I will not comment on the eye-candy department as that is personal opinion and I respect yours, as I expect you to respect mine. I'll just highlight that quality has nothing to do with looks. At all. The white and blue caps are probably the same as the other caps, as long as they are all the same kind and from a similar manufacturer.
The percentage is a balanced way of expressing the average of RMAs a company has had to fulfill. Even though Statistics are pretty easy to fake and make them display what you want to display, as a statistician friend of mine told me, I am pretty sure OCF has no kind of shady contract with any of the manufacturers, and ED sounds like a pretty sensible guy.
Your house, your town, your country... that is a small part of the world, isn't it? Your experience could be explained by scientifics as an anomaly of the average. I am in no way saying ASUS is a bad brand, nor that the others are better. I am not loyal to any brand, excluding nVidia to an extent, as my previous experience with Linux and AMD cards scarred me, though it seems they improved over time, specially with Steam coming.
Regarding the novice hypothesis, it is just that, an hypothesis, a possible explanation. We can't prove it wrong or right, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
"you get what you pay for no matter what brand or type you buy". TF2. You don't need to pay for it in order to play. Does that mean it will not provide me with the same feeling of joy and fun a AAA title will? Certainly not.
Or, and let me highlight that I do not intend to start a OS flamewar here, they all have their pros and cons, what about Linux vs Windows? I paid no money to use Arch Linux, does that make it a worse OS? It fits the bill, it lets me tinker with it as much as I want to, I know what is going on every second, it gives me actual error messages instead of a faint "Your computer had to restart"... et caetera. Is here the upper hand for the "premium" OSes like Windows or Mac?
Compatibility is just being able to discriminate square pegs from round holes. Checking lists, making sure you buy the proper hardware for your needs, making sure it all fits nicely together... It isn't rocket science. It isn't something that requires an EE to look at. Most times, barebones are sold for specific niche markets with "propietary" hardware, for example, Shuttles or Clevo laptops.
I am going to go straight to the point. You want a motherboard for your system. You gave us some choices. We analyzed them, and we thought that you could use another cheaper board that would provide the same features. We gave to factual information proving these suggestions. You ignored these. It seems it bothers you when we recommend you a product that does not have ASUS on it, or that is not the top-high-end-est component, something you do not seem to need as you will not shoot for WRs on HWBOT, and that is the only point of those boards.
If this is what you want to hear, go on, get the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme and enjoy it. It is your money. That board is overpriced for normal usage, but if you can afford it and you truly want it, go for it. No, it will not guarantee a bazillion megahertzs over air, that is CPU dependant and nowadays the motherboard has nothing to say as long as it uses a overclocking-capable chipset. No, there's no guarantee it will work for 7 years with no hiccups. No, it will not improve your computer's performance at all compared to any other Z87 board worth its salt. But, it's your money. You can do what you want with it. You're free to do your bidding.
We don't have shares on any special company, we just want the best for our forum fellows. If you don't want to hear to the advice of those with a little bit more experience than you, it's all right.
