For seasoned DIYs, choosing a motherboard isn’t a big deal. Readers read our reviews and go and order them online or purchase them at the stores. In the past, enthusiasts would go through every single shop to choose for that certain golden batch of processors because they can overclock higher, remember those Stepping etc. Some will even buy the whole 10 pieces from the shop and cherry pick the best among all and resell the rest.
The same would apply for motherboards or graphics cards too. Lately, Gigabyte was exposed on the internet that their board B85M-D3H differences between revision 1 and 2.
B85M-D3H (Rev1.1 & Rev2.0)
Both bear the same EAN: 4719331817275 but have a different Check Number.
Differences with B85M-D3H is PCB size is smaller (1cm width), Rev 2 does not come with Small Business Advantage and reduction in power solution. The EAN for both design is the same.
So what is EAN ? The EAN-13 barcodes are used worldwide for marking products often sold at retail point of sale. The numbers encoded in EAN-13 bar codes are product identification numbers, which are also called Japanese Article Number (JAN) in Japan. All the numbers encoded in UPC and EAN barcodes are known as Global Trade Item Numbers (GTIN), and they can be encoded in other GS1 barcodes.
This can be confusing for end users who purchase the board online because there is no way they can view the actual board. Secondly, using the same EAN might confuse the inventory control, thinking that they are the same batch of goods. If you go through the EAN documentation, the bar code did not include a field for revision. It is really a grey area.
So, what if you purchase something that is not of your like ? In Singapore, we have the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act which protects consumers. The Lemon Laws is a consumer protection law that provides remedies against defective goods (colloquially known as “lemons”), which fail to conform to the contract at the time of delivery, e.g. do not meet standards of quality and performance, especially after repeated repair. Such laws obligate sellers to repair, replace, or refund or reduce the price of those defective goods.
