I'm looking for some advice related to issues I've been having with multiple RMA's of a Rampage IV Extreme Motherboard and the supplier that manages ASUS RMA's.

I've had to RMA this thing about 5 or 6 times during its lifetime. Four of those have happened since about 2 months ago when my working RIVE stopped booting up. No QLED's, no information on the diagnostic LCD. The ASUS ROG software on my laptop always listed a status of Stand by Power.

I RMA'ed that board and got a different board back. That board had 4 non-working DIMM slots (C1, C2, D1, and D2). It didn't matter which RAM module I'd put into those DIMM's, they'd always display as abnormal within the BIOS, even though the BIOS could read their SPD information. If I installed the RAM modules that supposedly didn't work in the A1, A2, B1, and B2 DIMM slots they'd work with no issues. So I could only access half of the RAM that I had installed in the PC.

I RMA'ed that board and they sent me a different one (I am identifying them by their serial numbers). When I got the next board I was having problems booting into Windows. I figured maybe swapping so many boards may have corrupted the OS so I tried to reinstall it from the original installation media but I was having many issues. I decided to swap hard drives around the SATA ports and noticed that not a single drive that would be installed on the ASmedia ports would work. I tested with a DOS software called HD Sentinel and it was a consistent problem - any drive installed on the ASmedia SATA ports would not work. I was also getting random restarts while within the BIOS but I was never able to troubleshoot that and focused on the SATA issue.

I explained the situation to ASUS CS and they were nice; no complaints from the CS guys. I was given another RMA number and was told how they'd just replace the ASmedia SATA chip and that should fix it. I explained to the CS representative about the random restarts and he assured me he'd look into it.

Well, I got the latest board back a few days ago and boom, now none of the red SATA ports work. I can only run my PC if I hook up my drives to the black SATA ports, which are slower and there are not enough of them (I use 6 of the 8 ports; one of the reasons I got the RIVE was because of all the expansion, USB, and SATA ports as I needed them).

I called ASUS support again and got another RMA number but at this point I am not sure that the support staff even trust me and frankly, after my experience, I don't trust the people that test these components to certify them as working either. I realize the board was purchased 3 years ago, but I've had to RMA it so often that it has never been reliable and it was not a cheap board when I bought it.

As for the previous RMA's they were because the first RIVE I got was DOA; it never even posted. The second RIVE I got would have problems cold booting. That one was repaired. Then that same board got the cold booting problem again, I sent it for a third RMA and they said the problem was due to a faulty BIOS update. Odd, since I hadn't updated that BIOS in months; I never felt they bothered to fix the issue as the cold booting problems persisted but I just did my best to never turn it off. That was until it never turned on again and that's the one that was sent for an RMA two months ago.

So basically, has anybody gotten out of such a bad streak with a RIVE and how did ASUS assist to do so? I really want to avoid buying another board as I can't handle that expense now and such an expensive component should have been more reliable...