I used to be a huge Asus fan until I had problems with 3 motherboards back to back to back. I am now with AsRock and have never looked back.
There are 8 refurbished boards @ Newegg in stock and result in this coming down to $80AR.
Don’t you mean the updated board is the z97?
As someone who owns a couple of these, let me just say that these are possibly serviceable unless you have some kind of interest in changing something from a firmware default, like maybe the disk controller type or boot order.
These boards reset to firmware defaults at the drop of a hat. Or more likely, any sort of power interruption.
I’ve exchanged messages with the worthless pukes at Asus regarding these issues (I’ve experienced them with several other recent-vintage Asus boards as well) and had no luck in resolving the problems.
I’d buy a refurbished ECS board before I’d touch another one of these myself, but maybe it’s just too much to expect a $300 MSRP motherboard to behave the way I’ve configured it.
And this is what is wrong with woot. First they argue that we don’t understand the deal. Then they lower the price mid deal, after we the people prove that this isn’t a deal. Then when you ask for a refund of a price change within 30 days, typically provided by most online and brick vendors, you are told sorry.
I enjoy finding a rare deal on woot, much less than I used to.