“Poor soldering caused failure of Geforce RTX 3090”

In late July, Amazon launched a beta test for the new game New World. However, the session did not last very long before players encountered a patrol. Users with mainly graphics cards of the model Geforce RTX 3090 from the partner manufacturer EVGA reported that the graphics cards were destroyed in connection with playing New World.

A majority of the affected users indicated that the problem occurred in the game’s menus, which in the early beta version allowed the graphics card to render an unlimited number of frames per second. This gave rise to theories that the graphics cards broke due to current spikes or heat problems caused by the high frame rate.

Several graphics card models were affected, but EVGA’s Geforce RTX 3090 FTW judged to account for the largest share. It was thus speculated that an underlying hardware failure caused the problem, which is now confirmed by EVGA. EVGA has analyzed 24 broken graphics cards and now the company states that the problem is due to “inadequately performed work”.

X-rays revealed poorly soldered MOSFET circuits, which are one of the components that handle the graphics card’s voltage regulation. According to the company, only a few graphics cards from a batch manufactured in early 2020 will be affected. They do not give exact figures, but say that this is less than one percent of the partner manufacturer’s total sales.

Even if graphics cards are destroyed when users play New World, it is not the game that is the culprit in the drama, but only a trigger. EVGA has sent new graphics cards to the users who reported the error to the company’s customer service.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

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