What is Aopen?

[Warflagon]

Howzit, I'm gonna have a PC built for me within a week or 2, and so far I have (on paper) what I want from Monarch.com, but decided to check my local computer store.
They don't build em. Aopen does. (This store apparantly outsources it or is partly owned maybe by Aopen? no idea.)
Can anyone tell me about their hardware? I'm skeptical, the mousy lil guy at the store struck me odd and I've never heard of Aopen before.
I have heard good things about Monarch.
Any rants, flames or poems about Aopen would be greatly appreicated.

Thanks alot!

[elroy]

Aopen is a manufacturer of computers and also sells components. Likely made by other companies. They have been around for some time.
http://english.aopen.com.tw/
http://www.myaopen.com/myaopen/

[Warflagon]

Any word on their merchandise? good bad ugly?

[Redwolf]

Fairly good. Most of the stuff of their's i've used is okay (no problems). I hear their graphics cards are good. They also have some pretty strange features on some of their motherboards (think Vacuum Tube audio).

[Rand Dusing]

Can you show me an example of this Vacuum Tube audio? Sounds interesting.

[Redwolf]

TubeSound Audio:
http://english.aopen.com.tw/tech/techinside/Tube.htm
http://club.aopen.com.tw/pss/mbsearc..._advanced.aspx

Some more Aopen Mobo features:
http://club.aopen.com.tw/pss/mbsearc..._advanced.aspx

[John Prophet]

AOpen has been around a good while. I understand they had/have a very good name...supposedly very reliable etc.

They are somehow related to "Acer" stuff. I guess Acer was a brand name of their complete comp systems...for instance my sister had an "acer" 486 system way back in the day and it had an AOpen motherboard etc.

[skuz]

I own an Aopen CD Writer, very satisfied.

On the other hand, one of the weirdest motherboards I ever worked on was an Aopen.

[Starfury_2260]

hmm in a computer hardware class i had in high school the computers we learned to do stuff with (remove/install etc.) were mainly aopen and they were not good. they had all kinds of problems. they were old though so aopen may not be that way anymore.

[JohnE.]

Mixed bag really... in various systems I've got an Aopen 32X CD-ROM that works only sometimes, an Aopen GForce2 Ti that works ok but several of the features it was supposed to have don't work. BIOS updating and overclocking via the BIOS (an Aopen exclusive technology) is broken and for some odd reason it doesn't support nView Clone Mode or Digital Vibrance (which it didn't mention on the box when I bought it). The TV out is goofy... you can't display the desktop on the monitor and TV at the same time, it's one or the other. Tried to get tech support for the GF2 Ti with no success.

On the other hand, the company that owns the building I live in had me install and configure WinXP for two Aopen nForce2 board systems and they are running fine so far except that the Northbridge fan on one of the boards died so needs to be replaced. Haven't tried overclocking these two systems yet though... cheap ram

Based on my experience with Aopen products I wouldn't recommend them but you could do worse.