Gigabyte Power Supplies At Risk Of Explosion: Offers Replacement

The hardware manufacturer Gigabyte has admitted a production defect in some of its power supplies, which caused the devices to stop operating with a small explosion. An exchange program is now offered to users.

The testers from Gamers Nexus came up with the problem and dealt very intensively with such components. Here not only individual samples are tested, but entire series in order to be able to say something about stability and quality. And the Gigabyte GP-P850GM and GP-P750GM models showed an unusually large number of problems. And even with dealers, negative reviews by buyers gradually appeared.

Some power supplies did not work right out of the box, as The Verge reports. Others could be connected and used, but after a while, they caused lightning-like explosions, as is known from a short circuit of electrically charged components. With the GP-P750GM model, the error rate was sometimes up to 50 percent.

Based on the reports, investigations were also initiated at Gigabyte itself. Here it was concluded that the errors occurred more frequently under special loads. In each case, there were situations in which the maximum loads of the specifications were exceeded by 20 to 50 percent. However, this can certainly happen in normal operation – especially if the components built into a PC sometimes draw more current than specified by the manufacturer in special situations.

Less overload protection

Gamers Nexus rejected the implicit allegation that the power supplies were simply overloaded extremely and over a long period of time. Accordingly, the specified trigger points were only exceeded briefly once. In addition, so the testers criticized, the so-called Over-Power-Protection (OPP) has been reduced significantly in the newer models. With the 850-watt GP-P850GM model, the OPP is only 1050 watts, whereas previously 1300 watts were specified.

In the meantime, however, Gigabyte has given in and no longer tries to discredit the testers. Rather, affected users are offered a free exchange (details on the Gigabyte website). Normally, this would not necessarily be the case, as overloading normally invalidates the guarantee.