Abit and Capacitors

[Belwarrior]

http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?cid=10&id=14500

LoL, i know they have improved their components and not much news of the new board's caps going to electronic heaven.. but still this news reminded me of the Abit of old

[Greebe]

Abit despirately trying to undo the bad name campaign they caused by using cheap parts.

Well lets hope for the best, at least they appears to be listening (unlike some manufactures we all know)

[Helevitia]

It will be hard for me not to associate the name with poor quality. Time will tell though...

[UtwigMU]

I have BX133 RAID (fried AGP slot) and BE6 II RAID that I have replaced caps on with help form a friend.

At first Abit had the overclocking features edge. Now every enthusiast and budget board maker includes them.

And they started adding features that are a bit useless:
- Otes on motherboard = noise
- Max series without PS2 and other legacy ports
- they put noisy fans on northbridge instead of big passive coolers

[The PIT]

Something doesn't add up. Use more expensive components yet they're prices seem the same as everyone elses. I sense porkies being told.

[William]

No, no, no; they can do it because all the ABIT employees are so dedicated to building quality parts; they don't even have to pay them.

[TransformX]

C'mon, give them some slack.
We all know that when we buy Asus/Tyan etc. we pay for the name.
The DFI lanparty costs a lot because of the funky colors, does it mean it costs that much more to manufacture ?

[The PIT]

Yes but they're putting more of everything on their boards. Plus they're supposed to be top quality. Therefore it costs more manufacter. So either they're buying a lot in bulk or cutting into their own profits or they're talking marketing bollocks.

[rylan]

My educated guess is their total board cost went up by $3-4 from using better electrolytics.

[William]

By that logic, ABIT have a profit 9 to 12 million dollars a year less by using those caps (they ship ~3 per year). Last year their net income was about 36 million.

Shareholders aren't likely to be too happy about a situation like that, so something isn't right... Either they pass the cost onto their customers (does not seem to be the case) OR, they're making it back elsewhere...