GamersNexus exposes EXPLODING Gigabyte PSUs and Gigabyte Manipulating the Truth | Tries to Disparage GamersNexus

[AlTech]

GamersNexus previously released a content piece regarding certain models of Gigabyte PSUs exploding with a high rate of frequency. This content piece exposed viewers to the reality that Newegg and Gigabyte were selling PSUs that they knew to be defective to consumers. The content piece showed that these PSUs exploded on testing OPP on the 2 different models affected. Needless to say the PSUs exploded and now we have this story as a result of further investigation by GamersNexus.

 

First thing's first, here's the models affected:

• Gigabyte GP-P750GM
• Gigabyte GP-P850GM

 

GamersNexus's investigation in their previous content piece is linked in the Sources list.

 

I've quoted portions of this latest video in the Gigabyte exploding PSU Saga. If you want the full source I would encourage you to fully watch the 1st and 2nd videos.

 

Quote

As we stated in Part 1, this issue... the issue is the Gigabyte GP-P850GM and the GP-P750GM and as far as we're aware right now, only these 2 units. If you have another one and you're concerned about it and it doesn't match those numbers then we don't know of a reason it would also be exploding but that doesn't mean it won't

Quote

The issue is that about half of Newegg's reviews before we did anything with this, so it's before we had influence on it, about half of Newegg's user reviews were showing DOA, or dysfunctional power supply, or dead power supply and some of them even included note about killing other components taking them out with the power supply in the process of dying. We explored that, we explored one aspect of it but what we can tell from the user reviews, there are many aspects in which these power supplies are either dangerous to your components or explosive, which is potentially dangerous to you.

Emphasis added by me.

 

Quote

It's okay for companies to make bad products, it happens all the time. Really easy to do.  There's a lot of links in the supplier chain, we could totally understand making a bad product. It's how the company deals with that matters.

Quote

But to double down on it, especially when it explodes or in the case of some others we've tested catches fire, that's getting irresponsible so that's where we draw a line. We don't hold a grudge with a company if it fixes the problem correctly without us pushing it off a cliff in order to do it.... We were trying to work with Gigabyte here privately for months and never did Gigabyte say "you know what, maybe we screwed up, let's look into this" that's all they needed to do. That's not what they did.

Quote

HardwareBusters had reported to Gigabyte this issue back in October in 2020 and as we said in our video, we collaborated with Aris from HardwareBusters to work on this further, but they're just now responding [in August 2021], 

Quote

Gigabyte takes this issue so extremely seriously that when it first received reports of the issue in October 2020 it did nothing. It takes is so extremely seriously that when we started publicly stating we were working on further investigating the issue after people called our attention to it, Gigabyte did nothing, to our knowledge anyways. They didn't really talk to us. We reached out in fact and gave them about 5 months notice before our video went up. We contacted them at about March [2021] and started talking to them. We sent questions to them about June [2021]. 

Quote

They had a statement after that email in June that basically answered nothing. It was useless. We showed some of it in our first part of the video. So Gigabyte took this issue so extremely seriously that Aris.... reported it, they did nothing in an extremely serious fashion. Now interestingly GIgabyte's most recent statement conflicts with what Gigabyte said to us privately before. And the fun part about reporting is sometimes you don't give the manufacturer all the information you have, you don't reveal your hand when you're starting to ask them questions about something you already know is faulty. And that leads to situations like this where Gigabyte's statements are in conflict with each other. OOPS. 

Quote

So now to say that the OPP range is or was at this point 1020W to 1300W on the 850 unit, well that's adjusting the upper bound by about 24% old to new..... In fact if you look at is Gigabyte is actually, whether it intends to or not, adjusting it's claimed OPP to conveniently match the numbers we found in our testing, that's interesting. Especially because we didn't tell Gigabyte the exact details of the numbers at which we were seeing failures in our testing prior to publishing.

Quote

Let's talk about the worst part of all this, that's Gigabyte's misleading statements wherein it repeatedly tries to downplay the issues whilst offering a soft recall or return. Failure to commit to either one properly, it's about the worst possible response we could have. 

Quote

Let's get a couple of things straight here, Gigabyte is either lying or is incompetent....Power Supplies are a scary thing to make if you don't understand what you're talking about [Exploding PSU sound in video], [emphasising ]Gigabyte. So if Gigabyte claims we were repeatedly going close to the OPP limit, Let's get something straight here. Actually we weren't. It was ONCE, each power supply. ONE TIME..... We just want to make clear for all the viewers out there in actual fact that we approached OPP once and tripped OPP once and that's when they exploded.....It's not supposed to explode after OPP trips once by the way, don't let Gigabyte gaslight into thinking that. It's a protection, it's not supposed to work one time and KABOOM it blows up......... DON'T BUY THESE POWER SUPPLIES, THEY'RE BAD..... Additionally, Gigabyte said we repeatedly approached the OPP trigger point which is factually incorrect AT BEST.....Secondly, Gigabyte said extended testing and they talk later about extended length of time, also INCORRECT. You're frustrating me GIgabyte. Most of these units failed in about 2 minutes or less. None of them failed from extended testing. 

 

That's where I'll leave the quotes at. For the full information please view the video source from GamersNexus, they did an amazing job exposing GIgabyte's manipulation and BS.

 

In my opinion, this whole thing has just been a sh*t show from the start to end. Why did Gigabyte not respond in October 2020, why did it take GN multiple attempts at Conversation before GN had to ultimately release the video anyways with Gigabyte trying to manipulate the truth after the fact. This is absurd and it's wrong. If you own the aforementioned Gigabyte GP-P750M or GP-P850M you should replace it now. Gigabyte isn't taking this seriously despite their claims of supposedly taking it "Extremely seriously". Gigabyte's response to this has been somewhat of a joke. It's not befitting or becoming of any corporation and it's certainly not how a PSU manufacturer should respond given the increased risks of the nature of PSUs. They can do bad things like catching fire or exploding and manufacturers need to be responsible about making sure they don't. This is about the point where I'd say I'll never buy Gigabyte ever again but I'm not sure that's a statement or promise I can make. I won't however be EVER buying a Power Supply from them. And I'll be taking extra caution when looking at purchasing Gigabyte products from now on. 

 

Again thanks to GamersNexus for the incredible tech journalism and exposing this story.

 

Sources:

 

[emosun]

wow was this not posted to the news section already? I'm kinda surprised if it wasnt

[givingtnt]

3 minutes ago, emosun said:

wow was this not posted to the news section already? I'm kinda surprised if it wasnt

It takes time to transcript 90% of a GN video into text ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[AlTech]

7 minutes ago, emosun said:

wow was this not posted to the news section already? I'm kinda surprised if it wasnt

It looks like one was previously but lacked quotes and covered part 1 of the saga only and was moved to a different subforum. I didn't see that originally but I think my post is different, it covers part 1 and part 2, and has the quotes, opinions, and info of a Tech News post. 

 

Note to Mods: if you want to merge this with the topic that was moved to Power Supplies subforum then by all means but I think this should stay in Tech News as it's much more fully fleshed out, covers additional parts of the story and followup content, and I think this'll get more eyeballs and exposure than in Power Supplies subforum.

3 minutes ago, givingtnt said:

It takes time to transcript 90% of a GN video into text ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Actually by my estimation that was only about 30% or less. It was just the key bits from a very detailed video.

[givingtnt]

Just now, AluminiumTech said:

Actually by my estimation that was only about 30% or less. It was just the key bits from a very detailed video.

Take a joke

[BuckGup]

That's insane and it follows the same trend of how Gigabyte is with their server lineup. They are shit all around. From hardware to support

[emosun]

Just now, Nacht said:

So basically they are selling a bunch of lemons, and these units are still being sold to.

they'd be fine for a way crappier machine in a non flammable building

[Moonzy]

I have no issue boycotting them after what I had to deal with trying to RMA my GPU

 

"Cheap but shit quality with shit support" pretty much sums up my experience, and I own few of their GPUs

 

I don't think I'll touch Aorus branding as well

[AlTech]

32 minutes ago, emosun said:

they'd be fine for a way crappier machine in a non flammable building

Some of GN's testing was at 60% load continuously in a desktop system playing games. The PSU lasted less than 72 hours before exploding and in that test the GPU also simultaneously died.

 

 

GN wasn't able to attribute the GPU dying to the PSU but both the GPU and PSU were from Gigabyte and so they were satisfied with leaving the GPU question up in the air.

 

Even using this on lower end PCs is still potentially dangerous and the only real solution is replacing it. Gigabyte's offering to exchange units in a serial number range of the affected models. Though it has to be said I don't know that any replacement would truly be a component to rely upon.

 

Edit: GPU died within 72 hours. Replacing the GPU in the system completed the endurance test.

[AlTech]

8 minutes ago, Nacht said:

So basically they are selling a bunch of lemons, and these units are still being sold to.

The worst part is many were sold by Newegg in bundles with GPUs such as RTX 3080s or RTX 3070s cos Newegg knew the PSUs weren't selling well by themselves cos buyers buying the PSU standalone tended to experience the issues and returned the PSUs.

[emosun]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

 

Sorry I was being sarcastic , hence the non flammable building part lol

[Murasaki]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

Gigabyte's offering to exchange units in a serial number range of the affected models. Though it has to be said I don't know that any replacement would truly be a component to rely upon.

Can't wait for the replacement units to be tested and if those blow up too...

[Quackers101]

already posted but ok. gigabye, gigaboom, giganexus

also that was on an older topic, but gamernexus showing a lot more and bringing more information.

[TVwazhere]

Off Topic:

Spoiler

27 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Note to Mods: if you want to merge this with the topic that was moved to Power Supplies subforum then by all means but I think this should stay in Tech News as it's much more fully fleshed out,

This was the primary reason it was moved out. Since your TN post was created after but fulfils all requirements, it becomes the main topic and any further topics created with similar content would get merged here.

On Topic: I had someone who had another person put together a parts list have their Gigabyte PSU cause issues (not sure if it was the same unit) but this only solidifies my distrust for Gigabyte (anything not a motherboard or GPU)

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

Some of GN's testing was at 60% load continuously in a desktop system playing games. The PSU lasted less than 72 hours before exploding and in that test the GPU also simultaneously died.

 

GN wasn't able to attribute the GPU dying to the PSU but both the GPU and PSU were from Gigabyte and so they were satisfied with leaving the GPU question up in the air.

Did the PSU also die when the graphics card died in the endurance test? I thought that only the GPU died then they replaced it and continued using the same PSU with a new GPU which then completed the endurance test.

 

The failures that have been demonstrated by Gamers Nexus and Aris from Hardware Busters/TechPowerUp have been failures on the primary switching FETs and the APFC FETs. It's unlikely for such a failure on the primary side of the power supply (AC input side) to damage components. Normally damaged components come from failures on the secondary side (the DC output that provides the 12V, 5V, 3.3V to the system). The primary and secondary sides are divided by the main transformer which will act as a buffer against any failures on the primary.

 

I know Steve states several times in both videos that they're unsure if the PSU caused the GPU to die or if the GPU died on its own, though I think it's probably unlikely that the PSU killed the card - at least not from the type of failures that have been demonstrated in other units. There might have been some other issue that killed the card, though more likely it was just a dud card that died on its own. Would actually be interesting to see GN teardown the dead card and investigate how it died if they haven't done so already.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

Did the PSU also die when the graphics card died in the endurance test? I thought that only the GPU died then they replaced it and continued using the same PSU with a new GPU which then completed the endurance test.

Actually it looks like you're right. GPU died within 72 hours. Replacing the GPU the system completed the endurance test.

[expiredbiscuit]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

Actually it looks like you're right. GPU died within 72 hours. Replacing the GPU the system completed the endurance test.

Consider editing your previous post that states that the PSU exploded. It may cause confusion or misinformation to people who read only half of the thread.

[Quackers101]

multiple problems both Aris and GN might state, so that there is little doubt it "could" kill other components with it.

As in, better safe than sorry.

[SolarNova]

Well at the very least Gigabyte dont have to use shovels to dig their hole, they can just pile up a bunch of their PSUs, turn them on and blast a hole

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Moonzy said:

I have no issue boycotting them after what I had to deal with trying to RMA my GPU

 

"Cheap but shit quality with shit support" pretty much sums up my experience, and I own few of their GPUs

 

I don't think I'll touch Aorus branding as well

I won't buy a Gigabyte product after the failed MB back on the C2D system I have (but no longer use)

 

Like it kinda sucks how many brands on the "do not buy" list for ultimately crappy things the company did in response to delivering lemons.

- MSI - GPU catching fire, cheating benchmarks

- EVGA - GPU, PSU catching fire

- Gigabyte - GPU, PSU, MB catching fire

 

And these aren't even "old" reports. Just type "gigabyte catches fire" in your favorite search engine.

 

At least ASUS's worst problem is it's customer service. They have some reports of laptops catching fire (including one person's death from it), and in my own experience, while the laptops are nice, they're engineered in ways that can easily catch fire.

 

[Tea-Sir]

16 minutes ago, Kisai said:

And these aren't even "old" reports. Just type "gigabyte catches fire" in your favorite search engine.

 

Honestly, you can type "AnyBrandName catches fire" and some results will pop up for any and all companies. And if not catching fire, there will be some bad products among any companies lineup. Current or present.

 

As Steve mentions in the video "All companies makes bad products, making good products is hard, it's about how they respond to the bad products" (Might be a short version of the full sentence, but I think the message comes across )

 

I have reached out to ASUS support before, their Motherboard support is terrible, no help at all. But a few weeks ago, I got one of those annoying little black flies in my 27" TUF monitor (6 months old). And a quick few photos, a little note and a week of waiting, and I had a brand new display at my door, at no cost. Not even my local stores offered that level of service. And Proshop ind Denmark, have some of the best customer service you can get. And believe my, I have tested them many times over the past 15 years.

 

Besides the hate train against gigabyte at the moment, are their motherboards and GPU's really that bad?

I have both at the moment (brand new I might add), and they have been nothing but perfect so far.

I am at my second Gigabyte GPU btw. both flawless.

[TetraSky]

If something blows up when "OPP" trips, it means the protection was not adequate. Or more like, if their protection was designed to explode, that's not protection at all.
Gigabyte really screwed the pooch on that one. Especially for doubling down.

[Blademaster91]

The reaction from gigabyte is unfortunate, I've never had an issue with their motherboards, but I wouldn't trust anything from gigabyte besides motherboards, graphics cards, and their aorus monitors.

Although their RGB software just so I can set the motherboard LED's to a color kinda sucks, but most RGB LED software is crap and RGB settings in bios needs to be a standard feature on all motherboards.

[Moonzy]

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

but I wouldn't trust anything from gigabyte besides motherboards, graphics cards, and their aorus monitors.

For the love of god, not their GPU unless you like a GPU that piss oil all over your components and changes vbios tdp mid-release (high power first to please the performance benchmark, then lower tdp vbios in later cards to make them run cooler)

 

Piss oil:

Spoiler

Gigabyte 3090

 

Their 2070super did the exact same thing, leaking and dripping oil from disgusting thermal pads

 

[Blademaster91]

Just now, Moonzy said:

For the love of god, not their GPU unless you like a GPU that piss oil all over your components and changes vbios tdp mid-release (high power first to please the performance benchmark, then lower tdp vbios in later cards to make them run cooler)

 

Piss oil:

  Reveal hidden contents

Gigabyte 3090

 

Their 2070super did the exact same thing, leaking and dripping oil from disgusting thermal pads

 

Isn't low quality or leaking thermal pads an issue with most RTX 30 series cards?  Also not as bad as some cards lately that came with the thermal pad stickers still on it, I don't recall what AIB did that though.

I've had cards from MSI, Asus and EVGA that had leaky thermal pads, it looks gross aesthetically but never affected how the card worked.

Honestly if you want to boycott a company for lower quality products or garbage support then you'd have to avoid a lot of them, especially with the RTX 30 series and the AMD RX 5000 and RX 6000 series because i've seen so many stories of companies refusing to accept an RMA.