MiSTer bundle from aliexpress

[mineral55]

So I got desperate and I couldn't find a DE-10 board anywhere and against my better judgement I went with a bundle sold on aliexpress despite hearing about quality issues with the marketplace in general but I had also heard good things from a youtube video and decided to gamble with it as the reviews were really good on the listing and before I delved further into reading I assumed that these boards were probably easy enough to make.

Well what I got was an I/O board with really bad solder joints on the SNAC port which prevented it from connecting flush with the DE-10 and fitting in the case so I never even bothered with the thing but I got a bit impatient and decided to try out the SDRAM and hub after getting bored of just testing genesis games as well as getting tired of swapping between my keyboard and controller to set up the cores.

The USB hub seemed to work fine but then I tried the ram module and the thing tested bad instantly when I ran the memtest. I immediately dissembled the thing and put away the terasic board and deeply regretted inserting the ram piece LOL

When I looked closer at the SDRAM board (I can upload pictures later if you'd like to see) I had noticed a solder joint that is this massive bead nearly touching the adjacent pin

But it gets worse! They bundle these two heatsinks and one of the spares was lying on my desk and I looked at it and noticed the text "tissue paper" and a cut away 3 on the adhesive cover of what I assumed was the thermal conductive material for the heatsink. I peeled it back and noticed the stuff behind the sticker was black and quite sticky uncharacteristic of thermal paste. To my surprise after I google search 'tissue paper 3M' I find out that it's regular double sided tape! Ouch! Thankfully I had q-tips and isopropyl handy and I was able to coax the heatsink off that I had naively trusted and was able to wipe away the excess adhesive from the cyclone V.

Now I feel like such an idiot!

I ended up leaving a negative review and their response is clearly arrogant so I'm sure sales are going to slow down from it and hopefully they'll package a proper heatsink from now on but sheesh!! They refused to acknowledge they failed to provide a proper thermal conductive material for the heatsink in both our private correspondence and in their reply to my review so to heck with them! This needs to be known as they are preying on the retro gaming enthusiast community and need to be outed for it. They even have the audacity to put Sorgelig's name on all their MISTer boards and I wonder if that frustrates him because I highly doubt they build their boards completely to spec

[Hetzen]

I feel your pain. I fell for the ram scam on a Wish order on a SD card a while back. There's no recourse or customer coms or a way to get your money back, just a perpetual loop on a website for complaints, with no end.

Thank you for highlighting this. It's important that others know that all boards aren't built the same.

[siskavard]

That's quite the expensive experiment, thanks for taking one for the team!
More incentive to buy from our small pool of trusted sellers.

[mineral55]

you're welcome guys. The mistake came up to about double the price of the DE-10 at full retail and I knew the risks going in but I'm happy I got to warn others. Just be patient! Once I have my terasic board properly set up I'll try to stress test it with some of the bigger cores to be sure the double sided tape or ram didn't harm the cyclone V. Anyone have any suggestions on how I should test the DE-10s stability if I'm worried I compromised it? I touched the heatsink a few times as it was running and it was only a bit warm. I still can't believe they'd skimp out on thermal paste

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I got a generic MiSTer daughter board bundle from Amazon and had similar results. Mine didn't even have pins for the SNAC port, which I didn't realize until I tried to plug in my MT-32 Pi. I had to add my own pins and my amateur solder job still looks better than the one on your pins. My fan also gave out (inferior bearings) and had to be replaced within a few months. I, too, will only be buying from trusted sellers from now on. The quality is better, and you're also directly supporting the community.

[mineral55]

Here's a pic of that ram chip that tested bad....sorry my camera sucks. There are a bunch of what look like cold solder joints as well as that bead I found which I circled

Is it also possible that an overheating FPGA could cause ram errors?

[rhester72]

Well, on the other hand, you actually got a DE-10 (at any price) NIB...which is rather challenging to do by any other means these days.

[redsteakraw]

Don't buy cheap knockoffs buy from reputable and known board sellers from the community. It is not worth risking your DE-10 nano or anything else because you went with a cheap shoddy addon board. If you mess up the DE-10 nano chances are you won't be able to get one for a couple months and when you do it will be more money so you would have saved no money and lost quite a bit.

[Asteld]

Did you check the reviews of the product as sold by the seller? Aliexpress is a marketplace, there's an endless variety of sellers that sell all kinds of products. There is nothing inherently wrong (or right) with 'Aliexpress', because Aliexpress itself does not sell or produce these products.

Got my SD RAM from a seller on Ali and it is excellent.

When in doubt, check the reviews.

[Ray]

I had a different experience:
Bought everything except the de10 (mouser) from 3 different sellers on ali: casing, ioboard, memory, 8bitdo, etc.
Quality is fine and everything works as expected. Price was a steal compared to other onlineshops, so i could not be happier
I spent quite some time comparing the offers. You have to examine the pictures very closely.

I am quite sure many other online shops buy at alis, too.

Cheers,
Ray

[C-R-T]

Nothing unusual about that tape on the heat sink. That’s the tape that’s typically used. Thermal transfer isn’t very critical since the plastic package of the FPGA chip is the bigger bottleneck.

[mineral55]

Nothing unusual about that tape on the heat sink. That’s the tape that’s typically used. Thermal transfer isn’t very critical since the plastic package of the FPGA chip is the bigger bottleneck.

That's a relief! I wish the seller would have told me the tape is acceptable rather than just saying "the heatsink isn't the problem and is fine". Is it just not ideal or is it perfectly fine to use sticky tape on heatsinks?

EDIT: Are you actually sure it's acceptable to use? There is tape sold with thermal properties specifically for heatsinks and I can't find any information about it being suitable for thermal conduction at all

[mineral55]

Did you check the reviews of the product as sold by the seller? Aliexpress is a marketplace, there's an endless variety of sellers that sell all kinds of products. There is nothing inherently wrong (or right) with 'Aliexpress', because Aliexpress itself does not sell or produce these products.

Got my SD RAM from a seller on Ali and it is excellent.

When in doubt, check the reviews.

The reviews are great as you can see on that listing but there aren't that many of them and the descriptions are missing or not in depth

[mineral55]

Well, on the other hand, you actually got a DE-10 (at any price) NIB...which is rather challenging to do by any other means these days.

It doesn't actually come in the original box in the package I got unfortunately

[mineral55]

Wow! So apparently aliexpress deleted my review This retroscaler/bitfunx company sure is a shady operation!