EVGA Pascal cards hotspot problem

IvanDobskey · 3 Nov 2016 at 08:45

Another reply from evga:

Hello,

you really do not Need to be worried about this. The test they have done was like driving with a car that is only certified for 200kp/h on the Highway for hours at 230kp/h and then wonder why the engine got hot.
When you RMA a Card we can only give for the first 30 days of purchase a guarantee that you will receive a brand new sealed unit, after this we can not guarantee this anymore but all replacements we do use are pretested and recertified.
We do offer two different Kind of RMAs, Standard one where you send the product to us and we Need 1-3 Business days till we send a replacement and the advanced Version, there you Need to place a security collateral via PayPal, we ship a replacement right away, you then have 30 days to get the faulty Card to us to get the collateral refunded.

Regards,

Thing is, their engine gets hotter than everyone elses....

Aretak · 3 Nov 2016 at 08:53

IvanDobskey said:
The test they have done was like driving with a car that is only certified for 200kp/h on the Highway for hours at 230kp/h and then wonder why the engine got hot.

What an absolute load of crap. The VRMs get incredibly hot under regular gaming loads, not just FurMark. Their CEO apparently told Jay to his face that they're admitting they screwed up badly, so they need to get the word out to their customer service people that downplaying this and making excuses is only going to make things worse.

Albaba · 3 Nov 2016 at 08:58

This is pretty lame in my opinion.

The main reason I bought the card was because it was quiet, now I'm supposed to flash the bios to make it noisy?

Not sure what to do really. I'm guessing there is no hope of a refund from either overclockers or EVGA. Resale value is a bit screwed. I've always bought EVGA but currently this is looking like the last product i will buy from them.

jonathan_phang · 3 Nov 2016 at 08:58

Well, I leave this thread for a bit and its gone into overdrive!

There is definitely a whole lot of information that is floating about. I think this is the summary:

Regarding RMA, lets wait to see if we get a new card or not. So we have the pads (which were optional anyway apparently, but if we take the new BIOS then they aren't needed at all, option or not. BIOS wise, it changes the fan curve, but we don't yet have the full temp/fan % curve yet.

Like many others out there I am running a custom curve so would really like to compare. I haven't yet read the GamersNexus article on this, so don't want to say more.

At the moment, based on the way I have gamed, I'm not hitting really high usage, which I'm sure means I am not hitting the problem temps shown. I'll keep running the custom fan curve, and as suggested, that second BIOS will be good to try it out on.

Really need to go hunt out that article.

Gregster · 3 Nov 2016 at 09:02

Just read a couple of pages and I am shocked in truth. I have always recommended EVGA as one of the better manufacturers but looking at this thread, I would be silly to do that now. A new fan speed isn't fair and asking customers to add thermal pads isn't either. They should do it free of charge (pay for postage both ways) and do it quickly. That would only make them look better and do their credibility good in the long run.

Simon Belmont · 3 Nov 2016 at 09:15

Gregster said:
Just read a couple of pages and I am shocked in truth. I have always recommended EVGA as one of the better manufacturers but looking at this thread, I would be silly to do that now. A new fan speed isn't fair and asking customers to add thermal pads isn't either. They should do it free of charge (pay for postage both ways) and do it quickly. That would only make them look better and do their credibility good in the long run.

Agree Greg. They should have nip it in the bud the min it happened, but they didn't now there cred is gone to the toilet.

I wont be buying evga anymore.

Kaapstad · 3 Nov 2016 at 09:24

Gregster said:
Just read a couple of pages and I am shocked in truth. I have always recommended EVGA as one of the better manufacturers but looking at this thread, I would be silly to do that now. A new fan speed isn't fair and asking customers to add thermal pads isn't either. They should do it free of charge (pay for postage both ways) and do it quickly. That would only make them look better and do their credibility good in the long run.

This 100%^

Doing a bios update or fitting thermal pads is quite daunting to the average person.

mikeo · 3 Nov 2016 at 09:24

RanxZy said:
Surely it would make sense to everyone to look at the gamers nexus graph and realise that EVGA have upped the given fan speed at similar temps to the old BIOS to try and lessen the vrms burning. I don't even have to go to the article to gather that, as clearly EVGA are trying to firefight atm.

Think of it as creating a custom fan curve in afterburner, they've just made it much more aggressive to try and compensate.

I have looked at that article and what seems like at times several hundred others over the last couple of weeks.

Once again. What I am trying to get at, is to hit 60% fan speed on the current stock fan curve you would need to be running VERY high gpu temps! Probably I would have thought you would be approaching thermal throttling situation here I would have thought. So I'm assuming from the article, that they have increased this max fan speed to 80%. Fair enough.

What I'm more interested in, is what the new fan curve actually looks like. As currently the fan curve is passive up to 60C and then rises to around 30% at 70C. These are more like real world gaming temps. So what will the new fan curve be? Is it not going to be passive at all? Or start ramping up earlier? And what are the fan speed/s going to be increased to at or around normal gaming temps? Surely not 80% !!!!

Not an issue for me anyway, as like any sensible person, I've run my own fan curve from day one.

jonathan_phang · 3 Nov 2016 at 10:13

mikeo said:
What I'm more interested in, is what the new fan curve actually looks like. As currently the fan curve is passive up to 60C and then rises to around 30% at 70C. These are more like real world gaming temps. So what will the new fan curve be? Is it not going to be passive at all? Or start ramping up earlier? And what are the fan speed/s going to be increased to at or around normal gaming temps? Surely not 80% !!!!

I've said pretty much in the post I made this morning (I've also commented on the GN article as there was and EVGA presence there too). Are they effectively testing at the top end of the fan curve, due to the fact that they are saying VRM temps only go out of spec in exceptional circumstances (ie. Extended Furmark ones?). Would make sense seeing as they've never really admitted problems when NOT in extreme situations.

I'll just wait for more information. I have to say. I'm not really fussed about the 0% fan usage, I only really hear any audible change at about 55% so it might as well be at least that for any temp (well, until it gets a lot higher that is).

Kelt · 3 Nov 2016 at 10:36

Gregster said:
Just read a couple of pages and I am shocked in truth. I have always recommended EVGA as one of the better manufacturers but looking at this thread, I would be silly to do that now. A new fan speed isn't fair and asking customers to add thermal pads isn't either. They should do it free of charge (pay for postage both ways) and do it quickly. That would only make them look better and do their credibility good in the long run.

Totally agree.

Unless EVGA develop a better cooler than this, I won't be considering buying one of their graphics cards. And even then I'd think twice after this.

DRSEire · 3 Nov 2016 at 11:08

Almost recommended a friend to buy a 1080FTW.Have used EVGA myself in the past with zero problems.Support seems to be a bit of a joke with this big issue at this stage.Not good EVGA.This is dragging the rep down.

Drollic · 3 Nov 2016 at 11:19

Are pads being shipped currently in eu/uk?

mikeo · 3 Nov 2016 at 11:25

Drollic said:
Are pads being shipped currently in eu/uk?

As far as I'm aware (though there are now so many forums with posts about this issue ... that I'm rather loosing track), not yet. I seem to remember that last week... An EVGA rep (on their forums) said:

1) Instalation guide next week. So that's this week and it has appeared as promised.

2) Pads would start shipping in a couple of weeks. So that's next week I would assume.

TBC

jonathan_phang · 3 Nov 2016 at 11:42

There were emails sent when we registered interest for a valid product (with respect to the pads) so hopefully they send out another email update when its shipped.

Aretak · 3 Nov 2016 at 11:48

Kelt said:
Unless EVGA develop a better cooler than this, I won't be considering buying one of their graphics cards. And even then I'd think twice after this.

The one thing you can probably count on after this is that their 1080 Ti, or 1100 series cards if there isn't one, won't have this issue. Getting caught out twice would be the end of their reputation. Although I'd hesitate to touch said cards if they were still using ACX 3.0, since EVGA's "solution" seems to involve cranking up the fan speed, which presumably will be the case for new cards out of the box in future. No doubt there'll be much quieter cards that stay just as cool if they persist with this flawed design.

harney · 3 Nov 2016 at 12:01

mikeo said:
Can't say that I was too impressed to read this though:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/5aqjvb/so_i_disassembled_my_two_evga_gtx_1080_ftws/

EDIT. Regarding the new fan curve. Think I'll just stick with my own one. Seems to work well enough.

I can confirm reddit post ..
Done 3 cards all ready for clients

All three varied from the memory that where not in contact with the T pads to the pcb plate this is a serious issue more so the memory near the VRM's.

The band aid from evga does not address this.

So its 2 things either the t pads are too thin ..as i have had to replace all 3 cards using thicker ones or could be the whole design of the pcb plate not fitting / clamping as intended.

IvanDobskey · 3 Nov 2016 at 12:28

The whole thing is just poorly designed.

This will be my last evga card.

RanxZy · 3 Nov 2016 at 12:57

In the future I think EVGA need to be less focused on "LEDS everywhere, let's go with the trend" and just making sure the design offers solid cooling to all components as a priority.

I find too many aftermarket brands are in a rush to change their design to be trendy. I commend Gigabyte in not focusing on flashy lights with their G1 and just making sure the hot components have solid, active contact with the heatsink.

queamin · 3 Nov 2016 at 13:22

RanxZy said:
In the future I think EVGA need to be less focused on "LEDS everywhere, let's go with the trend" and just making sure the design offers solid cooling to all components as a priority.

I find too many aftermarket brands are in a rush to change their design to be trendy. I commend Gigabyte in not focusing on flashy lights with their G1 and just making sure the hot components have solid, active contact with the heatsink.

It is crazy making it flashy and cutting out/down on the important things and we seen it time and time again with almost all partners and it ***** me off and another thing that ***** me off is saving a few pence on important things like pads almost every one would pay a pound or two more if it means adding pads or paste/heatsinks to certain parts to cool them better.

queamin · 3 Nov 2016 at 13:25

Now everyone makes a mistake but it matters how a company handles it after that matters, look at XFX and it bad rep a few years ago and how long it took them to turn people opinion around it took years .