Just in case you were wondering if we ever looked into this, well, now you know! BTW, we just posted a big Patreon written blog update on our plans for this year! www.patreon.com/posts/76702217?pr=true (finally back to posting regularly on Patreon! Thanks for your patience while we tried to get back ahead of the main content and months of unending reviews!)

a negative result is still a result. its a big problem in the scientific community that people only want to publish findings when they actually find something. so we end up not having a lot of data that DISPROVES links between two things etc. glad you're getting these things on the record even if theyre not "exciting" enough for the main channel

That's some fairly wholesome content. We've have a team that spent thousands of dollars on a project and a year of their time, and the primary concern is simply to update the community and regain their table space. I love how the testing is complicated but the humanity behind it, is still simple. Humble.

In case you guys are ever wondering "Man, we talked about X thing X long ago and said we were doing something with it, and we're *still* not done/not resolved it, I wonder if anyone still cares about it or remembers it?" Hi, that person is me. Legitimately and not being facetious those kinds of long term *actual* genuine tests are seriously interesting to me, and updates like this are incredibly satisfying and fulfilling as they bring closure to a question. I often wonder about long term projects that seem to have faded away on channels, and though they don't occupy my mind all the time I do find myself thinking in passing about those types of things somewhat frequently, and I do sincerely enjoy getting updates on them when there's something to share- including the finding that there was nothing significant! That's an important part of the scientific method!

Glad to see that you’re still keeping us updated on stories that either didn’t come to plan or just a time/space conflict I appreciate these smaller updates on things that some people may have forgotten

I know what you need to do to make it pop. Use the board for something you rely on, like a stream PC for a event. If your luck is like my luck it will go.

“Computers, they’re hard” is the biggest truth on the internet, spoken so exactly 😂 Made my day, Steve! 🤘

Null results are equally important. Good job and thanks for publishing

We appreciate your hard work! Even when we don’t see it, GN’s high value content tells us it’s there. No doubt.

That ASUS motherboard is built with *NANOMACHINES*, that's why it won't die :)

Sounds like a good home here and more extra content to me so that’s awesome! It’s cool to see all those man/ equipment hours get out somewhere since I’m sure it’s annoying with stories like this one

Gotta love how casual the Extras channel is. Outro even cuts like a second early

I think its cool that you are putting out your "negative results" somewhere. In scientific research, publishing negative results is critical but way to overlooked and underappreciated. I know what you are doing is not really scientific research but I think negative results are still important. Glad to see you are not letting them go to waste.

Loving all the GN Extras content lately 😊

I like the idea of mentioning it on hardware news and directing to this channel for a more in depth for those that want to see all the details.

Just the time and hardware commitment to recording for several months is cool. Love the dedication

"I Didn't Fail" - Perfect content for a KZfaq Short.

ASUS is making the mother of all motherboards, Steve. Can't fret over every cap! -Senator Armstrong

This channel is the perfect spot to put this type of information that doesn't make the cut for the main channel.

Nice, been wondering about this every now and again. Either it was being worked on behind the scenes or, well, this. Awesome that you *do* spend the time on these sort of things though.

never knew this extra channel existed, just subscribed ;)

Good to see this channel used more :)

What I like about this is that you're showing the work and data behind the kickback of "could not replicate condition" that you often see from a shop (especially w/cars, OMG), which is perfect for the extras channel, IMO!

Back in the day I bought a first run modmat just because I thought it was cool, but I'm glad the money went to a team that truly has their heart in it. Like you could not pay 99% of reviewers enough to do this kinda stuff and here you are putting thousands into it and only getting a "behind the scenes" vid.

This aged like fine milk on ASUS' side with 7000X3D issues haha

I appreciate any GN content. It’s still interesting to see the results (even if it’s not the ‘exciting’ result). Love y’all’s thoroughness - and will watch any update videos. Appreciate your work

Steve hit the nail on the head encounter a problem "damn computers are hard" is every single person's thought 🤣

thanks for letting us know on the second channel!

cool touch on showing the handwritten data! The project was killed before it even got to the neat main channel data overlays

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, I had been wondering about GN's work on this

Have fun with this Channel and be open to posting other stuff here as well.. through this pain you might be able to create something great.

Great job, Steve and crew! You did get a very reasonable and thorough conclusion. We were just expecting a different answer. Again, another fine T&E. Please continue this type of reporting.

Sometimes you gotta know when to throw in the towel and stop giving in to the sunk cost fallacy. However it is commendable that you guys stuck with it for this long, trying to get it to fail. Even if the issue is long resolved it’s still interesting to see what went wrong in the first place and what the potential failure mechanism was. As other people have said, a negative result is still a result, and it’s super interesting that your sample did not fail after all these months where other people’s sample failed very quickly. Thank you for updating us on this project even though the board is still working, which is almost as interesting as if the board had failed. (Also if one of those gosh dang bots instantly replies to this comment…)

I hope this secondary channel grows, thanks for sharing!

Very awesome to have quick little updates like this on longer term things in the works / lack of results / other plans for the office etc. Really interesting to see how you all work.

I was just watching the 2022 disappointment PC video when this popped up in my notifications. It's a surprise, but a welcome one.

There’s a running concern in academia called publication bias where only positive results are published. Releasing these tests that don’t work out instead of burying them may help reduce the general overreaction from the public whenever some random issue blows up on the internet. Perhaps people will be more patient and wait for more conclusive testing after seeing enough negative results.

Even no news is news when it comes to this stuff, glad to see you guys found a solution to bringing this part of content to us.

As others said, negative results are still valid data. Thanks for finding a way to share even the bits that are less popular and lucrative.

This is def main channel content. Make a video featuring the guys who did the testing and give a recap of their methodology and their findings. Even though they didn’t blow up it’s still interesting.

The old saying in electrical engineering is simply "5-5" it means faulty electronics fail in either 5 minutes or 5 years with no inbetween with experience its more like 3 days or 3 years, but that might be worth keeping in mind when testing things for failure i think this problem is the capacitors that were factory tested exploded, the ones that were not factory tested were fine. Electrolytic caps go through a process called forming over 100 hours or so and in the process of forming the cap is polarized, this cap was simply never powered on the right way around and formed backwards if a backwards formed capacitor has any disadvantages im not sure, i dont think anyone ever cared to try

dedication, I likes it, continue the good work guys

As a customer that bought 2 Asus motherboards for my office and home rig that I assembled myself, this fills me with confidence and relief knowing that I'll have good millage out of it for years to come. Keep the good news coming 👍

Maybe you could do a summary once in a while on the main channel of the things that didnt work out. In any case, I'll be seeing it here!

No result is a result! Hopefully you can recoup some costs with this video. Thanks for the update!

Great job all these years. Im glad you have so much integrity.

you guys do the best journalism in the tech industry, seriously. keep it up!

I bought a Maximus Xi Formula years back and still have yet to take the shield off the board knowing there are TONS of bugs under the shield, bought it from a dude who lived in grasslands so he had tons of bugs even around his door 😅

Thank you for taking the time to do this video, you had the right idea: all that money and work needs to be recognized, and it doesn't matter it didn't yield alert-worthy results.

Long time ago my old FM2+ board was NOT actually compatible with the hyper 212 OG. I forced it too work, and bent that Board so badly it made cracking noises and couldn't mount stand offs anymore. It was a very noticeable C shape. It still works today. If I ever unmount it's gonna give up I'd bet.

This has probably already been said but I think it's still super important to talk about when an issue isn't happening despite outside claims. Even if it won't get the most views I love the idea of mentioning these things, though I feel if it's only mentioned in the hardware news it could be glossed over when someone is looking for it

Having no exciting result here is actually a really good thing so I like to know about it. Hey this board survived all of our testing for over a year. Pretty good stuff.

Great great idea, for huge fans it's always nice for us to see what experiments and testing you are doing in the lab even though results aren't what you expect. I think you should also consider selling that hardware with a big discount in the GN Store to get some of that (investment) money back and label them as "Test/Lab Equipment" or "Used for testing" same as an open box item but of course with NO warranty from GN, that's why it should have a pretty cool discount. Personally I wouldn't mind buying "lab hardware" from you guys. You can even combine it with GN's apparel, mod mats, etc. Like "For every purchase of +$250.00 in 'Lab's hardware get a 100% Cotton TShirt for free" hahahaha.

I actually found this quite interesting. In particular, I appreciate the commentary on the approach you took to testing, as well as how you recorded data and attempted to record evidence of the failure.

"Nothing Big came out of this motherboard story" Newegg: "Yeah nothing ever happened"

Great job! I am probably not alone in saying that lot of the daily driver/productivity crowd keep their PCs for many years and find this info VERY useful. Unfortunately both motherboard manufactures and PC KZfaqrs require a constant flow of new products and built-in-obsolesce to survive. Also Big Kudos for testing USB!. Although people like to get over-excited about VRMs I find that onboard peripheral chips fail far far more often than anything CPU related. My old MSI board is still running but the front panel USB chip has died, the built in Ethernet has died etc... P.S This is also why we need more PCIe slots and not just a bunch of M.2 slots....

THX... I really like to see such content - it gives me a better grasp on all tech scenarios that worked different as predicted.

Fascinating that a solid cap placed backwards can withstand that usage. If they were still using regular electrolytics I'm sure it wouldn't have lasted.

"Nanomachines, son. They harden in response to physical trauma."

It's actually really cool to see a behind the scenes mostly unsuccessful project. You demonstrated something, just not what you expected.

I think it would be a good idea to release a semi-regular (for example, quarterly or twice a year) video about your lab updates. You could talk about what new long-term projects there are, if there are any updates on other long-term projects, show what's new in the lab, talk about testing methodology et cetera. That way it is still a decent content piece even if the testing didn't produce any sensational results. It's still a very valuable information, and I'm sure your viewers would find it a very engaging.

Good to see more uploads in the extras channel!

I completely forgot about this being a thing but do remember it now. Glad to see you put all this time though into investigating the problem.

Thanks for showing your results! Even when they aren't what you expected to observe.

Great idea doing this kind of stuff on this side channel.

Thanks for all your effort GN Team! Even if the results did not pan out in this instance, we always look forward to your journalistic integrity raising the standard for information for us, the average consumers!

Thank man honestly would be nice if the manufacturers did funding for this stuff specifically

But this Is a good thing to post as well as your other stuff because uploading information on when products are not good vs when they are good & when they fix an issue gives consumers a better scope on whats a good product & what they should & shouldnt buy.

I didn't know you had this channel. Definitely subscribing to see what else is going on at GN.

Thank you very much for your hard work, time, and money spent on investigating this The data gathered is still valuable! It very possibly could have been a multiple points of failure issue that most motherboards wouldn't have issues with I'm glad you're going to be publishing stuff like these now so we can at least see the fruits of your work which is still very much valid

It's great to see more content on this channel!

Love the hard work you do, we all definitely appreciate it!

I work in automotive electronics, I have seen reverse caps instant fail functional test, I have seen them limp along hundreds of hours in a thermal chamber (you need a tenny Jr btw, its 120 volt and can fit most mobo's) and years down the road as a warranty recall hanging off the ass end of a car

I love the idea of putting those kinda test on here cant wait to see more!

I liked the video and watched to the end so you get the stats. Keep it up.

"We didn't find anything" is still a valid finding. You just _know_ it would have blown up if you hadn't looked, right? 😁 Hope the new year went well at GN HQ!

"We'll see yo--" -- End Screen Steve, January 2nd 2022

This is actually good findings and reassuring that the Asus Z690 board is actually pretty rock solid despite the component placement fault that some had. I wonder if it just prevents the quick USB charging? As in, it won't deliver above USB spec power current as a quick charge port should. (BTW, as Steve mentioned, Asus will still fix your board if it fails due to the flipped cap until the warranty period is up.)

GN To the motherboards:WHY WONT YOU DIE Mobo: Nano machines son *meme proceeds*

Thank you for this ! Loving the content!

On a similar note i'd love to see a video on how temperature / voltage actually impact the lifespan of parts. So much effort is spent investigating how we can lower temps by a few degrees but virtually nothing investigating whether it actually matters.

Nothing is gona be 100% with any produkt. But i love the work you do with this long turm testing 🤟 keep it going

Applauded this work and hope there isn't more of this non good main channel content but look forward to it when it dose

>Ultra high-end mobo doesn't spectacularly fail. Well good! Also shows like the 4000 series power connector that failures like this are extremely rare and not something the end user should honestly be concerned about.

Wohoo more GN Extras content!

fast forward a week: the smell of magic smoke fills the room as Andrew’s PC implodes.

I have 2 Asus boards from 18 years ago and both still work great and both were from prebuilt computers and back then on one of them I gamed on it for hours at a time and I'm talking 10 to 12 hours straight with little breaks in between. So due to the fact I've had really good luck with Asus boards I bought a Asus b450 board a couple weeks ago for my second build

Absolutely wonderful video!

It's good to know the result of this so in the future when we choose products we can see these videos about quality, endurance, performance of a product.

Sometimes with power circuit issues like these running a long term test simply doesn't create the failure effect. For instance capacitors in power circuits are generally stressed the most when you first turn on power. So instead of running a long term test you need to run a series of tests constantly cycling the power off and on, say on for 5 minutes and off for five minutes (Basically you need to test to see how long it takes for the capacitor to discharge after power off to determine the proper off cycle time). I would be willing to bet that nearly all the boards that blew up did so when the power was turned on. Although it's a different scenario anyone that has worked restoring old tube guitar amps that have sat for years without being powered up need to hook them up to an isolated variac and slowly bring up the voltage over a period of several hours so the caps can reform (Not as big of a problem with modern caps) or the caps will literally blow up. I've had amps brought in where when you open them up it looks like someone had a party inside with a lot of confetti as a lot of older caps where made from paper

I would love if stuff like this could get a small mention in a HW news once it's over as well, and then basically keep it to saying that nothing happened, and to check GN Extras for context / the full non-story.

Maybe that reversed cap, in an industry profoundly running on order, pleased the god of chaos and he blessed that board with immortality.

I could absolutely see a confirmation bias issue showing up in cases like this. By the time you've spent $1400 on motherboards and lots of time and resources testing them to try and make them explode, you _really_ want to be able to produce some content based on it. I could see less scrupulous people doing some crappy things.

Mythbusters mantra after regular testing produces no results: "so, what WOULD it take to ...". To clear those tables if you don't have access to C4, try more electricity.

Not every scoop bears fruit but it's good to know that you're still doing the work whether it's a big story or not.

This is actually quite interesting to see and think about. The capacitor that was affected is an SMD aluminium polymer electrolytic right? Aluminium electrolytic capacitors come out of assembly stages nearly entirely symmetrical, and are then "formed", where thousands of capacitors get clamped to the same voltage rails and their voltage is gradually slowly over hours pumped up to the test limit which is a little higher than the desired voltage rating. It's at this forming stage that they gain both their polarity and their final capacity. Slow forming lowers defect rate. When the capacitors are subsequently reverse biased, a few things can happen. They can and often do instantly explode, but that obviously hasn't happened to shipped units since the PCBs were factory tested. They might fail silently and become open-circuit, and the rest of capacity present in the net takes up the slack with some undesirable stray currents. It's possible that they survive with moderate damage and still provide some capacitance. Or the capacitors can even get re-formed, so the final capacitor manufacturing step got repeated in reverse and now you potentially have a nearly normal reverse-labelled capacitor. It shouldn't always work, as prior to re-forming, dielectric absorption needs to be deep depleted, and good forming is very slow, but by all reason, on the boards that shipped out, it's a possibility that they got rapidly reformed somewhat successfully. Indeed gradual voltage ramp-up is a recommended one-time post-soldering factory procedure for some power components. It can help components recover from previous shock and reduce in-field failure rate. Additionally the startup mode of many PC power supplies may be considered - in order to limit inrush instability, they ramp up the voltages over the not inconsiderable fraction of a second while holding the system in forced reset, taking it out of reset with PS_ON signal. Also capacitors formed in reverse from the factory happen as well, and that happens more often than some capacitor manufacturers are willing to admit.

It'd probably help out this content to give it a shout out during GN News pieces. Minor updates on these would also be good for Patreons ("It didn't blow up this week.") It'd also serve as a reminder where all the missing tables have gone. Also protip for these long term testing projects: get a good UPS. Various long term test projects like this will end to a mains power failure.

No complaints from me, I can never get enough of GN content!

I appreciate Gamers Nexus being unbiased when testing and dealing with a Companies reputation.

Reality Check: you're audience are a Bunch of nerds. We love this stuff. If I'd owned a Hero card, its exactly the content i'd be looking for. I own an Asus Z690 motherboard that's not a hero card, but I still wanted to hear what you had to say about a similar 690 Asus card. This may not be big news for you, but it is headlines for some of us!