Some people on the Gigabyte forums (it's not a widespread issue, a few users have posted about it) and one user over at another forum I post at. He had his motherboard just up and die and so he sent it in for RMA and they told him that they couldn't replace it, they instead gave him money to buy a new one. Very weird that they would give him money instead of replacing the board via RMA. Makes me think that there's a possible defect in Gigabyte boards.
Why?
Boards are made in limited quantities, and not all global region RMA centers have actual replacement boards yet since all boards that were made were likely sent to retailers so they could be sold. This is common for motherboards and VGAs in my experience. Since AM4 is a new platform, and they could not supply a suitable replacement since they do not have stock, the only choice they have is to refund the purchase price. This is standard practice throughout the industry.
Recall would be my LAST thought, not the first. This is how it works when the manufacturing plant is in one country, but an RMA center is "locally located" within each of the global regions. Since the RMA center doesn't make the boards, merely repairs them, they are actually very unlikely to have stock to replace items, and that's why for most retailers, they offer exchange at the store first, since stores DO have stock. Most stores are capable of processing RMAs and then get credit for the replacement board they give you. That's why going to the OEM is kind of a last-ditch attempt at warranty service for many OEMs (although there are a fair number of OEMs that ask you not return items to the store).
I have run into this myself with review samples, even, because the "local" office only gets limited numbers to give out on launch of a product, and they do tend to give out every single one they get in order to increase exposure of the product. But that only happens when dealing with reps in the US, while the companies I deal with that ship to me directly from Taiwan nearly always have a replacement (although I have had items repaired, too).
Let me put it into numbers, even. 14 million boards sold per year, OEM has 20% of market. That's 2800000 boards. But they have 140 different products, making it only 20000 boards of a particular model... meaning that nearly any board product you buy is actually kind of rare, given that there are billions of people on the planet. Of course, boards that will sell in higher numbers are produced with higher numbers, and things like halo products (such as $700 motherboards) are produced in far lower numbers... so it all balances out in the end.
It would be really silly for an RMA center, which doesn't have a storefront, and doesn't have any ability to sell things directly, to stock products and hold on to the "just in case", since this would lead to huge numbers of boards made that are never sold, and would end up in a landfill. That's a crazy thought... I'd love to see a motherboard graveyard filled with products that were never used, never unboxed...
. But they are moving slow, very slow. So slow that even if in a perfect scenario the few more cores and 20mb of cache can make a difference it will only be few more fps.