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Gigabyte announced a general recall of three of its front-line socket LGA2011 motherboards from the markets, the X79-UD3, X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2, following increasing complaints of burnt CPU VRM even under stress applied relatively-moderately overclocked setups.

In a move that puts a large chunk of its socket LGA2011 motherboard lineup in jeopardy, Gigabyte announced a general recall of the GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2 X79 motherboards, responding to an increasing number of complaints from overclockers that their boards' VRM weren't able to keep up with the stress they're supposed to cope with. Last week, an overclocker from Taiwan "japan0827" from the XFastest community posted a video on YouTube showing how the CPU VRM of his X79-UD3 motherboard popped up in smoke when subjected to stress.

This issue could have been caused by bad firmware to complement the board's CPU VRM, and bad-quality VRM components in general. In its latest press release issued on its Chinese site, Gigabyte offered two remedies. First, it issued a BIOS update for existing owners, which prevents this from happening. It does so, however, by thottling the CPU when it's under extreme stress, making these boards practically useless to overclockers, and is only recommended for those who run their setups with mild overclocking that isn't voltage-assisted. The second remedy, of course, is an unconditional return for replacement. Overclockers can send their burnt boards, as well as healthy ones that are prone to this issue, for a free replacement, when corrected boards are available.

Meanwhile, Gigabyte will be pulling its affected X79 motherboards off shelves worldwide, and replace them with corrected boards that will most likely be revisions of existing models that will sufficiently advertise the issue as being corrected.