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Dramatic video of magic smoke being released - Skip to the last 30 seconds
TechPowerUp
Gigabyte
SweClockers

Still looking for an official Gigabyte US release of this info, but a Google translate gives a recall for the:

GA-X79-UD3
GA-X79-UD5
G1.Assassin 2

Apparently if you're not willing to part with your board they have a newer BIOS that limits the operational draw of the board instead.

Edit: Some of the translated rumbling imply this little pyrotechnic display also killed the 39030K in the board. :(

not surprised... its Gigabyte, i've never had a good experience with one of their motherboards

Early adopters... You can always tell the pioneers. They're the ones lying face down in the mud with the arrows in their backs.

My GA-X48-DS4 was an excellent motherboard that is still working well for a family member today.

Impressive fail! Bet that smelled great too...

I don't see any thermal compound residue from the VRM heatsink on the MOSFETs (SweClockers link). Seems to me you *really* need some sort of thermal interface, given that there may be some microscopic variations in height from MOSFET to MOSFET. Wouldn't surprise me if that blown one was a couple thousandths of an inch lower than its neighbors (and not touching the heatsink as a result).

Edit: Well, OK... at least there's a compliant thermal pad on the underside of the heatsink. Still seems non-optimal to me, given the length of that heatsink. Even slight warpage of the PCB or heatsink is going to result in less contact pressure on the MOSFETs near the middle of the VRM area. Note that the blown one is indeed towards the middle, and the pad seems to be indented less towards the middle of the heatsink as well.

One of the links also mentions possible issues with the VRM controller firmware. This seems plausible to me; you'd kind of have to work at it to blow a MOSFET like that on a regulator design with *18* MOSFETs to share the load!

Ryu Connor wrote:

Dramatic video of magic smoke being released - Skipped to the last 30 seconds.

Ouch.

The US site now has the article.

http://www.gigabyte.us/press-center/new ... x?nid=-869

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Early adopters... You can always tell the pioneers. They're the ones lying face down in the mud with the arrows in their backs.

Shouldn't that be an arrow to the knee?