VRM components may overheat and fail on EVGA GTX 1070 or 1080 GPUs with ACX coolers

[WYP]

It has been reported that the VRM components may overheat and fail on EVGA GTX 1070 or 1080 GPUs with the companies ACX coolers, but thankfully there is a fix that will solve this issue.



Read more on EVGA's GTX 1070/80 VRM overheating issues.

 

[Dicehunter]

I got in contact with EVGA CS and there is a good way to test if you're ACX cooled GPU is affected.

Go here - http://www.evga.com/support/guestregister.asp

And enter your serial number, If the ship date is before the end of August then you "may" have an affected GPU, If it's after you should be safe as it was only a small batch that was affected.

 

[Kushiro]

Cant say I have ever been a big fan of using the backplate to cool those

I prefer the backplate to not feel like its going to melt away haha. Seriously though, when is EVGA going to get some proper cooling on there....

 

[AlienALX]

Those VRMs are bloody tiny !

 

[3DJF]

Sooooo. Emailed EVGA on this as i have a registered product that falls into circle of affected products. Don't get me wrong i'm glad i got a reply but really not happy with the response.

Maybe someone more familiar with the details can enlighten me:
"The test used in the referenced review from Toms Hardware (Germany) is running under Furmark, an extreme usage case, as most overclockers know. We believe this is a good approach to have some idea about the graphics card limit, and the thermal performance under the worst case scenario. EVGA has performed a similar qualification test during the design process, at a higher ambient temperature (30C in chamber) with a thermal coupler probe directly contacting the key components and after the Toms Hardware (Germany) review, we have retested this again. The results in both tests show the temperature of PWM and memory is within the spec tolerance under the same stress test, and is working as originally designed with no issues."
This was the first para of the response, what caught my eye was the ref to the Furmark being an "extreme worst case"....ummm i thought the EVGA precisionxOC software uses furmark to stress the GPU in the manual run for finding card limits? Are they trying to say a specific furmark stress test isn't good but the one they supply to test the card is fine??
I'm not a fan of stock emails at best but whoever wrote this should consider doing something else...

 

[Kilbane]

Sooooo. Emailed EVGA on this as i have a registered product that falls into circle of affected products. Don't get me wrong i'm glad i got a reply but really not happy with the response.

Maybe someone more familiar with the details can enlighten me:
"The test used in the referenced review from Toms Hardware (Germany) is running under Furmark, an extreme usage case, as most overclockers know. We believe this is a good approach to have some idea about the graphics card limit, and the thermal performance under the worst case scenario. EVGA has performed a similar qualification test during the design process, at a higher ambient temperature (30C in chamber) with a thermal coupler probe directly contacting the key components and after the Toms Hardware (Germany) review, we have retested this again. The results in both tests show the temperature of PWM and memory is within the spec tolerance under the same stress test, and is working as originally designed with no issues."
This was the first para of the response, what caught my eye was the ref to the Furmark being an "extreme worst case"....ummm i thought the EVGA precisionxOC software uses furmark to stress the GPU in the manual run for finding card limits? Are they trying to say a specific furmark stress test isn't good but the one they supply to test the card is fine??
I'm not a fan of stock emails at best but whoever wrote this should consider doing something else...

FurMark IS an extreme use scenario. It will use 100% of the GPU core 100% of the time with no limitation to frame rates. It is designed to stress the card as you said. There is no real world usage that will ever match something like that.

So what they are saying is, don't panic too much. Only if you are deliberately pushing your card to the limits and stressing it do you have to have a major concern. Chances are the cards will bee 100% safe in real world applications such as gaming.

 

[Dicehunter]

Sooooo. Emailed EVGA on this as i have a registered product that falls into circle of affected products. Don't get me wrong i'm glad i got a reply but really not happy with the response.

Maybe someone more familiar with the details can enlighten me:
"The test used in the referenced review from Toms Hardware (Germany) is running under Furmark, an extreme usage case, as most overclockers know. We believe this is a good approach to have some idea about the graphics card limit, and the thermal performance under the worst case scenario. EVGA has performed a similar qualification test during the design process, at a higher ambient temperature (30C in chamber) with a thermal coupler probe directly contacting the key components and after the Toms Hardware (Germany) review, we have retested this again. The results in both tests show the temperature of PWM and memory is within the spec tolerance under the same stress test, and is working as originally designed with no issues."
This was the first para of the response, what caught my eye was the ref to the Furmark being an "extreme worst case"....ummm i thought the EVGA precisionxOC software uses furmark to stress the GPU in the manual run for finding card limits? Are they trying to say a specific furmark stress test isn't good but the one they supply to test the card is fine??
I'm not a fan of stock emails at best but whoever wrote this should consider doing something else...

A guy from EVGA said that cards they shipped after the first week in September don't have the issue.

If you look further up this thread and click on the guest RMA Register link I posted and enter your cards serial number you'll be able to see the date it shipped from EVGA, If it's after September 7th you should be fine.

Quote from EVGA Jacob -

Recently, there are many customers wanting to know more details about the EVGA GeForce 1080 FTW “Black Screen” issue and we believe we need to make a clear statement to clear all kinds of speculation.

The EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW “Black Screen” issue was fixed as of the first week of September and this has been confirmed by all users who have received the replacement units with the issue resolved. Also, all new production has been confirmed to not have this issue after the first week of September.

This previous black screen issue was caused by On Semiconductor (VRM IC Manufacturer) VRM IC’s being out of spec, triggering the OCP (Over Current Protection) and will not cause any damage to your system. The percentage of the IC’s that were out of spec has been confirmed by On Semiconductor and is approximately 3% to 4%. Since then, EVGA and On Semiconductor have worked out the solution and RMA replacement action a couple months ago as we stated above. At this moment, all of the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW’s have been corrected and all products in the field are working properly.

If you have any questions, please contact our support directly at: support@evga.com.

Thanks,
EVGA

http://forums.evga.com/GTX-1080-FTW-Black-screen-fans-spin-up-to-100-m2530081-p46.aspx#2568569

 

[NeverBackDown]

On EVGA forums there was a video of an affected card catching on fire while not having any PCIe connectors installed. If you may have an affected card, I'd really get that checked out..

 

[Kushiro]

Crazy stuff goin on EVGA. But why are they still using Furmark to test cards... Cards just throttle using it now.

Shocked that it still managed to set on fire though..

 

[Dicehunter]

Update from EVGA -

http://forums.evga.com/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-10801070-PWM-Operating-Temperature-Update-m2573491.aspx

Crazy stuff goin on EVGA. But why are they still using Furmark to test cards... Cards just throttle using it now.

Shocked that it still managed to set on fire though..

It's only been 3-4% of FTW cards that have been affected, The internet likes to blow things out of proportion.

My 980 Ti Matrix when I first plugged it in and powered it on blew a VRM, Bright white light and horrible smell of smoke, Happened to a handful of people exactly like it's affected a handful of EVGA buyers but oddly enough the Asus cards going pop wasn't really made to be such a big deal.

 

[Kushiro]

Poor AUS. Always left out..

 

[TheF34RChannel]

Hey dice, the guest link isn't working? Brings me to the main page.

As for the bios update; it would be nice if they provided a link for each, because I certainly can't find it on their site.

Unfortunately my card suffers from frequent random fan revving.

 

[Doomslayer]

This still wouldn't stop me from buying a EVGA GPU, if it was a different company then it would.

 

[Dicehunter]

Hey dice, the guest link isn't working? Brings me to the main page.

As for the bios update; it would be nice if they provided a link for each, because I certainly can't find it on their site.

Unfortunately my card, as 99% of the others of SC and above suffer from the frequent random fan revving, and there's no fix in sight. If I had known I'd never traded in a perfect Ti for it.

Log out of the EVGA main site and/or forums and try again, If you are logged into the main site the guest RMA register feature to check your serial doesn't work.

As for the revving up, Do you have a decent fan curve or is it on auto ? Usually fan revving is caused by having a fairly mild fan curve so then intermittently the fan revs up to cool the GPU down quickly.

 

[TheF34RChannel]

Thanks for the tip!

Tried both auto fan and a manual curve. It happens when not under load as well.

 

[Nelly]

I got in contact with EVGA CS and there is a good way to test if you're ACX cooled GPU is affected.

Go here - http://www.evga.com/support/guestregister.asp

And enter your serial number, If the ship date is before the end of August then you "may" have an affected GPU, If it's after you should be safe as it was only a small batch that was affected.

Just to add what you have quoted above relates to an EVGA statement - it was caused by On Semiconductor (VRM IC Manufacturer) VRM IC's being out of spec, triggering the OCP (Over Current Protection) The percentage of the IC’s that were out of spec has been confirmed by On Semiconductor and is approximately 3% to 4%. Since then, EVGA and On Semiconductor have worked out the solution and RMA replacement action a couple months ago as we stated above. At this moment, all of the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW’s have been corrected and all products in the field are working properly.

Then there was the issue with Micron memory not being fed enough voltage, all manufacturers released a new BIOS to rectify the problem and increase overclocking potential.

Then there's EVGA offering additional thermal pads and a new bios with more aggressive RPM curve to solve the VRM overheating issue.

 

[TheF34RChannel]

As for the revving up, Do you have a decent fan curve or is it on auto ? Usually fan revving is caused by having a fairly mild fan curve so then intermittently the fan revs up to cool the GPU down quickly.

Got the new VBIOS, easy enough! I was hoping it might fix the revving as well but it did not (see RPM in the attached graph).

At this point I'm considering an RMA, sell the sealed replacement and buy an Asus Strix A8G and not have any downtime. I calculated I would have a loss of 100-150 tokens. The Asus coolers are plastic so there won't be any sagging like their previous metal gen was prone to.

 

[Dicehunter]

Got the new VBIOS, easy enough! I was hoping it might fix the revving as well but it did not (see RPM in the attached graph).

At this point I'm considering an RMA, sell the sealed replacement and buy an Asus Strix A8G and not have any downtime. I calculated I would have a loss of 100-150 tokens. The Asus coolers are plastic so there won't be any sagging like their previous metal gen was prone to.

Do you have a fan curve though or is it just on auto ?

Try it with a 1:1 fan curve.

 

[TheF34RChannel]

Do you have a fan curve though or is it just on auto ?

Try it with a 1:1 fan curve.

On auto, however the same happens with the suggested fan curve - any fan curve really. Temps are fine, never exceeding 68C. I edited my earlier posts regarding many SC's having the issue, I misremembered

It reminded me of the stock blower 470 cooler, which needed the plug pushed in further, which I tried but that wasn't it.

 

[Dicehunter]

On auto, however the same happens with the suggested fan curve - any fan curve really. Temps are fine, never exceeding 68C. I edited my earlier posts regarding many SC's having the issue, I misremembered

It reminded me of the stock blower 470 cooler, which needed the plug pushed in further, which I tried but that wasn't it.

Definitely an RMA then, I just tried my Classy at auto fan settings and the fan curve and ramp up is a long smooth line in Afterburner and not sudden full fan speed.