EVGA GTX 1080 And 1070 Graphics Cards Go Up In Smoke
There have been plenty of issues over the years where computers have caught fire, typically the fires were associated with defective batteries. A new issue is plaguing some owners of EVGA branded NVIDIA GTX 1080 and 1070 video cards that causes the cards to catch fire and the computers to die. The issue has cropped up over the last week with several threads with owners reporting the same sort of fire apparently caused by overheating leading to component failure and a MOSFET blow out.
The threads have been posted by upset owners on the EVGA forum here and here, on the NVIDIA forums here and here, Build a PC, and PC Master Race subreddits. One of the users says that his PC shut down after a bright orange flame shot out of the graphics card. Another says there were sparks followed by a black screen and acrid smoke pouring out of his PC.
Investigations were spawned and the source of the issue appears to be voltage regulation modules that overheat and result in blown out MOSFETS. The overheating and potential fire issue is linked to all of the EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 video card that have EVGA's ACX cooling solution. That cooling solution doesn't have direct VRM cooling and apparently that lack of cooling is the culprit here.
EVGA's GTX 1080 and 1070 ACX, SC, FTW, and FTW DT models are affected meaning all the dual fan models with the exception of the Classified version. Interestingly, before the fires and the investigation started, owners of these video cards had complained about component failure, instability issues, and black screens and all of those issues have now been linked to the same VRM overheating issue.
The good news is that EVGA has admitted the issue and is implementing changes in the affected products and will honor warranties for cars that have burned up or been damaged. The fix for cards that are still functional is a VRM thermal pad kit that EVGA is offering for free. EVGA is also offering to exchange the defective cards with ones that have the thermal pads installed for free.
SOURCE: Wccftech