News EVGA Says RTX 3080 Cap Issues Caused Crashes, Confirms Stability Issues

[Admin]

EVGA has confirmed that it encountered problems with a type of capacitor that has been cited as the cause of widespread RTX 3080 crashes.

EVGA Says RTX 3080 Cap Issues Caused Crashes, Confirms Stability Issues : Read more

 

[nofanneeded]

Yep .. never rush and buy from day one ...

 

[neojack]

thanks for the article

can you please add a paragraph to explain what is a POPCAP, what is a MLCCs and why it is superior ?
also it could be important to identify the best PCB designs. more work for Bulzoid/Gamer nexus !

 

[drivinfast247]

So only third party cards are having issues?

 

[nofanneeded]

So only third party cards are having issues?

well , if used as is , the FE models wont crash because they stay below 2Ghz OC , but if water cooled and OCed to higher levels , it is still not clear.

Nvidia's own RTX 3080 FE models, which only reach 1.71 GHz, aren't impacted by the crashes.

 

[nofanneeded]

Tomshardware , Why are you using the RTX 3080 FE photo and not EVGA cards Pics ?? this is wrong.

 

[spongiemaster]

thanks for the article

can you please add a paragraph to explain what is a POPCAP, what is a MLCCs and why it is superior ?
also it could be important to identify the best PCB designs. more work for Bulzoid/Gamer nexus !

Here is a good video explaining the issue:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6bUUEEe-X8

 

[InvalidError]

can you please add a paragraph to explain what is a POPCAP, what is a MLCCs and why it is superior ?

PoSCap are solid polymer caps.

They are neither superior nor inferior, they just cover a different range (DC-10MHz) of the power supply filtering spectrum.

Different size capacitors are most effective across different ranges of the spectrum due to their packaging's intrinsic ESL. Once you pass a given capacitor's self-resonance frequency, it becomes more of an inductor than capacitor and stops contributing to supply filtering, which is why you see clusters of 3-5 different size caps to provide uniform coverage where smaller caps pick up at frequencies where the large caps become less effective.

The POSCAPs likely had too much total ESL to maintain sufficiently flat filtering until the next cap size down could pick up, so the GPU voltage got too noisy for stable operation beyond 2GHz on cards with no intermediate-size MLCCs between the POSCAPs and the rest.

Beginners' mistake as far as high speed circuit design is concerned.

 

[spongiemaster]

PoSCap are solid polymer caps.

They are neither superior nor inferior, they just cover a different range (DC-10MHz) of the power supply filtering spectrum.

Different size capacitors are most effective across different ranges of the spectrum due to their packaging's intrinsic ESL. Once you pass a given capacitor's self-resonance frequency, it becomes more of an inductor than capacitor and stops contributing to supply filtering, which is why you see clusters of 3-5 different size caps to provide uniform coverage where smaller caps pick up at frequencies where the large caps become less effective.

The POSCAPs likely had too much total ESL to maintain sufficiently flat filtering until the next cap size down could pick up, so the GPU voltage got too noisy for stable operation beyond 2GHz on cards with no intermediate-size MLCCs between the POSCAPs and the rest.

Beginners' mistake as far as high speed circuit design is concerned.

This is a much better technical explanation of the issue. The video I posted is more of a pop-up book with pretty pictures version of the explanation.

 

[ThatMouse]

These cards only have a 3 year warranty. Kinda poopy.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Tomshardware , Why are you using the RTX 3080 FE photo and not EVGA cards Pics ?? this is wrong.

Fair observation - I was in a bit of a rush to get the article done, and honestly didn't think of it. Updated.

 

[Phaaze88]

Welcome to the early adopter club!
How's it feel being a beta tester?


EDIT: It's not just EVGA, it's ALL of the vendors.

 

[CandiceJoy]

That's great an all, but I have an MSI Ventus...it's got 5 POSCAPs and 10 MLCCs, but it still has this issue, so it's clearly at least not the ONLY issue.

 

[larsv8]

I think it would be helpful if we knew which cards had the faulty parts and which didn't.

 

[Schlachtwolf]

Welcome to the early adopter club!
How's it feel being a beta tester?


EDIT: It's not just EVGA, it's ALL of the vendors.

Not Asus, on their TUF 3080 they went with the more expesive Caps on all 6 modules.....thats why it costs more.. Love or hate Asus this they got very right.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

Dreading my 3090 GPU now incase of crashes but not heard anyone complaining about 3090 yet

 

[nofanneeded]

That's great an all, but I have an MSI Ventus...it's got 5 POSCAPs and 10 MLCCs, but it still has this issue, so it's clearly at least not the ONLY issue.

The FE Edition has 4 POSCAPS and two groups of MLCCs

see this

https://www.techpowerup.com/272591/...ly-connected-to-aib-designed-capacitor-choice

 

[TheHughMan]

Should have used capacitors from Tesla motors electronics. 88-97% success rate.

 

[Schlachtwolf]

That's great an all, but I have an MSI Ventus...it's got 5 POSCAPs and 10 MLCCs, but it still has this issue, so it's clearly at least not the ONLY issue.

Igor's Lab also said in their video that this issue with the caps is the glaring, smack you in the face problem but that others are almost certainly to do with driver inbstability. At the bleeding edge of tech.....as a consumer you will certainly bleed !!!!

I think Igor translates his write-ups with Goggle translatorso even though I'm Irish es ist gut das ich auch ein bisschen Deutsch kann 🆒

 

[russell_john]

well , if used as is , the FE models wont crash because they stay below 2Ghz OC , but if water cooled and OCed to higher levels , it is still not clear.

That's <Mod Edit>, the FE also clocks above 2 Ghz with the stock boost ..... 1710 Mhz is the guaranteed base clock but it will still go over 2 Ghz if the power and temperature allows it ..... Go looks at the reviews and you'll see many examples of the FE going over 2 Ghz stock if the conditions are right ..... and even more examples when they overclock it manually in Afterburner .....

 

[sizzling]

Are people having issues at stock speeds for their AIB cards? I can understand upset if this happens at stock but if it only happens when overclocking then this is a non issue as overclocking headroom is never guaranteed. I don’t want to jinx it but so far I have had no issues with my 3080 Gigabyte Gaming OC and seeing some occasional boosting over 2000mhz on stock voltages.

 

[damfs]

thanks for the article

can you please add a paragraph to explain what is a POPCAP, what is a MLCCs and why it is superior ?
also it could be important to identify the best PCB designs. more work for Bulzoid/Gamer nexus !

bulldzoid has already made a video talking about that , and he was screaming " the used capasitors isn't POSCAPs " Lol , the last card to use POSCAPs is the GTX590

 

[InvalidError]

Are people having issues at stock speeds for their AIB cards?

If you include boosting as stock, yes, some people do have problems at stock and some GPU manufacturers have issued vBIOS updates to lower clocks in boost tables as a work-around at least while they are weighing their options.

 

[sizzling]

If you include boosting as stock, yes, some people do have problems at stock and some GPU manufacturers have issued vBIOS updates to lower clocks in boost tables as a work-around at least while they are weighing their options.

Yes I would include boosting as stock as it’s a default feature.

 

[nofanneeded]

That's <Mod Edit>, the FE also clocks above 2 Ghz with the stock boost ..... 1710 Mhz is the guaranteed base clock but it will still go over 2 Ghz if the power and temperature allows it ..... Go looks at the reviews and you'll see many examples of the FE going over 2 Ghz stock if the conditions are right ..... and even more examples when they overclock it manually in Afterburner .....

Why are you calling my words <Mod Edit for language> while it is Tomsardware words ? and I quoted their opinion ?

Nvidia's own RTX 3080 FE models, which only reach 1.71 GHz, aren't impacted by the crashes.