Arc - Ascenti Resources - Good Or Bad?

[Meridian007]

Ascenti Resources or ARC provide support for certain items sold in other stores such as J.I.B. but I think they also have their own storefronts. Based on my recent experience with them, I would suggest caution for anyone thinking of purchasing a video card from them.

I'll put the TL;DR here as I know that this is a really long post: While Dtech provides good hardware support for stores like J.I.B, I have had a rough time in dealing with ARC, as they have been trying to avoid honouring their warranty with me.

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I bought a Galaxy GT9600 card at J.I.B. two years ago, and it was labeled with a sticker stating three years of warranty support. A week and a half ago, I started hearing a nasty noise coming from my pc case. It went on for a few seconds, and then stopped, so I figured that maybe one of the case fans was momentarily touched by a cable in the case. I continued working for a while, when suddenly the whole pc shut down without warning. I could start it up into the POST screen again, but as soon as the OS began loading, it would keep shutting down. I left it alone for a little while, and it started up normally again, but would then occasionally shutdown at random.

I decided to see what was causing these random shutdowns, and upon looking into the case, I noticed that the fan on the videocard wasn't moving. It seems that one of the fan blades broke off, and got jammed in the heatsink, which stopped the fan from moving. I removed the broken blade and the fan worked again, but minus a blade. Thankfully, this card is a "green" card from Nvidea, so I'm assuming that it was able to work for a while by lowering its clock-rate when it got too hot from no longer having active cooling. Although the fan was spinning again, I didn't think that this was a good state for the card to be in, so off to Pantip I went for some support.

First I went to Dtech, because that was where J.I.B. had sent me before for warranty work on failed hard drives. Dtech has always been great to work with, they will replace a defective piece with a re-furbished replacement without any problem. Sadly, they told me that they don't do support for J.I.B's video cards. I went to the J.I.B. service centre on the third floor, and showed them my faulty card. The girl at the counter seemed unsure of what to do, and told me to leave it with them for a month or two (!?!?). I told her that I couldn't wait that long, as I need to use my computer almost daily. She brought me to a manager, who told me that a broken fan may not be covered under the three year warranty. I said that that seemed unlikely, as I assume that if I replaced the fan on my own, I would void the warranty completely, so I asked her if she could please honour her warranty.

She told me that ARC does their warranty work for them, so she would have them look at it, and they would contact me in a few days. I was satisfied by this, and a few days later I was called by J.I.B. and told that I could pick it up. I went in and they said that it wasn't ready, and that I could pick it up after the weekend. Aside from the wasted trip, I was okay with this, but I decided to join some friends in Koh Samed for a few days, so I told them I'd be in on Thursday to pick it up.

On the Monday, I got a mysterious call from someone at ARC, accusing me of already changing the fan and heatsink! He said that ARC wouldn't support an aftermarket heatsink, and that my warranty was void. I told him that I definitely did not change the heatsink, that it was the original from when I bought it, but that I was on a beach and didn't really want to argue about it then. I said that I'd go in on Thursday, and talk to them about it then.

I went in, and after dealing with ARC's non-English speaking representative at Pantip, (luckily I can speak enough Thai to be at least basically understood), he put me on the phone with someone from the main office. She again told me that their techs said that the heatsink and fan weren't original, and that ARC was no longer responsible for the card. I again restated that I hadn't changed it, and was insistent that they should at least replace the fan, and test the card to make sure that it wasn't damaged by the extra heat from the faulty fan. She finally said that they would look at it again and contact me in a week or two.

That is where it stands now, and I made sure that I took a picture of my card before giving it back to them. This hopefully makes sure that they won't try to pull anything, and has allowed me to do more research on my own. I've since found at least four online reviews of the card, each having a picture of the card with the exact same heatsink and fan that mine has. Hopefully this will help motivate them to take responsibility for this.

I know that it is just a fan, and that I could just replace it myself for a few baht, but I know that doing so would then give them the chance to be correct that the warranty on the whole card is void. I figure that part of the value that I payed for in the purchase price of the card is the support for the advertised length of time. With the dirty current, frequent blackouts/brownouts, and heat of Thailand, the warranty has become an important variable for me. I think that it is important for people to know who will give good support, and who won't. Hopefully this can help some of you who like to build your own computers here.

[garyh]

I found out a long time ago not to ignore fan issues.