Gigabyte updates on the faulty motherboards, now offering lifetime warranty

Yesterday saw the clarification of a serious problem associated with Gigabyte’s X79-UD3, X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2 motherboards when enthusiasts subjected their boards to voltage-assisted overclocking with stress-testing which resulted in burned CPU VRM.

A press release from Gigabyte clarified the extent of the situation and as a remedy they offered to the existing owners an update for the motherboards’ BIOS to the latest “F7” version (posted on the company’s website), or for those who prefer, they can send their boards back for free replacement. This is only applicable in the area of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.

Although it’s not mandatory to send your board back, if the users wish to keep their boards, Gigabyte is now offering a lifetime product warranty as an extension of the limited warranties the product comes with.

As for the cause of the problem, according to Gigabyte, several of the faulty motherboards were shipped with bad BIOS firmware that didn’t have “overclocking limits”, which motherboards by other manufacturers did.

So according to Gigabyte, “japan0827”, the overclocker from XFastest community who burned his X79-UD3, would have been running his setup way out of spec electrically.

As for the UK owners, as reported, an update for the boards will suffice in resolving the issue, no recall of the board has been issued, neither will a free replacement and an extension of warranty will be provided.

Here is a link for the correct BIOS update for the boards:

• GA-X79-UD3 – update to BIOS F7
• GA-X79-UD5 – update to BIOS F7
• GA-X79-UD7 – update to BIOS F7
• G1.Assassin 2 – update to BIOS F7

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