GA-970A-UD3 Rev 1.1 in flames....

[Basquedude]

I was really impressed with this board till now.....
Ill explain, I have been running my 1055t @ 3.92GHZ for months now. Reset bios the other day and setup OC again. Left stability test on while I slept.
Woke up and found PC with no power. And would not power on.

I proceeded to "drain" power supply by holding power button which worked. System lights when on and fans spun up, only thing is immediatly I started hearing a weird noise from VRM/MOSFETS area, then sparks came out and it lit on fire....
Had to blow it out.

Now after some investigating looks like its a BIOS issue with UD3 boards and voltage regulation for VRMs.
Now im in the process of RMAing the board, my question is, could CPU be dead too? I did read there is surge protection on these boards, but im still skeptical.
And if CPU is dead too, will Gigabyte cover it? I did read that someone got new mobo,CPU and RAM from gigabyte after an incident like this.

Also once new board arrives, will issue be solved by running latest F7e beta bios? I was running F6 official. This sucks now I have to spend 2 weeks with no computer. 

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

My initial feeling would be that you haven't got a leg to stand on as you had been overclocking the motherboard/processor which obviously puts an extra load on the system.  Have Gigabyte agreed to repair the board via RMA or the retailer ? If so I would just accept that you have got as good deal out of it and leave it there. Hopefuly your CPU is undamaged anyway.

Please let us know how yopu get on with it anyway as there will probably be others in the future who will have some sort of similar experience.

[Basquedude]

Like I said, it should still be covered, when you advertise a mobo with 8+2 phase power with jap caps its clearly targeted at the enthusiast crowd.
Google this issue of VRMs and UD3 boards and you will see the similtudes. Most infamous was an overclocker who lost CPU along with RAM when VRM blew. He said Gigabyte replaced everything for him, since they were aware of the problem, they even did a recall on some boards, 2 days later Gigabyte german branch cancled the recall and insisted customers flash bios to newer version instead which resolved the bios vrm issue. Im concerned if this applys to 970 UD3s as well....

Will talk to Gigabyte soon. They already issued me an RMA but I must also call them concerning CPU. Will test CPU tomorrow on another skt AM3 mobo to see if it works.

[Dark Mantis]

Well I will be interested in their approach to your problem. Let's hope that they will sort it all for your sake. Please keep us informed.