**Faulty Motherboards: A Cautionary Tale**

As we navigate the world of technology, we often hear about products that don't quite live up to their promises. In this article, we'll delve into some of the worst stories from our audience members who have experienced faulty motherboards and other components.

One such story comes from a retailer in Australia who had purchased a particular Z490 motherboard model from a manufacturer. The problem was that when customers would install two 32 GB RAM sticks, the board would only post with one stick, regardless of which memory they tried. This issue became so severe that some customers reported receiving faulty motherboards back to the company after attempting to return them. In some cases, the retailer even sent the faulty boards back to the manufacturer, only to receive them again as defective products.

Another example of a faulty component is an RTX 3080 graphics card that was purchased from a reputable retailer. The problem with this particular model was that it would sometimes flicker on screen and was generally unreliable. Despite being confirmed by the retailer's staff as a faulty product, the manufacturer refused to replace or repair it, instead sending the defective card back to the customer.

These stories highlight the importance of choosing reputable brands and manufacturers, as well as the need for good customer service in case something goes wrong with your purchase. If you're experiencing issues with a product, don't be afraid to reach out to the retailer or manufacturer for assistance.

**Cooler Maintenance: A Word of Caution**

When it comes to high-performance graphics cards like those using the Z490 chipset, coolers can become a major concern due to their size and design. Some board repairers have noted that these large coolers can put pressure on the card over time, potentially leading to issues down the line.

To mitigate this risk, it's essential to use a GPU support bracket with your card, especially when the card is sitting horizontally. This will help distribute the weight more evenly and reduce the likelihood of damage or sagging.

**GPU Support Brackets: A Simple Solution**

For those who are unfamiliar with GPU support brackets, these small devices attach to the end of your graphics card and provide additional stability and support. They're usually relatively inexpensive and can be found online or in-store at electronics retailers.

In the case of an RTX 3080, using a 6-pin to 8-pin adapter is often the simplest solution when connecting the power cable. However, if you're looking for a more permanent fix, using a GPU support bracket is a great option. For those on a tight budget, there's also the possibility of using sense pins and shorting them to metal, although this method is not recommended due to its ghetto nature.

**Question of the Day: Connecting an 8-Pin Power Cable to a Six-Pin Connector**

Our question of the day comes from Abdul AIT 6672, who owns a HP z440 computer with a power supply that has two six-pin connectors. They're wondering how they can connect their graphics card, which requires an 8-pin power cable.

The answer is simple: use a 6-pin to 8-pin adapter. These adapters are usually inexpensive and can be found online or in-store at electronics retailers. For those who are strapped for cash, using sense pins and shorting them to metal is another possible solution. However, we must stress that this method is not recommended due to its unconventional nature.

**Conclusion**

In the world of technology, problems don't always come with a warning label. As our audience members have demonstrated, faulty components can cause frustration and disappointment. By choosing reputable brands, taking care of your gear, and knowing how to troubleshoot issues, you can minimize the risk of running into these problems in the first place.

So, if you're experiencing issues with a product, don't hesitate to reach out for help. With a little patience and persistence, we can work together to resolve even the most complex technical challenges.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday's video is going to be about the process known as RMA return merchandise authorization and getting a graphics card that was faulty fixed and replaced and actually this topic might be a little bit rare I don't really see many people talking about it but also I don't really see any videos on it on the internet so I thought I'd just make a video explaining my whole process here with the RMA uh of this RTX 4080 that I bought on off a used PC parts hunt and then after a couple of months it I sold it in a PC and then the person started saying the problems got progressively worse to the point where the system would just randomly shut off and then I took it back to the studio here and did some thorough tests on it and indeed it would just shut off after a couple of hours sometimes but then after it shut off after about 2 hours it then became relatively quickly for it to shut off again after 15 minutes and then also there was a bad display port after this happened so it was a really weird issue that I had with this RTX 4080 but regardless it was faulty and it was still under warranty now when I bought this card I made sure especially whenever I'm buying something over a couple of hundred I make sure there's a receipt with that and there's some kind of or if it's a newer card and it's still under warranty I make sure I get the receipt so that if something does go wrong I can then deal with this RMA process myself and I have had this happen once before with another graphics card a few years ago but this time around I thought I'd make a video detailing I guess how good the process was in that the store that I dealt with umart they had a really good process for it there are some quirks however and there are some things to be aware of especially if you're in Australia and you do have a problem with a product and you want to get it returned especially even after that you buy it off the second hand Market but we'll go through this whole step-by-step process in today's video right after today's video sponsor never pay full price for Windows 10 or 11 again with today's video sponsor SD Keys you can get activated for as little as $15 using that coupon bftc links in description below welcome back to Tech yes city and what we've got here is a brand new RTX 480 that's been replaced by MSI this is their Supreme extreme model Supreme and I'm very glad that I got a new card because I know sometimes I've heard of stories actually heard of quite a few stories where people send off a faulty product and then they just get a faulty product back and it can take them months to get a um actual replacement or to get something fixed even though their product is under warranty and usually if this starts to drag on there are authorities in your country that you can follow up with independently of either the retailer or the board maker to then make action happen in Australia I believe it's the A C if you cannot resolve the issue with either the retailer or the board partner but in this case I had a very good experience and the funny thing is it's an MSI card which if you guys have seen at techs City I'm very critical of MSI with some of the stuff that they've done not just to me personally but some of the products that they've made over the past few years where I thought they've done uh questionable uh things but this time around I'd say there are R ma process is was very straightforward basically what happened was I had the faulty card as I explained in the intro what was wrong with it I even got video footage of the PC shutting off and it actually took me a long time to get this footage because of how initially rare it was and my camera when I was recording it initially it would overheat after an hour and a half of recording so I was thankful that I did get that snippet of when it was shutting down so I could show you guys as well but also when I got this card back having a brand new replacement with a different serial number on it and also I can just tell because I clean Parts a lot that this is a brand new car there was some little blemishes on the cooler itself that are now gone so MSI just replaced the whole card so basically there must have been something seriously wrong with the GPU for it to get a replacement now with the RTX 4080 and 490s there are significant investment and the person that I uh sold the PC to I ended up giving them a Phill uh gaming GPU in the meantime something a little bit slower but they're using that and now they've got their replacement ready to go I can put that back in and they should be having a good gaming experience though here is where the process started for me basically I had the problem the card was faulty I then took it into where uh the person that I bought it off on the secondhand Market bought it from and so in this case they bought it from a retailer called um and they're one of the biggest uh PC parts retailers in a Australia here and their warranty cycle is such that you go in you tell them that the part has the problem they will then send it off to the manufacturer for you and then if there's a problem you will then get that problem fixed and the card will come back and you go pick it up to the store the problem here is buying off the secondhand Market legally the um team and the people there they're only allowed to contact the email address on the registered account that bought the product because they can't verify that I bought this product off the secondhand Market even though I showed video footage of me buying it on my parts hunt they said they still they said technically yes but technically no so I was like look here's the proof that I bought it off the guy it's actually mine now so I mean if you can get around this uh hurdle in your country with showing them video proof of you changing ownership then I don't know but I guess there's a bit of extra steps there because then you got to verify that that's the person who owned the card and then they sold it to you so I guess there was a bit of a a hurdles there but anyway bottom line is I had to go and email the person's account on the file and tell them hey look the card's faulty I've taken it into um please uh don't go and collect the card because you now it's my card I want to go collect that when it's ready and the uh problem has been fixed and in this case they say it could be anywhere from usually 2 to 6 weeks and so this is the biggest downside of an RMA is that you can be left without a GPU especially if it's a high-end gaming graphics card like the RTX 480 you can be left without that and got downtime that you can't really do anything about unless you go out and buy a real cheap GPU as a filler for the meantime they basically with the warranty take it into the retailer they'll then go ship it off to the manufacturer for you on your behalf and they'll also notify you when it comes back in and it's ready to be picked up now of course that's the simple process the extra layer there for the secondhand Market is that you've got to do what I just said before you've got to deal with that original party that purchased the product to be able to get the product return to you and in this case they just told me at the store look come back in and check on the card in say around two to four weeks and so I did that after a month I came back and I checked in on the graphics card and they said yep it's ready to go here it is and they gave me the card and it was all good to go though the warranty process on umart side them taking the card in and doing all the postage and sending it off for you and then notifying you when it's back in stock that's really good it makes me uh feel good about recommending um here in Australia to local Aussies but also MSI in just sending out a brand new card that was actually a really uh surprising thing I thought the card would perhaps be fixed in Taiwan which they say that's where the six we delay can come from with rmas because they get sent back to Taiwan they then get fix at their repair centers and then they get sent back to you and then you I guess get the card and you have to fix it but in this case the card is a brand new sample so we're good to go we're ready to rock and roll and a lot of these graphics cards these higher end models they will have a 3 to four year warranty uh so do keep your receipt always keep your receipt when you're buying anything that's relatively expensive so that right there is the easy process that's how it should go but from what I heard I actually spoke to the retailer and I've spoken to a few other retailers in Australia here the RMA process can be sometimes even better or it can be sometimes worse and in this case I've heard of uh say recently I heard of an RTX 370 a faulty one coming in to another retailer and them getting sent an RTX uh 40 7 back so because their RTX 370 they bought it they didn't have a a straight replacement for it they actually had to replace it with something better all the same and so they only had a 4070 to replace it with so the person who bought that 3070 actually got a free upgrade so that's rare but sometimes that can happen in your favor though what about when things go bad and this is where I can't actually say the name of the manufacturer in Australia because I can't verify that this has actually happened but you guys are welcome to go in the comments section and have a guess who it is but anyway there's been a manufacturer where I've heard two different accounts now from uh actually two different retailers where there was a motherboard a z490 motherboard a particular model where the people would buy this particular model and they would put two 32 GB RAM sticks in and it just would not post it would only work with one of the sticks and the Border essentially just would not work with 64 GB of memory flat out doesn't matter what memory you tried the board was essentially faulty from the get-go it wasn't doing what it said it would do on the box so the said person would go and try and get it rmade and they' just send them back the same motherboard and the problem would still exist and so this is with a particular brand with a particular z490 Mini ITX Bard with only two slots and all the other makers they work fine with 64 GB of RAM the second example I've heard of is an RTX 3080 the particular person sent it back to the retailer and the retailer who's my friend told me about this process they said that they sent it back to the uh Company the company then just sent them back the same card and it was like what is going on here clearly there was a problem where the screen would uh flicker sometimes it was just faulty in general and the person confirmed that at the shop and they sent that back to the board partner and they just completely I guess ignored it and sent them back a faulty product and so this is the same brand that I've heard about this in Australia so that's some of the worst stories I've heard you guys are please let me know in the comments some of your horror stories when it comes to rmas U and do share them so if people are having problems they can perhaps relate in the comments and get some guidance going forward but the bottom line is if you go to a store that has a good customer service perhaps if you're having an ongoing issue then they can help you out perhaps loaning you um some secondhand parts or just learning you something to get by in the meantime though in terms of the RTX 480 and 490 I do feel these coolers are just so big that that's perhaps as I've seen board repairers talk about it's going to be putting pressure on these cards over time so if you do have one of these cards and it is sitting horizontally definitely use a GPU support bracket on the end of the card I think that's something that you have to do I always do do it ever since I saw the size of these things and I saw the GPU sag on them I was thinking well that could be a problem over time but in the case of this card here I guess it's another fault that's gone mainly with the display port perhaps something happened there I'm just not sure but these faulty uh Parts they do come up from time to time but in usually my history with the faulty Parts it's usually on the stuff that uses quite a bit more power and I guess more components on board the more chances something go wrong anyhows with all that aside we've got the question of the day here which comes from Abdul AIT 6672 and they ask I have a HP z440 its power supply has two six pin connectors how should I connect with eight pin required GPU please please please guide me so for this uh question here it's an easy fix and that would be just to get a 2pca 6 pin to 8 Pin adapter these are usually uh relatively cheap cheap on places like AliExpress you can get them for a couple of bucks that would be the best way to solve your problem and if it's maybe an rx470 or an RX 480 or something like that you can usually just plug in the six pin without the eight pin and it works I mean if you're really strapped and you cannot afford like a couple of bucks there is another way and that is you can use those sense pins and short them to metal this is like real ghetto I have tested in this this in the past out of curiosity and it has worked absolutely fine but um we're not going to go there I'm not going to show that on any video because it's it's really uh it's too too ghetto anyhow hope that answers that question and with that a said I'll catch you in another tech video very soon but if you stay this far you're enjoining that Tech yes content then you know what to do and I'll catch you in the next one peace out for now bye atoday's video is going to be about the process known as RMA return merchandise authorization and getting a graphics card that was faulty fixed and replaced and actually this topic might be a little bit rare I don't really see many people talking about it but also I don't really see any videos on it on the internet so I thought I'd just make a video explaining my whole process here with the RMA uh of this RTX 4080 that I bought on off a used PC parts hunt and then after a couple of months it I sold it in a PC and then the person started saying the problems got progressively worse to the point where the system would just randomly shut off and then I took it back to the studio here and did some thorough tests on it and indeed it would just shut off after a couple of hours sometimes but then after it shut off after about 2 hours it then became relatively quickly for it to shut off again after 15 minutes and then also there was a bad display port after this happened so it was a really weird issue that I had with this RTX 4080 but regardless it was faulty and it was still under warranty now when I bought this card I made sure especially whenever I'm buying something over a couple of hundred I make sure there's a receipt with that and there's some kind of or if it's a newer card and it's still under warranty I make sure I get the receipt so that if something does go wrong I can then deal with this RMA process myself and I have had this happen once before with another graphics card a few years ago but this time around I thought I'd make a video detailing I guess how good the process was in that the store that I dealt with umart they had a really good process for it there are some quirks however and there are some things to be aware of especially if you're in Australia and you do have a problem with a product and you want to get it returned especially even after that you buy it off the second hand Market but we'll go through this whole step-by-step process in today's video right after today's video sponsor never pay full price for Windows 10 or 11 again with today's video sponsor SD Keys you can get activated for as little as $15 using that coupon bftc links in description below welcome back to Tech yes city and what we've got here is a brand new RTX 480 that's been replaced by MSI this is their Supreme extreme model Supreme and I'm very glad that I got a new card because I know sometimes I've heard of stories actually heard of quite a few stories where people send off a faulty product and then they just get a faulty product back and it can take them months to get a um actual replacement or to get something fixed even though their product is under warranty and usually if this starts to drag on there are authorities in your country that you can follow up with independently of either the retailer or the board maker to then make action happen in Australia I believe it's the A C if you cannot resolve the issue with either the retailer or the board partner but in this case I had a very good experience and the funny thing is it's an MSI card which if you guys have seen at techs City I'm very critical of MSI with some of the stuff that they've done not just to me personally but some of the products that they've made over the past few years where I thought they've done uh questionable uh things but this time around I'd say there are R ma process is was very straightforward basically what happened was I had the faulty card as I explained in the intro what was wrong with it I even got video footage of the PC shutting off and it actually took me a long time to get this footage because of how initially rare it was and my camera when I was recording it initially it would overheat after an hour and a half of recording so I was thankful that I did get that snippet of when it was shutting down so I could show you guys as well but also when I got this card back having a brand new replacement with a different serial number on it and also I can just tell because I clean Parts a lot that this is a brand new car there was some little blemishes on the cooler itself that are now gone so MSI just replaced the whole card so basically there must have been something seriously wrong with the GPU for it to get a replacement now with the RTX 4080 and 490s there are significant investment and the person that I uh sold the PC to I ended up giving them a Phill uh gaming GPU in the meantime something a little bit slower but they're using that and now they've got their replacement ready to go I can put that back in and they should be having a good gaming experience though here is where the process started for me basically I had the problem the card was faulty I then took it into where uh the person that I bought it off on the secondhand Market bought it from and so in this case they bought it from a retailer called um and they're one of the biggest uh PC parts retailers in a Australia here and their warranty cycle is such that you go in you tell them that the part has the problem they will then send it off to the manufacturer for you and then if there's a problem you will then get that problem fixed and the card will come back and you go pick it up to the store the problem here is buying off the secondhand Market legally the um team and the people there they're only allowed to contact the email address on the registered account that bought the product because they can't verify that I bought this product off the secondhand Market even though I showed video footage of me buying it on my parts hunt they said they still they said technically yes but technically no so I was like look here's the proof that I bought it off the guy it's actually mine now so I mean if you can get around this uh hurdle in your country with showing them video proof of you changing ownership then I don't know but I guess there's a bit of extra steps there because then you got to verify that that's the person who owned the card and then they sold it to you so I guess there was a bit of a a hurdles there but anyway bottom line is I had to go and email the person's account on the file and tell them hey look the card's faulty I've taken it into um please uh don't go and collect the card because you now it's my card I want to go collect that when it's ready and the uh problem has been fixed and in this case they say it could be anywhere from usually 2 to 6 weeks and so this is the biggest downside of an RMA is that you can be left without a GPU especially if it's a high-end gaming graphics card like the RTX 480 you can be left without that and got downtime that you can't really do anything about unless you go out and buy a real cheap GPU as a filler for the meantime they basically with the warranty take it into the retailer they'll then go ship it off to the manufacturer for you on your behalf and they'll also notify you when it comes back in and it's ready to be picked up now of course that's the simple process the extra layer there for the secondhand Market is that you've got to do what I just said before you've got to deal with that original party that purchased the product to be able to get the product return to you and in this case they just told me at the store look come back in and check on the card in say around two to four weeks and so I did that after a month I came back and I checked in on the graphics card and they said yep it's ready to go here it is and they gave me the card and it was all good to go though the warranty process on umart side them taking the card in and doing all the postage and sending it off for you and then notifying you when it's back in stock that's really good it makes me uh feel good about recommending um here in Australia to local Aussies but also MSI in just sending out a brand new card that was actually a really uh surprising thing I thought the card would perhaps be fixed in Taiwan which they say that's where the six we delay can come from with rmas because they get sent back to Taiwan they then get fix at their repair centers and then they get sent back to you and then you I guess get the card and you have to fix it but in this case the card is a brand new sample so we're good to go we're ready to rock and roll and a lot of these graphics cards these higher end models they will have a 3 to four year warranty uh so do keep your receipt always keep your receipt when you're buying anything that's relatively expensive so that right there is the easy process that's how it should go but from what I heard I actually spoke to the retailer and I've spoken to a few other retailers in Australia here the RMA process can be sometimes even better or it can be sometimes worse and in this case I've heard of uh say recently I heard of an RTX 370 a faulty one coming in to another retailer and them getting sent an RTX uh 40 7 back so because their RTX 370 they bought it they didn't have a a straight replacement for it they actually had to replace it with something better all the same and so they only had a 4070 to replace it with so the person who bought that 3070 actually got a free upgrade so that's rare but sometimes that can happen in your favor though what about when things go bad and this is where I can't actually say the name of the manufacturer in Australia because I can't verify that this has actually happened but you guys are welcome to go in the comments section and have a guess who it is but anyway there's been a manufacturer where I've heard two different accounts now from uh actually two different retailers where there was a motherboard a z490 motherboard a particular model where the people would buy this particular model and they would put two 32 GB RAM sticks in and it just would not post it would only work with one of the sticks and the Border essentially just would not work with 64 GB of memory flat out doesn't matter what memory you tried the board was essentially faulty from the get-go it wasn't doing what it said it would do on the box so the said person would go and try and get it rmade and they' just send them back the same motherboard and the problem would still exist and so this is with a particular brand with a particular z490 Mini ITX Bard with only two slots and all the other makers they work fine with 64 GB of RAM the second example I've heard of is an RTX 3080 the particular person sent it back to the retailer and the retailer who's my friend told me about this process they said that they sent it back to the uh Company the company then just sent them back the same card and it was like what is going on here clearly there was a problem where the screen would uh flicker sometimes it was just faulty in general and the person confirmed that at the shop and they sent that back to the board partner and they just completely I guess ignored it and sent them back a faulty product and so this is the same brand that I've heard about this in Australia so that's some of the worst stories I've heard you guys are please let me know in the comments some of your horror stories when it comes to rmas U and do share them so if people are having problems they can perhaps relate in the comments and get some guidance going forward but the bottom line is if you go to a store that has a good customer service perhaps if you're having an ongoing issue then they can help you out perhaps loaning you um some secondhand parts or just learning you something to get by in the meantime though in terms of the RTX 480 and 490 I do feel these coolers are just so big that that's perhaps as I've seen board repairers talk about it's going to be putting pressure on these cards over time so if you do have one of these cards and it is sitting horizontally definitely use a GPU support bracket on the end of the card I think that's something that you have to do I always do do it ever since I saw the size of these things and I saw the GPU sag on them I was thinking well that could be a problem over time but in the case of this card here I guess it's another fault that's gone mainly with the display port perhaps something happened there I'm just not sure but these faulty uh Parts they do come up from time to time but in usually my history with the faulty Parts it's usually on the stuff that uses quite a bit more power and I guess more components on board the more chances something go wrong anyhows with all that aside we've got the question of the day here which comes from Abdul AIT 6672 and they ask I have a HP z440 its power supply has two six pin connectors how should I connect with eight pin required GPU please please please guide me so for this uh question here it's an easy fix and that would be just to get a 2pca 6 pin to 8 Pin adapter these are usually uh relatively cheap cheap on places like AliExpress you can get them for a couple of bucks that would be the best way to solve your problem and if it's maybe an rx470 or an RX 480 or something like that you can usually just plug in the six pin without the eight pin and it works I mean if you're really strapped and you cannot afford like a couple of bucks there is another way and that is you can use those sense pins and short them to metal this is like real ghetto I have tested in this this in the past out of curiosity and it has worked absolutely fine but um we're not going to go there I'm not going to show that on any video because it's it's really uh it's too too ghetto anyhow hope that answers that question and with that a said I'll catch you in another tech video very soon but if you stay this far you're enjoining that Tech yes content then you know what to do and I'll catch you in the next one peace out for now bye a\n"