump but the system did not boot. I cleared CMOS and given it a try again, it didn’t work. Yeah the OC genie was disabled before I tried to OC manually. I flashed the BIOS to see if it improves, it didn’t. I gave up. Tried turbo but there was some stability issues when I ran intel burn test. The OC genie button on the motherboard is just for show. Honestly speaking, its about time that mobo manufacturers put onboard power/reset/automatic OC button on the back at the I/O panel like few boards and not putting on the motherboard, where you end up opening side panels just to press the button.

I decided to overclock manually to 3.0 ghz. I increased the BCLK to 153mhz and kept the multiplier default  20 with VCORE 1.230v. It didn’t boot up. So I tried to boot to boot the system on stock speed but all on manual, same result. I set the rams on 1333mhz cl7 and not cl9 (yeah the rams are 1600mhz, but you need to run your processor to 3.ghz in order to use 1600mhz, just like how someone said in techenclave), same result.

So, I went to intel’s site and found the data sheet (one might choke, but data sheets do give a lot of info needed for overclocking as far as voltage and others are concerned) from here. I used 1.00V manual rather than 1.025V VTT. 2.66ghz all manual booted up, but when I ran intel burn test, the stocks failed. I bumped the VCORE to 1.285V and 1.300VTT, 164 BCLK and x20 multiplier with 1600mhz cl9. 3.2ghz was stable, finally. But at what cost? 3.2ghz is achievable just by switching on turbo without turning off c1e and EIST on stock VTT and VCORE. Why do you need to feed so much power just for a 3.2ghz OC? Action spoke louder than words and the dealer agreed to swap the board with gigabyte p55-ud2.

I remember Harshal telling me once that gigabyte board work well when you OC and keep EIST and C1E enabled at the same time. I didn’t try that (slipped my mind) but Turbo mode mode worked its charm to 3.2ghz (on 100% load, since C1E and EIST was enabled) on ud2 and manual ram timing and lantency setup, so gigabyte boards is a win in most scenario.

So, question back to you? Why buy MSI when you get good enough gigabyte for the similar price range? Experimenting is good but depends what you experiencing with and if you know . There were days when asus buyers ridiculed other buyers who bought from gigabyte, DFI and abit. Result? asus p5n32 sli owners sold and bought ip35-e, and there are more like this scenario which happened over time. Now people prefer gigabyte for a non-oc, oc, gaming, etc. and for good service history. MSI has a lot of stepping up to do. They have specifically advertised oc genie as 1 sec overclock and as “gaming series” boards. The marketing gimmick is not so far away from asus. I just hope gigabyte and other manufacturers don’t succumb to such level, as it becomes easier to fool the masses.

Follow up of “Asus=Epic fail logic”

Rants continued from here… I love lurking around the forums, it gets information pretty effectively if one does it right!!!

So Asus has shown one of the packages of one of their radioactive-free motherboard, the asus protek (or is it prutek but if its says protek, sorry to say it looks more like a condom ad campaign, which is also the same conclusion on the S-A forums) 3.0:

Yeah, ddr2 and drr3 support but they are actually Intel G41 and nv 630a boards so people can check out the chipset limitations on respected sites. Perfect marketing sentences for the “futureproof” advisors. Bet we will have environmental advisors as well and then maybe vegetarian boards. Sarcastic it might be, but asus and nvidia seem to be on a mission to create a whole new universe.

All thanks to TheLostSwede of the semi-accurate forums. BTW, don’t let the name of the site fool you, most of the “semi-accurate” news turn out to be true. Anyways its more “entertaining” than FUD IMHO. A press release for these series is put up in tweaktown. They are nothing but just G41 and NV630a boards, same recycled shit with couple of (maybe) phase power control or some other components that take lesser power but greatly over exaggerated.

I guess Asus and nvidia have the same marketing and advertisement team. While its always great to see companies jumping on the “green” bandwagon, over-exaggeration need to be curbed, atleast companies should do that without being told.

Another member, TripleA, made a pretty good comment and I quote:

I cannot help but feel sorry for those who will be fooled by the marketing. I’m sure that the boards are not any worse than others on the market, mind. It’s just that they will certainly cost more. And almost certainly the buyers would have been better off investing in, say, a better PSU. It does not have to be a whizz-bang model with a zillion LEDs (actually, I feel such models are unprofessionally designed and they inspire non-confidence in me. But that’s another subject), just a good basic model would do. I cannot speak for the Indian market, but the price difference between a basic craptastic PSU and basic PSU with APFC (brown-outs are suddenly a non-event, with this) and acceptable quality in the Jordanian market is just US$10…

Unfortunately, you can’t make horse out of donkeys, then again, such marketing has to be gunned down.  Will/Can they be gunned down, I don’t know. In any case, prevention is better than cure.

Mass effect 2: Star studded game with star studded perils, excitements, missions and voices!!

I loved mass effect 2.

No spoilers, no usual dialogues, Miranda..hmm…yeah (did I say no spoilers?), nothing to add anything what other people who have reviewed, played and enjoyed the game. There’s was one review from an Indian source (they are into “tech” magazines and brag as one of the highest selling blah-blah bullshit) which made some really lame err “reviews”.

Unfortunately, the cover system is still inconsistent and AI controlled party members continue to suck at finding cover.

Yo, doctor dumbass, you can direct your characters to take cover using “Q” and “E” and the characters do say (the matter’s the same) that they are taking cover. You use space bar to recall them to following you. They also take cover during gun fights on without positioning them (usually under heavy fire) and they not only do move over when you strafe towards them when they are taking cover, but they pick the second best spot for taking cover.It is better than l4d and l4d2′s friendly “artificial intelligence” (no they don’t have problems positioning themselves) where you have to lead them.

Just like the first game, Mass Effect 2 is not particularly impressive; however it’s not a bad game either

Yeah I am pretty sure crysis and GTA IV still gives you multiple orgasms.Word of advice, get you head out of the sewage.

I completed about five planetary exploration missions and none of those had anything to write home about.

Erm, haven’t you played any sort of role-playing games, AT ALL? Sucks to be you because if you did but haven’t figured out the genre or haven’t played this genre, because if you did, you wouldn’t even have said this.  By the way, you ain’t supposed to give spoilers on reviews. Writing game spoilers (or movie spoilers) is not equal to writing a game (or a movie) review, same goes for synopsis. Besides you’re reviewing a game, not the game engine. If you want to review game engines, make a separate article about it.

No offense, but they are so many beautiful writers out there that are calling them amateur is an insult to their gift, but sadly they don’t get paid much or don’t get any jobs at all. Rather, we see such samples here writing “reviews” for magazines and websites. Such people outta write scripts for porn movies. Porn movies have intense stories, ermm, it doesn’t matter? My point exactly.

So which magazine? Links? Oh it does NOT deserve the respect. Besides, the witty and the smart should be smart to know which magazine/site I am talking about.

There’s also few battlestar galatica stars who did lend their voice to their characters. I wish captain Bailey’s voice had the same depth like michael Hogan’s true voice (Exo of battlestar Galatica), sort of like a drunken old man thingy. I guess they did a “cleanup”. Truth  be told the only voice which was visible to me was Worf. When did a little bit of googling, I found out that mass effect 2′s voice cast is pretty star-studded (Yeah well “silver screen” stars, except The Matrix, as some people might call it, but IMHO most sci-fi is brilliant) when I searched it for youtube:

BTW, The illusive man’s voice is the best of all IMHO. But yeah Joker and Miranda’s voice for the character ain’t that far behind.

I have played mass effect 1 with a positive character and migrated the game-save to ms:2, it was worth it. So this is tempting me to play mass effect 2 using a negative role and make sure the council dies this time. Yeah I didn’t kill the council last time >_<”. But in any role, Wrex will still be around and maybe I will kill the rachni on this one. Most likely rachni will help (assuming the queen lived on ms:1 when you played) and aid Shepard in ms:3. Why I say so? the hint is in ms:2! In any case, Wrex doesn’t deserve to die in any scenario. One of the best and loved game characters. Sometimes, crazy is the only way to go!

Star trek fans know Lt. Commander Worf? He’s also gave is voice to the character called “Gatatog Uvenk” and its pretty obvious when you are hearing the character speak for the first time. But I happy to see wrek (hear his voice) but I also wished Wrex was also in “The A-team”. I guess the team from MS:1 and MS:2 might be together in MS:3. If so then in one of my game profiles, Kaiden and Miranda deserve a lot explanation from Shepard.
BTW, I played ms:2  using the onboard graphics so its pretty decent (well for an onboard yeah). So people who would try to scare you to upgrade to a better graphic card (just like those samples who told others to upgrade specifically to play crysis, nicknamed, the bottleneck busters!!!) just to play the game decently,  don’t be disappointed (unless you’re one of those paranoid people who want the “MAXXED OUT” in every way, still I guess 4850 and 4870 is enough). Read the game’s minimum specs and see if you’re cool with it.

Asus= Epic fail logic

Some of you remember Asus P5kPL Am/PS board? Long story made short, the board has the technology safeguard the motherboard from power fluctuations with the help of three important attributes such as over-voltage protection, short circuit protection and power-good signal generation because they come with solid caps-aka “Anti Power Surge technology”.

Epic fail- no not yet.

So what’s the big deal about solid caps? Most of the newer boards come with it and also with phase power, why is this board being mentioned here?

Simple, it comes with a really large load of bullshit. Asus claims that this board can be used with any shitty power supplies and it comes with “Burnt Warranty” through banners and posters in retails stores & through some Indian review(?) sites like techtree (ooh lookie lookie, they even put up an ass kissing publicity about it over here ), tech2 and express channel business to name a few. But here’s the catch, they did not mention it on their website- nor on the specs nor on the online (usually updated manual). I did a bit of a search on Asus India’s website and there was no information giving a direct sign of anything remotely close to the words “Burnt warranty”. What I did find from here is

it can provide a reliable power supply environment for you and protect the motherboard when power supply is in short circuit or over voltage.

So according to Asus India, if the power supply has voltage fluctuations which could lead to short circuit or over voltage, the board will “take care of it”. Now if a person who doesn’t know anything/less/half of anything about computer hardware will have a royal “OMGWOW” moment, I would if I was a hardware n00b.

But Asus’ marketing team made a marketing blooper. Techtree, a review site which was/is famous for stealing the creative EP-630 review and replaced words like “London underground” to “Mumbai Local” seem to be advertising companies in the form of reviews these days.  What techtree claimed (and I quote):

One of the worst enemies of PC electronic components is power surge, which usually occur due to irregularities in the power supply from the mains. They can also happen during a thunderstorm due to lightning. Power surges can destroy the motherboard, and also other components attached to it. To address this problem (at least for the PC), Asus has launched the P5KLP-AMPS motherboard featuring surge protection, thanks to Japanese 5000 hrs conductive polymer solid capacitors in VRM.

I am no electrical engineer, but I don’t need to be an electrical engineer to know that a power supply converts AC to DC power and they come with surge protection (the good enough ones anyways). You don’t need to be a genius to acknowledge that you aren’t supposed to use any electric items during thunderstorm, its something which I know since school and I am pretty sure the sample applies for others.

Lets assume that the claim made by asus is true in our universe for the moment, to the core, it’s still not going to protect your system. You use the 24 pin connector and atx connector to power your board and the processor and molex/sata/pcie connectors power peripherals, hard drives and graphic cards. There’s no magical way to connect them to the board and then to the respected hardware. If it protects the board, what about other components?

Asus clearly mentions on their online manual in small letters that their board is not responsible for any losses, even businesses, should the system goes bad. Asus also says that the socket damage is not covered on the warranty. So if the processor gets burnt and so does the motherboard socket, you not only break your head to get a new processor, but also the new board. Why? Asus mentioned it on the manual. So tell us Asus, what the point of a “burnt” warranty? What “anti surge protection technology” does it have? FYI, anti surge protection is a job of psu and most of the good enough now available power supplies have them. If there any instability, they simply turn off or don’t even start. There was this one time some idiot managed to connect pcie power connector on the atx connector. Luckily, thanks to the surge protection, the system didn’t even start, or else good-bye pc!!

It’s not over yet. Techtree, a part UTV network, seem to have hired a bunch of monkeys. It’s clearly mentioned on techtree’s review and I quote:

The price seems to be very good and we are sure that most entry-level buyers would agree with us that Rs. 2,800 is not asking for too much for a motherboard that comes with a five-year warranty.

Yes you heard it right. But is it true- NO. I checked on new egg and it clearly shows 3 years manufacturer’s warranty. I also checked with Rashi peripherals who does major distribution for asus products (there is one small time sub distri in Delhi, who’s main distri is rashi ) and they said its 3 years. If you check the last line of the techtree review, it clearly says they got the testing sample from Asus directly. So, were they smoking weed when they were writing this.

Epic fail- no not yet. Here comes the interesting part.

Asus loves their customers so much that they want to make sure your dog won’t end up having a 1 eye on its forehead

Why? Ladies and gentlemen. I present you not 1, not 2 and not 3 but no less than 6 motherboards which will have the “ground..err..breaking” low “radiation” motherboard in their press release.

ASUS has set a new standard in total motherboard protection with the launch of the ASUS Protect 3.0 Design based on Xtreme Design, which helps protect the earth, systems, and users. Equipped with intelligent anti-radiation shielding, the technology lowers the generation and transmission of harmful radiation by up to 50%—offering the lowest electromagnetic emissions from a motherboard in the industry. This lowers the adverse health impact to users and delivers more stable system operations. Additionally, active anti-surge protection helps enhance component and system longevity. Protect 3.0 also includes the ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit) chip to reduce system-wide power consumption by up to 80.23%* and to ensure a more environmentally sustainable operation.

It’s “cute” to see Asus throwing in the anti-surge garbage with the low radiation amd CO2 (no shit, seriously) garbage. Damn if they only came with “You smoke those ciggies, then you will be dead” sticker. FYI to people, as its mentioned on semi accurate and most of us know, most of the reputed manufacturers are not even allowed to ship any boards if it will affect you. There are certifications given to ensure they don’t emit high radiation. So either the certification and load of tests are crap (usually no, I think EU has strong policies against it) or asus simply have gone mad because motherboard manufacturers like gigabyte offer better value and package.

This is wrong. What asus doing is wrong. What review sites (we know they are crappy, but people who google out the reviews will see techtree right on top and they fall under the assumption that the claims/reviews are real and unadulterated, unlike you and me) doing is wrong. Question is no about the cost of the board. Even if you sell it for 2.5k, it’s still fraud.  Asus P5kPL Am/PS is just the beginning. Its not an easy job for reviewers to keep readers and company’s happy all the time. Unfortunately such review sites become sellouts to earn a quick buck. Beware!!! If users are not smart enough and don’t pay to those marketing gimmicks, it will simply encourage hardware manufacturers to make such bizarre claims. As it is dealers/assemblers make such claims, but if company’s makes such bullshit, its going to be difficult to point out actual facts.

Now- its epic fail!!!