This may not be the most popular comment to make, but in my opinion, the culprit is not Gigabyte alone. The problem imo is quite complex:
- Gigabyte has not provided heatsinks on the VRM MOS-FETs for the budget boards, but has incorporated a proprietary system of overheating protection, which is just the same thing other manufacturers do, however, the trigger temp on the Gigabyte boards is set quite a bit lower, so that the protection system actually works to prevent damage to the components. On an Asus board, the MOS-FET's will get just as hot, but Asus will not prevent them from reaching such high temperatures. Don't believe me? ... put your finger on the MOS-FETs of an Asus board with an FX-8350 and you'll know.
- It happens especially on systems that are not optimised to run FX-8350's, in that sense that if Windows is not updated to support the AMD core load distribution algoritms, the FX-8350 will run very hot and unnecessarily draw a lot of extra power. This is entirely a Microsoft fault, and although I don't believe in coincidence at all, I find it unfair of Microsoft that they do not push the updates or advertise them.
- The FX-8350 is a huge power hog, it's unseen for a processor, and I find it at least careless of AMD to just categorise it as a 125W TDP processor, while it draws a lot more power than another 125W AMD processor like the FX4350/ FX6350 or the Phenom II X4 965. Noone in their right mind believes that the FX4350 draws the same amount of power as the FX-8350, which is basically, when overclocked, 4 times the FX4350.
- I've not seen MOS-FET overheating at stock speeds. Most users should know better than to use budget boards to overclock such a mighty processor. However, this fact is not advertised sufficiently by AMD or motherboard manufacturers, which is also unfair. As I've mentioned before somewhere on the forum, the FX-8350 is a very expensive processor when overclocked to Intel CPU specs, because it draws a lot of power so you need a more expensive board, and it produces a lot of heat so you need an expensive aftermarket cooling solution. Of course AMD doesn't want to advertise this.
- The most available version of that board is the version 1.0, which is good, has a good BIOS, and is suitable for a non-overclocked FX-8350 or a moderatley overclocked FX-8320. The version 3.0 is not that available, it's just not that popular, because Gigabyte was forced to make some stupid BIOS choices because of Windows 8 compatibility, even though there was no problem to be solved except that Microsoft should issue the AMD patches spontaneously instead of helping break their customers' PC's and demanding stupid BIOS changes from manufacturers that exclude functionality for the sake of the Windows 8 monopoly.
Anyway, I've built several PC's with the 990FX UD5 board from Gigabyte, and even with extreme overclocks, that one has no problem at all, but then the heatsink assemblies for the VRM MOS-FETs on that board are quite hefty, and it has a more solid CPU power phase design. It also costs more.
I would still recommend the UD3 board for processors up to the FX6350, which is also 125W TDP, but it draws a lot less power than the FX-8350, and can be overclocked without problem on the UD3 board. The only thing I really don't like about Gigabyte is their attitude of "use Windows or die", they blindly implement every stupidity Microsoft tells them to implement, and they don't support more modern and serious operating systems at all. However, in terms of durability, they are the industry standard.
