On Tuesday, a major problem associated with Gigabyte's X79-UD3, X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2 motherboards came to light after a Gigabyte press-release, where enthusiasts subjecting their boards to voltage-assisted overclocking with stress-testing, ended up with burnt CPU VRM. Till that press-release, the scale of the problem was not known. Gigabyte announced remedies to existing owners, which included either updating their motherboards' BIOS to the latest "F7" version posted on the company website, or sending their boards dead or alive for free replacements.

We're getting to know now that to all those who opt to keep their boards and update their BIOS, Gigabyte is offering a lifetime product warranty, an extension of the limited warranties their products come with. Gigabyte's own version of what went wrong with these motherboards is that it shipped several of its motherboards with bad BIOS firmware that did not have "overclocking limits", which motherboards by other manufacturers did. This claim means that "japan0827", the overclocker from XFastest community who ended up with a burned X79-UD3 that he posted on YouTube, would have been running his setup way off spec, electrically.

Last week, a Taiwanese overclocker putting his OC workbench through an relatively laxed OC stress test saw its Gigabyte X79 UD3 motherboard go bust. Its CPU VRM couldn't cope with the stress, and blew a MOSFET. At the time, people responding to his video condoled him for his bad luck. It appears now that his wasn't a one-off case of "bad-egg". Gigabyte, in its latest press release on its Chinese website, noted the issue. Apparently it received several such complaints from overclockers where even moderate voltage-assisted CPU OC fried its VRM. The issue was found to be widespread, among three of its main socket LGA2011 products, the GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2.

Apparently, the issue is caused by a cocktail of bad firmware to complement the board's PWM circuitry, and bad quality PWM components. As an immediate remedy, Gigabyte issued a BIOS update for the affected products. This BIOS, however, will cripple the board's overclocking abilities. The new BIOS will throttle CPU when subjected to extreme stress, to save the VRM. The BIOS remedy is only for those who opt to keep their boards, or don't subject the board to extreme tuning. The other remedy, is to return the board to Gigabyte, for a free replacement when the "right" boards are available. Gigabyte also announced a general recall of the GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2, from the market. A video of the "unlucky" (not anymore) overclocker's day going bad, can be watched here.Update (29/12): Gigabyte's German office wrote to us and explained that on their end they find the problem to be because of bad firmware, and not bad component quality; and that unlike Gigabyte Taiwan, they are not recalling products or soliciting replacements, but asking users to update their BIOS to the latest available. Gigabyte Germany set up a hotline for German customers, that's 040-253304-55.

Important, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada, in cooperation with HP, are starting recall of the Lithium-Ion batteries used in some Hewlett-Packard and Compaq notebook computers, due to fire hazard. Around 70 000 batteries are reported as dangerous, due to overheating and rupture problems, that may cause fire. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. Models that can contain a recalled battery include:

• HP Pavilion: dv2000, dv2500, dv2700, dv6000, dv6500, dv6700, dv9000, dv9500, dv9700
• Compaq Presario: A900, C700, F700, V3000, V3500, V3700, V6000, V6500, V6700
• HP: G6000, G7000
• HP Compaq: 6720s

We would like to inform you that Acer today recalled some of its Predator premium gaming PCs due to overheating issues. The reason: the insulation on the computer's internal wiring can become bent or stripped, causing the wires to overheat while the product is in use. This poses a burn hazard to consumers. Until now two reports of computers short circuiting, resulting in melted internal components and external casing have been sent. The affected models include model numbers ASG7200 and ASG7700 developed from May 2008 through December 2008. Consumers of the affected machines should stop using them and contact Acer for a free repair. See the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recall alert posted here for more information.

Yet another overheating drama has struck Sony's laptop subdivision. As of today a potential overheating issue has been discovered in the following notebook PC models:

• VGN-TZ100 series
• VGN-TZ200 series
• VGN-TZ300 series
• VGN-TZ2000 series

The issue involves a small number of units which may overheat due to a wiring problem. Sony has initiated a voluntary program to perform a free inspection and, if necessary, a repair to ensure these units meet our high quality standards. To find out if your VAIO TZ notebook is one of the affected units, please visit this link here. After a quick check of the product code and the serial number located on the bottom of your notebook, you'll know whether to worry or not. Please follow the information found here if your laptop is affected.

Lack of proper clarification by NVIDIA on exactly which products have defects that require a recall, certain channel vendors now demand that some of their desktop graphics cards be recalled for a replacement. It had been established that certain discrete graphics processors for the mobile platforms had problems caused due to manufacturing defects and announcements were made on NVIDIA's part that they would recall and replace the faulty parts.

NVIDIA has commented that the faulty notebook GPU problem only exists in a few specific notebook models made by specific clients. The company contended that desktop-based discrete graphics card products are not affected by the issue.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Toshiba AC Adapters Sold with Portable DVD Players

Units: About 142,000

Distributor: Toshiba America Consumer Products LLC, of Wayne, N.J.

Just when we thought the enormous recall of all Sony laptop batteries in several laptops, including those made by Dell, was over, someone's laptop spontaneously combusts. The laptop-turned-firecracker was one of the Inspiron 9200s, which were among the first to be recalled. However, it is not clear whether or not the customer actually went through and replaced the battery. If this is not a case of consumer ignorance...this could mean that Dell will have to deal with another massive laptop battery recall.

A few weeks ago, a Digitimes report suggested that AMD had accidentally released a large quantity of broken HD 2400 and HD 2600 cards into the market. This created mass hysteria in the hardware world, and even sparked a mass recall from one manufacturer. However, after the dust settled, AMD and their partners did some investigating. What they found shows that the entire situation was overblown. ASUS representatives say that ASUS has not received a single broken HD 2400/ HD 2600 card. Gigabyte and MSI also have not received broken cards. Most engineers suspect that the idea of a defect/recall came from Acer, who ordered a large quantity of HD 2400 and HD 2600 graphics cards with UVD (Universal Video Decoder) disabled. When news of the UVD "problem" reached the market, the hardware world went hysterical, while Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS all did internal testing to confirm no problems with the HD 2400 or HD 2600 series.

AMD engineers have a statement to cover the entire HD 2400/HD 2600 fiasco: "Any report claiming that defective HD 2600 and 2400 [cards] are recalled in the channel is completely untrue".

NVIDIA confirmed a couple days ago that their GeForce 8800 series (in particular, the GTS 320MB version) suffers from a texture slowdown "of complex nature". Thankfully, NVIDIA is wasting no time in fixing the problem. We already have a timeframe for when we can expect an end to this "highly annoying" bug. NVIDIA expects to have a working fix to this problem by late August at the earliest, and mid September at the latest. The Inquirer has found that the easiest way to avoid the problem is to not press the Alt-Tab key combination while switching between game window and program window.

Anyone who's ever had the Red Ring Of Death (the Xbox 360's way of saying it's dead) knows what an unfortunate position they are in. There are various ways to fix the RROD, but most of them indicate that it's time to get a new Xbox 360. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. In a classic RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization), a customer says they got a broken product, want a new one, ship the broken one to the manufacturer, and get a new one for their troubles.

However, what happens when this keeps happening? A certain Justin Lowe has done this classic RMA procedure with his Xbox 360 eleven times over, and still isn't sure whether or not he'll have to do it again. And with the wide range of problems he's had, why should he be sure? He's lost three Xbox 360s to the infamous red ring of death, two to disc read errors, two were dead on arrival, several had random audio and video-related issues, and one actually exploded. Customer support was at first friendly and fast, but now, it seems to Justin as if they are slow and unhelpful.

After the well known Sony notebook battery issues sparked off worries among numerous companies last year, the problems aren't over yet, with Gateway having it's second recall in under a year. The notebook maker has now announced that it is to recall a further 14,000 batteries - on top of the 35,000 Sony batteries it recalled in October. This time round the batteries for the 400VTX and 450ROG laptops manufactured between May and July 2003 are to be replaced, with the battery model numbers being 6500760 and 6500761 respectively. If you suspect you may be affected by this, visit this Gateway site to find further instructions.

Another laptop battery recall has begun from today, when Acer Inc. announced that about 27,000 laptop batteries are defective. Again we are talking about Sony-made lithium-ion batteries that could overheat and cause a fire. The affected Acer models were sold in the U.S. and Canada from May 2004 through November 2006 for between $500 and $1,500. The laptops possibly containing the recalled batteries were the TravelMate series with 4-digit model numbers beginning with 242, 320, 321, 330, 422, 467, 561, C20, and the Aspire series beginning with model numbers 556, 560, 567, 930, 941, 980. Acer, whose U.S. division is based in San Jose, says consumers should immediately stop using the recalled batteries and contact the company for a free battery replacement. The laptops could still be safely used if powered by the AC adapter, the company said. Please click here, if you want to find out how you can replace your defective laptop battery.

Though many manufacturers like Benq, Dell, Hitachi, Lenovo, Samsung and Apple too recalled nearly 10 million laptop batteries last year it seems they missed some of the flawed batteries in question. An Australian Apple MacBook owner woke up this Monday morning finding his notebook, the desk and some magazins around on fire. He was charging the batterie overnight which was reportedly not one of the ones to be replaced by Apple. So as long as this case is not clarified you still should keep an eye on your notebook regardless the manufacturer I would say.
The Apple Service already reacted and guaranteed him to replace the old model with a new MacBook Pro and take care of the damaged furniture.

On March 1, 2007, Lenovo voluntarily recalled certain 208,000 9-cell lithium-ion batteries. These batteries were manufactured for use with ThinkPad notebook computers that shipped worldwide between November 2005 and February 2007. All ThinkPad R60, R60e Series, ThinkPad T60, T60p Series and ThinkPad Z60m, Z61e, Z61m, and Z61p Series with 9-cell 10.8V, 5.2 Ah batteries with part number FRU P/N 92P1131 are being recalled. All affected batteries will be replaced free of charge. Lenovo suggests those computers with defective units remove the battery and use the AC adaptor until a replacement has arrived.

A lawsuit filed in Ontario Superior Court, which aspires to gaining class-action status, accuses Dell of selling notebooks with defects...that they knew about. The prosecution is claiming that the Dell Inspiron 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150 or 5160 were designed in a way that caused premature motherboard failure due to overheating. A Dell spokeswoman has no comment on this lawsuit.

Nintendo set to recall "dangerous" Wii strapsNintendo claims that this isn't a recall because their straps are safe, but it certainly seems the best word to describe this. In an announcement earlier today, the company offered to replace 3.2 million Wii remote straps after a number of incidents leading to injuries and damage to property. It looks like you need to go here to fill in a form and then Nintendo will send you a replacement. Nintendo also announced this morning that it will be recalling 200,000 AC adaptors for the Japanese DS and DS Lite.