Following reports of damaged SD cards and overheating problems, class action law firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP (CSK&D LLP) has set its sights on the ASUS ROG Ally.
According to the CSK&D LLP website, the firm is currently in the investigation phase and is purely gathering information from consumers who’ve suffered any issues.
“CSK&D LLP is investigating a potential class action lawsuit related to reports that Asus’s Rog Ally handheld gaming console experiences a range of performance related issues impacting gameplay,” reads the site.
“The handheld system is touted by ASUS as featuring a robust zero gravity thermal system lending to purported smooth gaming performance. However, owners of the console have reported issues with the system overheating causing the system to freeze unexpectantly during gameplay and/or fail to boot-up properly after being woken from sleep mode. Some have also reported issues with saved game data on any inserted microSD cards becoming inaccessible. A hard reset of the system will not always fix these issues.”
For those not up to speed with the ASUS ROG Ally woes so far, here’s a quick catch-up.
Users originally reported problems with the SD reader, with many claiming their SD cards were rendered unusable. The working theory back then was that heat from the CPU was – somehow – causing SD cards to die.
ASUS then released a statement saying the company is looking into the problems reported but so far hasn’t found anything that lines up with what users are experiencing.
Fast forward a week and ASUS would release a follow-up statement to confirm the cause of the problem. As expected, it’s heat-related.
“After confirmation from internal testing, under certain thermal stress conditions the SD card reader may malfunction,” said ASUS.
One thing to note: Although ASUS has confirmed the cause of the issue, many online don’t think it’s purely a heat problem. Heat is a factor, but there’s concern over the SD reader’s controller becoming loose and disconnecting from the main ROG Ally motherboard.
I personally wouldn’t rule anything out at this point, but I’d also advise not jumping to any permanent conclusions. The more consoles that get returned to ASUS, the more investigations can be opened to find the real cause of the problems.
In the meantime, ASUS released BIOS 322 as a temporary solution. This BIOS update increases the CPU fan speed in the hopes of keeping the internals even cooler. The cost of this, however, is fans are now much louder.
I was able to decrease the volume somewhat by disabling the CPU boost, but we won’t be able to get back to a quiet console until ASUS finds and fixes the current crop of problems and returns fan control back to users. Here’s hoping that’s sooner rather than later.
