GIGABYTE and Newegg Accused of Dumping “Explosive” Power Supplies on Unknowing Customers with Combo Deals

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Image: GIGABYTE



GIGABYTE offers two power supplies called the P750GM and P850GM. These are 80 PLUS Gold certified PSUs that offer a fully modular design, 120 mm Smart Hydraulic Bearing (HYB) fan, Japanese capacitors, a powerful single +12 V rail, and other key benefits.



Enthusiasts might want to skip them, however.



According to an investigation by Gamers Nexus’ Steve Burke, there is something very wrong with the design and/or components in GIGABYTE’s P750GM and P850GM. Burke ran a series of tests and found major problems such as bad MOSFETs, some of which actually exploded in the PSUs under certain conditions.



Burke alleges that GIGABYTE knows that its P750GM and P850GM power supplies are bad and that nobody should buy them.



What’s worse is that Newegg seems to be compounding the problem. Burke pointed out that GIGABYTE’s P750GM and P850GM power...
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Brian_B said:
What's the FPSer take?
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I doubt fps has the resources to dump into buying a bunch of power supplies to test and the time to properly test them. I don't fault fps on not doing that either.
 
That's a Paul question. I don't really have an opinion on it myself as I haven't really been following this.
 
Brian_B said:
What's the FPSer take?
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Paging @Paul_Johnson

Using different components doesn't necessarily admit anything - it's normal to have different brands qualified for each part by the design team.

Unsure the impact on the components to run them above spec first and then test.

Grimlakin said:
I doubt fps has the resources to dump into buying a bunch of power supplies to test and the time to properly test them. I don't fault fps on not doing that either.
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We did purchase one of these units (the 750) and it passed all tests in an incubator - https://www.thefpsreview.com/2021/04/12/gigabyte-p750gm-750w-power-supply-review/. I'm fairly sure Paul didn't run the unit beyond spec to OPP level before proceeding with the balance of his testing.

At this point, I'd rather buy more variety for Paul to test than 10 of these.
 
On that note, sometimes companies source parts and they don't work out as well as they had hoped. The whole Chinese capacitor situation comes to mind on that.
 
Dan_D said:
On that note, sometimes companies source parts and they don't work out as well as they had hoped. The whole Chinese capacitor situation comes to mind on that.
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Yes. For a PSU there will be a QVL for each component (capacitors, diodes, MOSFETs, etc) that the OEM can use to meet contract specs. So one unit may have Nippon Chemi-con caps and another HItachi, etc. so long as they meet the same required specifications and performance and are on the QVL. The only time it sucks is if the OEM has to change and when they do the replacement on the QVL meets spec and performance on paper but they get a bad batch. Then they get pantsed and everyone blames the fact that the component changed...not that it was just a bad example of the changed component.
 
One thing I did notice over the last year is that NewEgg has had a lot of Gigabyte individual products and combos in the shuffles. That doesn't necessarily mean anything but I did find it odd. There have been some days where it was practically nothing but Gigabyte products. You don't really see that so much with other brands they carry. Sure, there's the occasional mix of Asus, MSI, PNY, and seemingly random Memory brands, but by far and wide I've seen a lot of G's stuff show up on the lists.
 
I think some people see a component change between identical units and think its malice intent like when patriot changes out nvme parts, and endurance, or performance goes down. But with PSU's I think it's normal to not have the same parts between units as long as they are rated the same. It's whatever they can get for the price at the time.

Still sucks these had to be sold at all, and some people actually needed them and realized they were junk. hah
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
One thing I did notice over the last year is that NewEgg has had a lot of Gigabyte individual products and combos in the shuffles. That doesn't necessarily mean anything but I did find it odd. There have been some days where it was practically nothing but Gigabyte products. You don't really see that so much with other brands they carry. Sure, there's the occasional mix of Asus, MSI, PNY, and seemingly random Memory brands, but by far and wide I've seen a lot of G's stuff show up on the lists.
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Seems to go in waves. Some days it'll be mostly Gigabyte. Next day mostly MSI. Day after that mostly EVGA. Crapshoot really, even with the bundle crap. I see a lot of the same Asus 1080p monitor, a lot of the same motherboards, a lot of the same power supplies, a lot of the same oloy ram kits, corsair AIOs, etc.
 
Im sure as far as NewEgg, its probably nothing nefarious, just bulk buy and combo. Vendors probably sell newegg in bulk what they have the most inventory simple things like this. I don't know what NewEgg has to do with this, I didn't know they are QA.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Yeah, tested one. I was not impressed with it. That said, I don't run them at above their rated capacity on purpose and see if they die when.....run outside of their labeled capacity.
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Isn't it the point, that they should just shut down when running outside of specs, instead of dying? From what I gather the main issue might be that over temperature protection is tied to the ambient temp of the psu, and some components ran much hotter than their design specification at high load. Meaning there is inadequate heat sinks or air flow.
 
It seems like anything else they have with overstock gets sold with a rare piece of hardware in their bundles, so I don't feel that it's bad intentions on Newegg's part. These power supplies were known to be faulty for quite a while, so most people like myself have been avoiding them hence the overstock. Unfortunately when you need that holy grail graphics card and it's bundled with that you take the risk.
 
Brian_B said:
Seems to go in waves. Some days it'll be mostly Gigabyte. Next day mostly MSI. Day after that mostly EVGA. Crapshoot really, even with the bundle crap. I see a lot of the same Asus 1080p monitor, a lot of the same motherboards, a lot of the same power supplies, a lot of the same oloy ram kits, corsair AIOs, etc.
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Me too. I haven't been tracking it much in the last month or so because we've been taking care of a lot of other projects around the house but I remember a lot of days back in April/May where I saw 2-3 days of mostly or nothing but, Gigabyte. At one point I was entering daily 5-6 days a week, from around Feb/Mar until around June because I was trying to help David source cards for reviews, and had an interest in a 2nd 3090 for my other rig.

I admit I checked a couple of times in July and saw some more variety. I do remember going into May/June seeing more things creep into the mix with the combos but still saw a bit of dominance but I also saw those waves change like you said, with Asus, MSI, EVGA.

I also remember joking how it almost became debatable whether to pay a scalper on Amazon or just to get a combo with stuff people didn't want or couldn't easily unload because the prices became so similar. I ended doing neither as my own funds became tapped out and I've since decided I'm going to hold out for whatever comes out next.

edit: Just got today's notification and took a look out of curiosity. Happy to say it's changed a lot and there's a mix of Gigabyte, XFX, Powercolor, Sapphire, and some Asus.
 
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Peter_Brosdahl said:
edit: Just got today's notification and took a look out of curiosity. Happy to say it's changed a lot and there's a mix of Gigabyte, XFX, Powercolor, Sapphire, and some Asus.
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Well today is 6600 release day, so it's a bit different than it has been in the past few weeks.
 
Brian_B said:
Well today is 6600 release day, so it's a bit different than it has been in the past few weeks.
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I was in such a rush to get out the door this morning I totally forgot. With all the stories about it over the last couple of weeks I seriously thought it was already out. My sense of time is totally shot these days with all the projects I've been working on between home and the day job. Barely even had time to enjoy more than a couple of beers a week -sigh-.
 
MadMummy76 said:
Isn't it the point, that they should just shut down when running outside of specs, instead of dying? From what I gather the main issue might be that over temperature protection is tied to the ambient temp of the psu, and some components ran much hotter than their design specification at high load. Meaning there is inadequate heat sinks or air flow.
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Depends on how and why they are run out of spec. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is a reason the spec have approved load change rates.
 
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