Counterfeit DFI Motherboards Surface In Indonesia 216
crazyeyes writes "Those crazy counterfeiters have done it again. First they made counterfeit Intel boxed processors, now they are counterfeiting DFI motherboards! Quoting: 'The detail to the packaging, documentation and the motherboard printing really makes you wonder if the people responsible for this have only limited their activities to DFI motherboards. It's quite possible that there are fake ASUS or Gigabyte motherboards in the market as well.'" Update: 04/15 12:59 GMT by Z : As noted in the comments, the articles offer no speculation as to the origins of the counterfeits. Updated to clarify that.
Prejudice? (Score:5, Informative)
Neither article presents proof (or even speculation) as to the origins of the fakes.
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The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Irony (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically the Chinese have the world by the balls and they know it. I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords, provided I can has pork fried rice.
BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development. I just think it's time they started playing by the rules.
Re:The Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you think the USA jump started their economic development after the revolution?
And who do you think control the current "rules" and to who's benefit?
The Irony indeed
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USA rules - Strict IP with Software Patents
European Rules - Fairly strict IP without Software patents
UN Rules - Strict IP without patents but respecting counties Patent systems
China has a huge cheap workforce so IP is largely irrelevant to them at this stage (as it was in Japan when they ignored IP rights, now they have their own IP to protect and an expensive workforce they enforce other countries IP)
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Remember the golden rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules.
In a Chinese world, these are the new rules, and all of us in the West had better get used to it.
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The rule of the majority?
The rule of might makes right?
The rule of he who has the gold makes the rules?
They don't have to play by 'our' rules at all if they don't want to. And the rest of the world can't make them.
Just because we pressured alot of other countries into playing by our set of rules. Don't think for a second you can do the same to china. They have the population and resources to make their own rules. and force US to play by them.
They make all our s
Re:The Irony (Score:5, Funny)
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They very politely informed us that we had the wrong China, but to come back in 2000 and they would have unified.
Ain't happened yet, but it's not unimaginable if the drift towards economic freedom leads to eventual political freedom in PROC.
Anyway, those Formosans make very good motherboards :P
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Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Interesting)
On Saipan, though, you can get knock-off Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger, and J.Crew clothes for really cheap. Almost cheaper than the price of materials. These knock-offs are so good that even an expert wouldn't be able to tell a real one from a fake one.
The reason is that they are all real ones produced by the same factory. The only difference is whether the apparel was passed through proper distribution channels or swiped from a table at quitting time.
So, if I can save 80% of my money buying a "counterfeit" motherboard, is my little indiscretion going to break the global economy? Why can't I save a bit on the mobo and splurge a bit on something else? The design and manufacturing knowledge to build them is out there, shouldn't anyone be able to replicate the boards? And if they come from the same assembly line, what differentiates a real one from a fake one? Isn't "proper distribution channels" an artificial construct to bilk customers?
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But if you are going to do something illegal why not try to maximize your profit: there is more money to be done by just copying only the visible markings and slam it onto the cheapest hardware as possible.
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anyone remember the outfit that completely copied NEC? to the point where they started developing their own products with their own inovation, not just ripping off NEC.
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You may want to risk frying your new shiny 9800GX2 and your 4GB of DDR3, but not I, sir.
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Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. They might make their 10-15% profit, but that is reward for the risk and hardwork they put into the R&D that goes into making those chips/boards.
You are IMHO robbing from society as a whole by buying stolen goods. Sure sometimes it's for the greater good, breaking the rules is a good way to influence change. But you can't do it forever. Someone has to pay for the R&D.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Funny)
I wasn't going to pay full price for a super-duper chip anyway. It's not like they lost a sale on me.
But the police sell stolen goods (Score:2)
You can't be right, because the police are not in the business of helping robbers, yet they sell stolen goods. I got my first bike from a police auction btw.
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More like 100-150%.
In case of designer clothes and perfumes, 1000-1500%. Often much more.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow. Just...wow. A proper distribution channel exists so a company that spends money on R&D, engineering, manufaturing, etc. can turn a (relatively low margin) profit.
I just love how you rationalize that it's OK to buy counterfeit gear just because it's cheaper. Cutting out the 'evil capitalistic profits' eh? If it were not for profit there would be no incentive for DFI or any other company to make any product in the first place.
You show either a very shallow understanding of economics or a strong Marxist bias. Or it could just be you didn't have your coffee before you posted, or you just want to rationalize your purchase of low cost counterfeit products so you don't feel guilty.
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If the prices of the branded goods weren't artificially inflated, it would be harder to produce cheaper copies. Similarly, if the cheaper copies are actually inferior they will soon earn a reputation for being so, unlike digital media where the cheap copies are often better (removal of unskippable commercials and forced activation/cod
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Similarly, if the cheaper copies are actually inferior they will soon earn a reputation for being so [...]
This is where you argument falls down.
The fakes are (allegedly -- TFA offers no facts) being sold as "genuine DFI(TM) motherboards". Now if they were sold as "genuine ChinaCorp Fake(TM) motherboards" then you could consider the reputation of DFI versus the reputation of the fakes, and perhaps the fakes would be just as good. That is not possible if the fakes pretend to be a DFI motherboard and
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However, so strong is the marketing surrounding the well known products, that a noname producer has a hard time getting any sales, even if their products are both superior and cheaper. The current system is geared up to keep incumbents at the top, while providing an unnaturally high barrier of entry.
Maybe sales and marketing should be banned, and accountable non profit groups set up with experts in particular fields independently reviewing and publishing the results. It should cut
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How else do you think the multi-million dollar salaries for overgrown rounders players are funded?
No marketing => little or no professional sport.
Not to mention the revenue streams of the media, Google, etc. etc.
You're especially right about the designer clothes, though - as far as I'm concerned anything that puts the designers' noses out of joint is a Good Thing(TM).
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For motherboards, your argument works. For handbags made by slave labor from $0.15 worth of raw materials that sell for a few hundred dollars, not so much.
Cutting out the 'evil capitalistic profits' eh? If it were not for profit there would be no incentive for DFI or any other company to make any product in the first place.
If the workers can't a
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Also, "name" branding does have value. As with the appearance of the clothing itself and estimation of its "quality," it has a rather arbitrary value. With some goods the brand maps ra
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I'll pay for name-brand when that actually correlates with quality. When it comes to matters of "fashion", where people pay only for the name - I'd actually prefer to buy the knockoff at the same price, just to punish the idiots that really believe a name has value.
Ish. I'm sitting at my desk dressed head to toe in designer clothes [rapha.cc]. It's expensive. But the brand sponsor a team [britishcycling.org.uk] in a sport I support, and not being a mainstream sport, it needs all the sponsors it can get.
The reasons for buying a particular brand are not necessarily simply to do with what you get for your money.
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps they could assert that buying a "genuine" DFI motherboard provides extra peace of mind and a valid warranty, but if all the parts come from the same materials and the same manufacturing techniques (in fact the same exact production line), then the difference is the label and warranty, right?
Or is the knowledge to build chips somehow purely DFI's to own?
A counterfeit board might have the following issues:
1) Counterfeit bios, or a poorly implemented one.
2) Inferior parts... voltage regulars that overheat, under rated caps, shitty resisters, fuzzy silk screening, poor materials.
3) Mislabled parts... claims to use one chipset but really under the heatsync is another.
4) Dummy parts... looks like a slot, but ain't hooked up to anything.
5) Unknown factor. I can read reviews on Brand X's 123 board vs Brand Y's 123 board. Each model will have it's own features, and performance benefits. Counterfeit 123s may not even share the same attributes (jacks, ports, slots, layout) as a genuine board.
But what does DFI provide? They provide a product worthy of putting their label on it. They accept responsibility for it. They might not even have designed or manufactured it, but it bears their brand and at the end of they day they are accountable for a product they sold. A good reputation is what people pay money for... assurance that they won't get stuck with a product that they'll have to return or lose their money on.
It doesn't matter if we are talking lightbulbs, toasters, motherboards, macrame coat hangers, if you put your brand on a product, you take the blame if that product is crap.
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What you are buying when you buy the genuine article is a valid warranty, and the ability to get some recompense if it is faulty and nothing more
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:4, Insightful)
Assembly lines create rejects... most often the "knockoffs" taken from factories are those that don't meet assembly/reliability standards and are "liberated" from the reject bin. Proper distribution channels is not just to bilk customers, it's also to control the quality of goods shipped to customers.
For example leaking capacitors and exploding batteries are the risks of poor control in the non-proper channels.
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The design and manufacturing knowledge to build them is out there, shouldn't anyone be able to replicate the boards?
On the point of copied products (not stolen/diverted goods):
And when the company that spent money obtaining the design and manufacturing knowledge (ie: R&D) goes under because they couldn't compete with the barely above cost copies? The company that invests in designing the next generation of a product is gone, and the company that's producing the cheap knockoffs doesn't do design, so where do the next set of improvements come from?
Expecting a company to simply write off its design costs and compete pu
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Any firm subsidies the R&D spend by selling their current range at a competitive profit. Any one line only stays in the field for a limited length of time and by then a new product must be ready to roll or the company folds.
This goes double for "arms race" technologies like the IT field, where a mobo will be deprecated in ~8 months. They NEED to sell a certain number in order to fund the development of the next model and so on. Every new fork in the technology will leave a few sm
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This goes double for "arms race" technologies like the IT field, where a mobo will be deprecated in ~8 months. They NEED to sell a certain number in order to fund the development of the next model and so on
I disagree.
In "arms race" technologies, emphasis on the race, they probably have the least need to prevent true copy-cats precisely because of the short duration of profitability. Copy-cats don't literally spring up over night, it takes time to reverse engineer the system, source the components and bring up the manufacturing line. By then, most of the profit from a true "arms race" product has already been realized.
Shoddy knock-offs are another thing, I'm talking about true copy-cats. Trademarks are gen
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Firstly, I doubt that replacement auto parts form any significant percentage of
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China is just getting going but will probably take longer since it has a larger pool of cheap labour
Re:Just how counterfeit are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
Second... how reliable do you think a 80% cheaper board is? I know during the 486 era I was hip to buying some cheap arse boards. We're talking rebranded PC chips crap. Even the socket 754 line which was designed to be the cheap line... even true blue asus boards had a high return rate. I'm sure other
And third... support from a counterfeit board. Bios updates are ultra handy. Even from a non-counterfeit board i've seen a lack of updates in the pentium III class where win2k or xp refused to work (I forget the issue, but something MS and intel hashed out). Imagine a pirated bios with no chance of an update.
And lastly... let's say you "could" get a $30 motherboard. Odds are you're going to have to replace that sucker relatively soon with another $30 board because of failure, lack of updates, or whatever. You're out $60. You might as well have bought a $60 board, which to me represents an older model, overstock, or closeout deal.
So to sum up
1) 80% savings is too good to be true for new gear.
2) You risk failure or damage to your equipment
3) Lack of support and updates make it a headache
4) Under pretty ideal conditions, you'll likely be better off with a realistic discount for a realistic reason.
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The boards don't have to be sub-par. They might be substandard, as in 'failed to pass one of Q/A tests'. Or they may be run-off-the-mill standard devices, made at night on the same line as the originals.
They will run on exactly the same drivers as the originals.
You will replace your $150 motherboard in 2-3 years. That's about as long as your $30 one would serve you.
We're not in an era wh
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Justify anything can we? (Score:2)
You want to know the problem, its called theft. By your example which you tried to use clever words to cover up its pure theft.
"Proper Distribution Channels" - Thats rich.
You are receiving stolen goods, worse you acknowledge they are stolen. You they try to excuse it by tossing all the PC key phrases to assign the guilt back to the party being harmed... as in "using slave labor, low wage
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For example, all of my suits for the last 5-7 years are YSL or PC in anything but a label. I buy them when on holiday in Bulgaria (and I know where to buy them from). When YSL, PC or any of the other usual suspects orders a batch to a specific design the factory always makes 10-20% surplus to ensure that enough of them survive through quality control.
The surplus is after that sold unlabelled on the lo
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Personally I would be more concerned about frying my hardware, electrocuting myself or possibly burning the whole house down. It doesn't matter either if the mobo is actually genuine in the stolen sense. Who knows if the thing passed QC or not. For all anyone knows, it came out of the reject pile and has something seriously wrong with i
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If the product is produced on the same production line but carted off and sold without the client's knowledge, it's tantamount to theft. It's a direct contract violation.
It's not like it would be actual DFI motherboards that DFI sold or shipped to someone. These aren't gray market motherboards. They're illegally produced and sold without DFI's knowledge by a factory who violated their contract to produce boards to DFI's spec without their knowledge or consent.
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Well great (Score:3, Interesting)
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All those motherboards have all the right looking shininess, capacitors, traces etc etc. How does a person without a PhD in I dunno--hardware something--tell these apart from legit boards (apart from the legit boards not being sold in the country of sale.)
This is a legit enough question, one where there is no easy answer. I remember back in 2000 when some parts dealers were popping up all had fliers for their special of the month. Some were legit, but some used boards with counterfeit bios. The only way one can tell by looking at it was looking up the BIOS ID what was flashed for a moment upon bootup.
It's not like the deals were too good to be true. For about $100 from each dealer you could buy a reasonably cheap MB and Chip combo in OEM packaging and a
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Are they worse than the original? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is just DFI getting no money for them or can the end user experience any difference?
Confused.
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In what way are they different?
Especially if they use:
1) the same die cast Intel uses
2) Uses same workers to do the job,
3) Uses the same tools to get it made
4) Uses same raw material
If it barks like a dog, looks like a dog, wags its tail like a dog and chases cats like a dog, then it is a dog to me.
Just because it is an unauthorized copy doesn't mean it is inferior.
Much like your GF making a copy of the 256 kbps MP3 song you bought from Amazon.com. Is the copy in anyway inf
They actually make the originals worse! (Score:2)
Crazy Chinese? (Score:2)
Yes, crazy like a fox.
However, I don't see what nationality or ethnicity has to do with this. TFA doesn't even mention China.
Counterfeit boxes, not processors (Score:2)
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It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake (Score:3, Interesting)
Now take a step back and think about it: Pharmaceuticals, airplane spare parts, nuclear power plant spare parts
And I am thinking. If they are that skilled, why don't they just produce originals themselves (I heard that some fakes are even better than the originals, especially with products where a lot of value is in the brand instead of the product itself).
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Because implementation (manufacturing) is a commodity service; research, design, and developement is hard.
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There have been several air accidents due to fake aircraft parts, not to mention fake Titanic rivets.
Re:It IS crazy thinking about what the can fake (Score:4, Insightful)
They will...
This is the same process that Japan went thru. If you're old enough you'll remember when "Made in Japan" meant crap quality, and back then there were few Japanese brand names. China if building up it's tech expertise (very quickly) building knock-off versions of brands that are easy to sell. As "Made in China" stops becoming synonymous with "cheap piece of crap", then you will see more and more Chinese brands, respected for themselves, rather than knock-offs.
China is/will be knockoff capital, full stop. (Score:2)
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So? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Aren't all of these boards Chinese in the first place? The factory probably just did some overtime runs to knock out several more thousand.
That would be a good scenario. A bad scenario is that these are the motherboards which didn't pass QA or testing, in other words faulty motherboards which were liberated from the reject bin by enterprising workers. You'd be buying a known broken motherboard and wouldn't know about it until you got it home, or perhaps even until you'd been using it to process your
and? (Score:3, Informative)
look, on the bright side - it probably will not be fatal. if you really want a shocking (bad pun) Chinese fake, look at this one:-
http://www.schneider-electric.co.uk/internet/pws/pws.nsf/luAllByID/F2DAEE42760F06F3802573F3004D040C [schneider-electric.co.uk]
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There was 1 difference though - the west was a easier target because the margins were so much better. It is the normal to see us ripped off left, right and center but there is less economic incentive for them to rip each other off.
There is one point worth making though - they fully understand IP law (and find it hilarious), and they use it against the western world. They have creat
Why Asus/Gigabyte hasn't been faked yet... (Score:2)
Ditto for Gigabyte motherboards.
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How about an anology (Score:4, Interesting)
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So no. The friends that bought them were doing something more like "Oh, I know this fab designer and picked up one of his originals for £30!" instead of "I bought this £90 chunk of crap they told me 'jeweler' sells for £120, but they don't and it's actually worth only £15!"
In most places (Score:2)
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The "left over" silver was clearly stolen (unless it's a normal part of contracts like these that such material becomes the property of the silversmith). The harder question is the design that was used, but again it comes down to the contract: if he was handed a design and then used it later without proper license, he's stealing the IP (if you'll allow such an argument here; if you won't, then you might not even accept the notion of a counterfeit board in the first place). If he composed his own design, t
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It also depends on whether the smith was responsible for buying it, or the company that bought the contract. At least in the machine shop world, which I'm a bit more familiar, the machine shop often handles their own materials purchases.
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That's because jewelry really doesn't need support, and in your example, they know the original silversmith. But electronics, should it fail, you'll want it fixed, or you'll want BIOS or driver updates. The real drivers might or might not work.
Fakes are already very common (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny how accounting works (Score:2)
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In the 1980s, Capitalism defeated Communism, in the 1990s it defeated Democracy...
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What's to say this is limited to mobo's? (Score:2)
I think a bigger question this begs is what if this isn't limited to motherboards? Remember the lead paint issue? And the tainted food? Once we started looking we found those problems went much deeper than the original discovery.
The potential is massive. Think of all the embedded systems manufactured overseas...flight control, car computers, radar, medical diagnostics. It's a really long list.
To me this is the real potential downside of outsourcing our manufacturing: Losing control of the QA/QC cha
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