Had no response from the RMA by 15:00 so phones them up… after describing the damage to the board - the burn mark on the ATX12V socket the CSRep started saying it sounded like my PSU had gone faulty thus allowing excess current to flow in the 12V line to the socket and as started muttering something like it wouldn’t be covered if they found the board not to be at fault.
They have issued a RMA number but at the moment I haven’t decided whether or not to RMA it to them…
Shortly afterwards I emailed Gigabyte-UK describing the damage to the mobo and they responded within 5 minutes asking for serial number to see if was still in warranty, and less than 30 minutes later issued an RMA number to me. Gigabyte have about the best RMA turnaround and state a repaired/replacement product will be returned to you within 2 weeks.
The damage to the motherboard looks like a short has occurred in the ATX12V plug/socket itself rather than a surge from the PSU, and the system load prior to it happening was well within the capacity of the PSU. Looking at the underneath of the mobo there is no other signs of thermal damage on the circuit board - if the VRMs were overheating you often see brown marks on the circuit boards. With working on electrical/electronic systems I know by experience some short circuit damage can occur before any circuit protection has had time to react. I personally have experienced an main isolator switch suffer an arc that melted the contacts as it was the circuit was being re-energised without taking out the circuit protection.
I know that if I send the mobo to Gigabyte themselves they will at least test it and repair it if necessary and I will have it back within 2 weeks.
With Aria I don’t know how long it would take - weeks possibly months as they would most likely send it off to Gigabyte. The chances are Aria will try and blame it on a faulty PSU and refuse to honour the warranty, then I would then have to send it to Gigabyte for a repair.
At the time I ordered the mobo I did a bit of research and came across these threads on overclock.net about VRM’s and failures on AMD motherboards and at that time this motherboard was not showing problems… it had been out on the market for 9 months at least. Checked it yesterday and several failures have now been noted. Dodgy batch perhaps?
Have an earlier revision of the same motherboard running with my X6 and it runs great.
If Aria were to say they will replace it with an equivalent product I’m not sure what they would replace it with - they aren’t showing any AMD760G chipset mobos on the website now.
Before I make my decision on whether to use the Aria or Gigabyte RMA could you use your influence and find out if they will honour the warranty. the RMA number they gave me was RMA254765.
The PSU still works and I had the motherboard booting up into BIOS again last night.
In 6 weeks I am getting a nice little bonus so am now starting to think about a Bulldozer upgrade… so I am now thinking about upgrade options… I will see what happens with the RMA then perhaps put the repaired/replaced mobo on ebay when it is returned.