Date:
Monday , May 15, 2006
Author:
Brian Boyko
Editor:
Chris Morley
Google +1

Monarch Furia

Beige bezels on a black chassis? We didn’t order that. Our sponsor, Monarch, offers a ton of different configurations but it leads to major problems in build quality when it comes to the Furia.

continued...

Conclusion

Purchasing, Presentation and Packaging – 7.0/10

Purchasing the computer on the Monarch website gives you a dizzying array of choices without much context, and getting to the “real” configuration screen requires hunting.

The computer took 19 business days to arrive – four more than Monarch said it would take. Monarch offers a rush service for $125, but they couldn’t meet their own standard deadline. Besides, that “rush” is 5-8 business days, which is often other companies’ standard times.

The computer was placed inside a chassis box, but there was added padding and protection, even if it did get a bit messy and returning the computer could become a problem. Other than a Monarch-branded burned driver disc, there wasn‘t anything else special about the packaging, with manuals, discs, and accessories in an inverted motherboard box.

Build Quality – 5/10

If I ordered a mint-green car and it came with orange doors, I’d immediately wonder what else was going wrong at the factory that day. It’s just so obvious that you wonder what else they overlooked.

We ordered a black chassis with black drives to match. It even says so on our invoice. We were going for that “black” motif that seems to be so popular today.

Instead, we got a black chassis with beige drives.

How could someone be so distracted that they could not see that they had beige drives on a black computer chassis?

And, of course, they did overlook other things. The promised BIOS revisions simply weren’t installed, causing problems in Battlefield 2 and with FRAPS. Finally, it’s not likely that we got the latest ATI drivers since the version installed came out on February 21, 2006, but it almost doesn’t matter because the ATI Catalyst Control Panel wasn’t installed, removing control over our game playing experience.

Gaming – 7.5/10

If we didn’t have the technical knowledge to solve the Battlefield 2 stutters by updating the BIOS, we would never have been able to get it working – technical support was no help.

Monarch clearly states that they ship with the latest BIOS. They didn’t.

This computer’s configuration is a bit odd – although we knew it was when we ordered it. The motherboard, not the video card, is the most expensive component in the entire machine. We chose it because we wanted a CrossFire upgrade path in the future, and this was hands-down the best option. A casual gamer could save about $150 dollars by going with another motherboard – the key is that the choice is there.

The ATI Radeon X1600 XT has drawbacks and advantages compared to similarly priced NVIDIA products – if you prefer games which rely on pixel shaders, such as Oblivion and Battlefield 2, ATI provides a very good solution.

The problem with this system was from Monarch’s negligence in updating to the latest ASUS BIOS as promised. However, we were able, with no help from Monarch, to resolve the issue. After that, this computer delivered a good gaming experience, and the blame for this system’s initial gaming problems is Monarch’s.

Multimedia and Productivity – 8.5/10

Onboard sound was very good compared to other onboard solutions. PowerDVD 6 was preinstalled and available on DVD. Encoding and burning were a bit sluggish at 1 hour, 52 minutes, but that’s not that much of a difference compared to other mid-range systems.

Our biggest problem with multimedia was that the included DVD software did not include 5.1 audio support.

General Usage – 10/10

We had no problems with everyday tasks, and if there’s any sluggishness in this system we didn’t notice. The synthetic WorldBench benchmark clocked in at 102. Outside of gaming, we didn’t have any problems, and we could certainly get things done on the computer.

Stability – 8.0/10

The only problem we had with stability was in Battlefield 2, although Monarch should have caught this problem. We were eventually able to correct the problem ourselves by updating the BIOS, but technical support, when we could reach them, didn’t provide any useful help.

This computer did pass our 24-hour torture test, done after the BIOS upgrade.

Technical Support – 3.0/10

Tech support was incredibly hard to contact – we were only able to contact them after a week of trying. We left messages and emails, and they never called us back. The advice they gave was unhelpful, and while they were willing to do an RMA on our media reader and DVD-RW drives, that’s merely standard practice, nothing special.

We paid extra for 24/7 technical support, but we couldn’t even contact them during normal business hours for their location in Tucker, Georgia for an entire week.

Half the time we got messages saying that our party wasn’t answering. The other half of the time we left messages on an answering machine, and our calls were never returned.

We had a terrible technical support experience.

Value – 6.0/10

The initial purchase price is fine for what you get. You’re essentially getting a bunch of parts and then paying someone to assemble them.

But even if a beginning computer enthusiast isn’t ready to tackle such things as BIOS updates, it’s a rare customer who would go out of his way to buy a black chassis with beige bezels or vice versa. If you can’t get even basic computer assembly quality from a vendor, you might as well just buy the parts and put them together yourself – or better still, buy the computer from a company that delivers what you pay for.

The main other reason you’d want to buy a computer rather than assemble yourself is for technical support. We had trouble reaching Monarch, and they weren’t of any help with our difficult problem. Had we known we wouldn’t be getting any useful help, we certainly wouldn’t have paid the extra for 24/7 technical support.

The Bottom Line – 6.0/10

The only other companies to keep us waiting for a week on technical support were PC Club (which got a 0 in Technical Support because we were never able to get in contact with them at all) and Hypersonic.

Hypersonic was much more apologetic about not getting in touch with us and genuinely tried to make up for our original bad run during the week they were incommunicado by doing whatever they thought it would take to make us happy. As I stated in that evaluation, I simply felt that I got a run of bad luck with the company, and while they kept screwing up, they at least kept trying.

The week without contact didn’t seem like bad luck at all with Monarch. In fact, taken with the other problems, it seemed like a modus operandi. With Monarch, the overriding theme of our experience was that of utter apathy. They didn’t bother to update the BIOS. They didn’t install Catalyst Control Panel. They didn’t bother to answer our phone calls or emails for technical support, and they never called back. They didn’t even bother to glance at the front of the computer and notice the glaringly wrong parts for our order.

In short, they didn’t care a whit about the computer before it left their factory floor, and they didn’t care a whit about it afterwards. They had our money – including the extra $20 for 24/7 tech support that we never received –and that seemed to be enough to them.

A score of 6 is considered “poor,” and that’s exactly how we felt we got treated with this computer. We not only felt dissatisfied, we felt a little ripped off, too.

We cannot recommend the Monarch Furia for any user.

Article Image

Article Image

Discussion

Please feel free to discuss this article in our forums here.

Another Perspective

I must say that I was baffled at the system we ordered from Monarch

In our Furia, it should have been painfully obvious that the drives were incorrect. They weren’t even the same shade of beige. One look at our BOM (bill of materials) or invoice would have told the assembly technician that the drives were incorrect. Barring that, it should have been common sense. Heaping insult to injury, the floppy combo drive was not even flush with the chassis.

I think of building systems this way: if I were to build this for my best friend, and then take it over to his house for his birthday with his entire family there, would I be able to give it to him, proudly look him in the eye, and then accept payment from one of his family members for my effort? If the answer is no, then I have no business selling that system. I quite simply would have been ashamed to hand this system over to anyone, much less my best friend.

I have personally met Sterling Harris, the brother of Trey Harris, founder of Monarch Computer Systems. Sterling loves his company, and loves talking about the "family" of employees that work there. He seems to have a lot of pride in what Monarch does, as should anyone in his position. I do not believe that Sterling would have been proud of the Monarch Furia we received. I do believe that Sterling and others at Monarch have the drive and the passion to make sure that no one receives the quality product that we did, and I look forward to seeing Monarch step up to the challenge.

Monarch has told us that they were experiencing staff changes and switching phone systems during our evaluation period. While they may have gone through a difficult period, that does not change the fact that they were still selling computers during this time. We will be revisiting Monarch’s system integration business in the future to see if they can fix their mistakes.

Chris Morley

Managing Editor - [H] Consumer