Reports from various sources are coming in regarding major issues with EVGA’s GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 FTW graphics cards. The root of the problem seems to originate from improper VRM cooling methods. Alarmingly, this issue has caused at least one EVGA GTX 1080 FTW graphics card to catch fire.
The 30-second video – uploaded by Micheal Duncan – shows an EVGA GTX 1080 FTW graphics card momentarily on flames moments after the system was powered on. It’s worth mentioning, however, that the PCIe power connector was not connected – this could’ve contributed to the severity of the incident.
Other users, especially on Reddit, have voiced out their frustration regarding their units of the EVGA GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 graphics cards being faulty due to overheating – some even claimed that smoke started coming out of their graphics cards. The folks at Tom’s Hardware discovered – using special equipment – that one of the affected EVGA graphics card had a VRM temperature of 106°C; not even GPUs will be able to withstand that kind of temperature.
EVGA acknowledges that there is indeed a problem with the cooling methods of the graphics card’s VRAM and VRM modules, and the company is looking into fixing the issue starting with BIOS updates. Thankfully, warranty will still cover graphics cards that were damaged as a result of this issue.
EVGA is also offering a free ‘thermal pad kit’ for owners of affected EVGA graphics cards to manually place the pads on both the VRAM and VRM modules. Alternatively, one could also opt to simply send their graphics card over to EVGA to help with the installation of the thermal pads – this method would take quite a bit of time, naturally. More information regarding EVGA’s thermal pad kits can be found here.
(Source: TweakTown, ExtremeTech)
