It’s been some weeks since it was discovered that some GTX 1080 GPUs manufactured by EVGA were slightly hazardous to your health. It was a horrible revelation for those whose cards were affected by the disaster. Imagine, your GPU, which you spent your hard earned money on, suddenly catching on fire for reasons unknown.
Likliehood of EVGA GPU death is almost nil
Further investigation found that there may be a slight cooling problem around the VRMs. It was theorized that they just weren’t getting the great amounts of heat they they produce siphoned away as quickly as would be best. On the rear of the board, temperatures soared to over 104-degrees Celsius. VRMs themselves can withstand quite a bit of heat, being designed to operate in that environment. The TjMax of the VRM’s used by EVGA is around 150C. But what about the PCB itself? Or even the Mosfets. Is this actually a rampant problem as a result of bad engineering?
Not at all. In fact, it seems that a small manufacturing anomaly may be the actual culprit. Poor QC and a bad batch of parts. Your PCB shouldn’t just light on fire. Nor should any component under the normal stresses they’ll experience in your PC. But if it weren’t built to the high specifications of EVGA, or perhaps a small bad batch of PCBs made it though the line, then it could be possible that it wouldn’t be able to withstand the high heat. And thus explode in a fiery death. Our own review of the GTX 1070 FTW before a BIOS update showed a toasty, yet manageable card. And one that is not going to be bursting into flames, exploding or any other nonsense. Unless of course you apply a ring of det-cord. For fun, of course.
EVGA hasn’t had a terrible amount of actual failures, either, pointing to the issue being a slight manufacturing issue and components that may have passed QC, but weren’t up to the long-term duties they were required for. EVGA has stated that they’ve had around 200 defective products per million, which is a lower failure rate than you might expect and is actually right in line with failure rates of nearly any generation of cards. The media, place such as WCCFtech and others, have blown the issue out of proportion. Sure, those affected should be outraged that they had that one defective card. But in all things in life, it’s simply a part of it. But that outrage from a small number still doesn’t mean that the entire EVGA GTX 1080 line of GPUs are horrible. Just those few that did have issues, and that’s all. We need to remember that it doesn’t represent the entire population even if it’s the loudest segment. It doesn’t hurt to over do cooling, though.
You’re GPU won’t be burning tonight, sorry kids.