Exploding power supplies are now the worst thing about the Newegg Shuffle

In the event you’ve been making an attempt to purchase a GPU this 12 months, chances are you’ll be conversant in the Newegg Shuffle, a lottery system that Newegg instituted in January to attempt to beat bots and scalpers. You may additionally know that the GPUs and consoles within the Newegg Shuffle are sometimes bundled with parts like RAM, motherboards, and energy provides as a bundle deal—if you’d like dessert (on this case, a GPU), you need to eat your greens (or, a product you may be capable of use however weren’t seeking to purchase).

Earlier this month, the PC gaming YouTubers at Avid gamers Nexus posted a video exhibiting that two Gigabyte energy provides generally bundled with GPUs within the Newegg Shuffle had been liable to “catastrophic” failure. A number of the GP-P850GM and GP-P750GM fashions that had been examined sparked as they died, creating a hearth danger, and one additionally ruined an hooked up RTX 3080 GPU. Gigabyte has now released a statement that (inaccurately) takes situation with Avid gamers Nexus’ findings earlier than outlining how the corporate is addressing the issue and providing exchanges for anybody who has purchased an influence provide inside the affected vary of serial numbers (the corporate has stopped wanting a proper recall, nonetheless).

Gigabyte claims that the Avid gamers Nexus group ran the facility provides over capability for “prolonged lengths of time” and that these circumstances “wouldn’t be typical of any actual world utilization.” In a response video posted right now, Avid gamers Nexus identified that this assertion mischaracterizes their exams, which had been rigorously designed to seek out the place the facility provides’ Over-Energy Safety (OPP) characteristic would set off and shut the facility provide off (as OPP is designed to do when functioning correctly). The ability provides had been then left to take a seat for a couple of minutes and introduced again on-line at 60 p.c of their capability to make sure that they had been nonetheless working correctly after the shutdown—the total testing methodology part of the primary video is here. Avid gamers Nexus additionally pointed to quite a few product evaluations claiming that the facility provides had proven up lifeless on arrival, earlier than they had been ever put in or used.

As for what it is doing to forestall future issues with these energy provides, Gigabyte has responded by reducing the OPP wattage restrict to enhance the chances that the facility provides will safely shut themselves down and proceed working. Each fashions would settle for energy spikes of as much as 150 p.c their rated capability earlier than shutting down (1300 W for the 850 W energy provide, and 1125 W for the 750 W mannequin), and that ceiling has been lowered to 120 p.c. The assertion would not say whether or not Gigabyte is making different manufacturing modifications to handle the issue.

The difficulty is partly that Gigabyte has made a poor product, however dangerous energy provides occur. This has solely grow to be a newsworthy downside as a result of Newegg has been pushing these components onto patrons who’re determined to get a GPU at anyplace close to the marketed retail worth. At finest, shopping for a bundle means getting some issues you possibly can really use however did not plan to pay for, like an additional controller or a recreation with a recreation console, or first rate RAM or a motherboard to go along with a GPU. However at worst, it is a approach for retailers to dump issues they cannot usually promote to people who find themselves so keen to purchase one thing that they’ll gladly settle for the inflated value together with the undesirable equipment.

We have contacted Newegg to see if the issues with the Gigabyte energy provides will lead to any modifications to the Newegg Shuffle return coverage or the sorts of merchandise that get bundled with GPUs within the first place (the present return coverage says that it is advisable return all bundled gadgets collectively to get a refund). We’ll replace if we get a response.