ASUS refuses to fix G16 burnt motherboard defect despite irrefutable timestamped 'before' photos matching my RAM/SSD serials.

Dear Asus Laptop Users,

I bought an ASUS ROG Strix Gaming Laptop for my 11-year-old son, thinking it was a premium machine built to last. Instead, near May 5, 2026, our ASUS Strix G16 (Core i7 13th Gen, 32GB RAM, 2TB storage, RTX 4060) suffered a catastrophic hardware blackout.

Upon inspection, a severe internal electrical burn mark was localized right next to the left cooling fan screw housing. This is an internationally documented, inherent manufacturing design flaw affecting thousands of 2023/2024 G16 units, caused by improper insulation near structural screw points.

ASUS is now hiding behind scripts and denying accountability because a third-party technician looked at a completely dead board. They issued a repair quote for approx. USD $1,200 to swap the motherboard. I bought this laptop brand new 1.5 years ago for $1,350.

Worse yet, they claim this is a "discounted price" (their email screenshot attached), but their official ASUS USA Parts Shop explicitly sells this exact replacement motherboard for USD $1,038. They are literally attempting to price-gouge me on a repair for their own engineering failure ( https://partshop.asus.com/us/90nr0c60-r00027.html ). Have also attached screenshot of ebay listing of the same laptop and Asus quotations.

I am uploading the laptop photos directly and also sharing these Google Photos links to preserve the original date and time stamps in the file metadata. You can clearly see the unique factory serial numbers matching my original DDR RAM and NVMe M.2 SSD, which remain in my possession to prove these are authentic.

• Before Any Repair Attempt (Factory screw sticker 100% intact): https://photos.app.goo.gl/zDNxzacBsfcZuB559 (If you check the info/details on these phone photos, the timestamps prove the motherboard burnout was fully present BEFORE any independent technician touched it. The final zoomed-in photo was taken at the shop when the technician pulled the board to show me the damage. All taken from my phone)
• After the Diagnostic/Repair Attempt: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xFc67EGGJtpbQzCf8 (Because I live outside the USA and the machine was out of warranty, I went to an independent shop thinking it was a simple power IC issue. This link shows where the technician later tried a standard micro-soldering bypass on the already dead, ASUS-burned circuit, which ultimately failed.)

A subsequent diagnostic or repair attempt does not erase the fact that ASUS supplied an inherently defective, short-circuiting motherboard. There are now multiple teardown videos on YouTube showing this exact fan-screw burn location on the G16.

Asus is now trying to hide behind that the third-party repair claims. The technician merely attempted to bypass a pre-existing, non-functional, burned circuit that ASUS engineered poorly. A subsequent repair attempt does not erase the fact that ASUS supplied a inherently defective, short-circuiting motherboard. There are now many youtube videos showing the same procedure to recover this particular Asus motherboard.

They are counting on me to give up out of frustration. If anyone has advice on how to handle an escalation like this or push this through legal consumer channels inside or outside the US, please let me know.

thank you
S.Khan

P.S. Smartphones automatically embed invisible EXIF metadata into every photo, recording the exact time, date, phone model, and GPS coordinates. To prove this, I can provide a video recording of my screen or do a live demonstration for Asus.