The Return of PGM? – Gigabyte UD-GM

Update

quasarzone has confirmed my thoughts for the 1000w version of the PSU in this review.

Introduction

Gigabyte has been a lot in the news because of their P-GM units having a high failure rate, caused by a massive design flaw. They have issued a voluntary recall, but have also tried to influence a reviewer that had a major cause in this, keep flawed units in circulation, sell units they knew had these issues to retailers, who had to bundle them to even sell. But now, Gigabyte goes one step further by releasing a unit that looks a suspicious lot like it, seemingly trying to cover their tracks. This is an outright dirty method of covering your tracks, given what came before this.

Other coverage

To get the full idea, I recommend reading the following articles from us and other well-respected people.

Original review

Review of newer revision

Aris refusing official samples from Gigabyte

GamersNexus with a wider sample size to test

Our coverage of the recall

GIGABYTE Statement and a Formal Recall of their P-GM PSUs

Aris responding to recall statement

Aris Mpitziopoulos Responds to Gigabyte’s Power Supply Recall Statement

With that out of the way, I’d like to show why I see it as a literal re-release of the PGM.

Evidence point 1: Physical

The same depth, the same tooling. Everything but the name on it seems to be the same here. You can see on the renders from Gigabyte below that they didn’t even bother this far.

Evidence point 2: Cables

The exact same cable configuration is used on both. And because of the housing, they’re even in the same spot. Below a few compares

Evidence point 3: Marketing

Even the marketing outside of this is the exact same, touching on the same parts, with the same points. The only difference is two additional parts for their UD line. Below again some compares.

Disclaimer: This is P750GM and UD750GM at 11-02-2022, the same marketing is used for the 850w and 1000w models

99% sure… Why not 100%?

With that all out of the way, the only reason I can’t confirm this fully is that there’s no visible components in the renders. For that reason, I can’t compare the units internally.

As much of a bomb?

Short answer. Probably not. Gigabyte has shown a fixed version in a video from Greek PSU reviewer Aris that had some internal changes. These were beyond what they’re claiming, but survived all tests Aris threw at it. The issue here is that it can easily have been a golden sample and the old units were never taken out of circulation. I doubt however that Gigabyte is insane enough to ship the old revision under the new name, so these should be the “fixed” revision. We however still don’t recommend these both because of Gigabyte’s outright dirty methods here, but even disregarding that, there are much better alternatives on the market right now.

Alternatives

In our PSU buying guide you can find many choices that are better alternatives to these units. With this you also support our site by buying via our links.

PSU Buying Guide (November 2021)

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