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Damaged 3080fe rear cap (with a cracking ending)

For anyone unsure about warranty, it doesn't overide the law. Burden is on Nvidia to prove the user broke it, in the UK we have 6 years by law to return a broken item according to the consumer rights act, companies can offer repair or replacement but they cannot deny it via terms and conditions, if said item is suspected to be broken.
 
If you put the card back together and send it for rma they won't find anything because you say it runs fine. They wont take it apart if it runs fine. You pretty much have to tell them what you have seen otherwise they won't check for it.

Tbh. I would put it back together and sell it on lol. You could even be nice and offer it at msrp buy now.

How would you brake such a part without marking other parts near it? They look pretty tough so would need quite a bit of force especially being so tiny you would hit something else aswell.
 
henson0115 said:
For anyone unsure about warranty, it doesn't overide the law. Burden is on Nvidia to prove the user broke it, in the UK we have 6 years by law to return a broken item according to the consumer rights act, companies can offer repair or replacement but they cannot deny it via terms and conditions, if said item is suspected to be broken.
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This. Exactly this.

As I said previously they'll try to spin you a line about the warranty being void. It's their responsibility to prove you broke it. If they try to fob you off with terms and conditions, just quote your consumer rights and they'll soon offer you a "Goodwill gesture". It's quite worrying to see so many people that aren't aware of their rights.
 
Tiamat21 said:
Never considered that as a thing. From a cursory google it seems that this type isn't prone to cracking from high temps (it's the smaller MLCCs that do). Not saying it's not possible but just not highly reported.

@0h_no_not_again have you anything to say on this? You seemed to know your caps quite a lot from your reply.
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Highly doubt it broke due to temperature.

These components are reflowed at ~275C and cooled quite rapidly. 125C, while being a high temperature for operating, isn't exceptional for these sorts of components. It's worth saying that the reason normal electrolytic caps aren't used on these cards because the electrolyte boils off under such high temperatures.

Cracking generally happens due to mechanical stresses / vibration. You can get cracks due to thermal stresses, but those are generally classed as manufacturing faults. Further cracks are internal and are generally not visible on the package!

Very rarely a package will "blow apart" like the one in this thread, and if that was the case you'd normally have signs of an energetic failure (black skid mark), which is not the case.

My guess is this is a manufacturing defect or it has taken a hard knock. This is a rare failure mode in my experience though!
 
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Worth saying my prior guess on the exact component was wrong. Assumed it was an input cap on the VRM, but it is definitely on the output side, i.e. much lower voltage.

I believe the part is a Panasonic EEFSR0D221R4
220uF, 2V, Polymer Aluminium.

Note that it is a 105C rated part. Higher than 105C won't kill it instantly, but the lifespan will reduce from 2000 hours @105C to 500 hours @ 115C or 250 hours at 120C (based on industry standard guesswork)
 
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0h_no_not_again said:
Worth saying my prior guess on the exact component was slightly off previously. Assumed it was an input cap on the VRM, but it is definitely on the output side, i.e. much lower voltage.

I believe the part is a Panasonic EEFSR0D221R4
220uF, 2V, Polymer Aluminium.

Note that it is a 105C rated part. Higher than 105C won't kill it instantly, but the lifespan will reduce from 2000 hours @105C to 500 hours @ 115C or 250 hours at 120C (based on industry standard guesswork)
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So if you were mining constantly without being too concerned with temps, you could quite conceivably only get 2000 hours out of it, which is less than 3 months?
 
Grim5 said:
The thing that cracked should be able to handle 120c+
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Most components should be able to handle high temps but as mentioned in a post above the component is only rated at 105C. Generally most pcb's are not designed to run at over 100C constantly and we know mining and extreme gaming have indeed pushed memory temps to over 110C. Igor's lab have a thermal image showing an 84C hotspot at the back of the card.

I have used quite a few high wattage cards like the R9 290X but the 3080FE is the first card I owned that gets extremely hot to the touch.

Heat does cause slight expansion in materials and even the pcb so it is possible this particular component was reachig 100C and spilt apart as the pcb expanded. We will have to see how the mining cards are affected long term.
 
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I think the capacitor is easily replaceable, I would take it to a specialist electronic repair shop and get it replaced.
The cap probably costs no more than £1 and a technician would charge no more than £50 to fix it, probably even half of that.

And if you are worried about the warranty or card dying, sell it as refurbished/repaired, so the person buying know what he is buying and you also avoid headache.
 
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The other thing to consider is down time. If you arrange a repair at an tv repair shop you should only be without your card for a couple of hours. Return your card and it will be at least a day each way and a day to fix it.
 
mikehhhhhhh said:
So if you were mining constantly without being too concerned with temps, you could quite conceivably only get 2000 hours out of it, which is less than 3 months?
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That's what guaranteed by the manufacturer to some high confidence level, in my experience roughly 3x standard deviations or about 0.5%.

So for the average component, it will be quite a bit longer. But yeah, certain components age quickly at high temperatures.
 
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Tiamat21 said:
Rma seems to be going forward.

Basically stated that I felt I was being punished for being honest and that I could have easily been dishonest in sorting the rma.
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Great result!

I think a soft no to start with is just to put off those that can't be bothered to persist or don't know better.

FWIW, I pulled the backplate off my 3090 yesterday, there's absolutely no way you could create that damage by user error!
 
mikehhhhhhh said:
I thought it was well established that things like warranty seals aren't legally enforceable.
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There was a ruling in the US about warranty stickers, but no such ruling in the UK.
In this case, FEs don't have any warranty stickers so you could still RMA easily after opening but obviously if you say you've opened it, it can be a grey area, and CS reps might say one thing when the RMA dude might conclude another.

Pads in FEs are also useless after you've opened it up, they cannot be used again.
 
It arrived in their Hong Kong centre two days ago. Should have an update mid next week.

@Dannysaiyan I had identical mining temps when I put the plate back on so I don't think they were useless (some may argue that because they're so bad they are useless in the first place).
 
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Arrived today after a day delay.

Was hopeful it would arrive yesterday as it departed the Newcastle depot (around an hour away) but it was the Newcastle Under Lyme depot...

Obviously put the new thermal pads on and the temps are 20 degrees lower with the same settings as before.

Edit: after settling its more like 20/25 degree improvement on previous settings.
 
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