News Poor Soldering, Not Amazon, Killed 24 EVGA RTX 3090 GPUs

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spongiemaster

Admirable
Dec 12, 2019
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Your argument is specious because different people value money differently.

No, they don't. Not in this situation. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, everyone should expect better customer service for a $2000 product than a $100 one.

Considering EVGA's response and overall customer support you are getting what you pay for at 2000 dollars and even more.

Disagree. I own a non-EVGA 3090. It hasn't broken. That's what I paid for. I didn't shell out the money for a 3090, which was not $2000, but still more than for any single GPU I have ever bought, to get "great" customer support. I paid for it for the performance and features while expecting it to just work like pretty much every video card I have owned over the last 25 years.

Just because you spend a lot of money on a product does not make it less prone to breakage or defect. All products are the same regardless of price, sometimes things are made badly. This can happen to a 5 million dollar car or a 5 cent plastic toy, your expectation of quality is what the is problem. All of this is obviously my opinion, if you do not agree, let discus it more.
I never said anything about mistakes not happening, but no other AIB had this problem, and it isn't the first time EVGA has screwed up a GPU design. I'd rather pay for a product from a company with crappy customer service I never have to use, than give my money to a company with great customer service I have to use more often than I should.
 

waltc3

Reputable
Aug 4, 2019
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Pretty obvious from the start that it was never a problem with the game software. It was always going to be either a design flaw or a manufacturing defect in the GPU hardware, and it turns out it was the latter. I'm glad they found the cause & fixed it! Such defects are rare these days and it makes me wonder about the manufacturing story on these GPUs...seems like everyone is trying to cut corners and save a buck these days. Not peaches and cream for the owners, I'm sure, but all's well that ends well...;)
 

Kilbane_

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Nov 4, 2020
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I'm quite shocked these are soldered by hand. I never would have guessed that, it seems highly inefficient.
 
No, they don't. Not in this situation. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, everyone should expect better customer service for a $2000 product than a $100 one.



Disagree. I own a non-EVGA 3090. It hasn't broken. That's what I paid for. I didn't shell out the money for a 3090, which was not $2000, but still more than for any single GPU I have ever bought, to get "great" customer support. I paid for it for the performance and features while expecting it to just work like pretty much every video card I have owned over the last 25 years.


I never said anything about mistakes not happening, but no other AIB had this problem, and it isn't the first time EVGA has screwed up a GPU design. I'd rather pay for a product from a company with crappy customer service I never have to use, than give my money to a company with great customer service I have to use more often than I should.
So if you pay more for something its supposed to be better than something that costs less but is essentially the same product? That is not logical. Paying for something at any price has no relevance to its quality. You as well as many millions more seem to believe this fallacy. Cost != quality.

You are flat out wrong. If you buy something there is no guarantee that the specific thing you bought is going to work at all. This is why laws regarding lemons, and return policies exist. The customer support you neglect to value is baked into every single product sold on earth.

I also never said you said anything in particular. EVGA barley even has this "problem." As far as we know only 24 3090s were affected out of thousands if not tens of thousands. Nobody ever releases a perfectly designed product. Not EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS, Sapphire, et cetera. Making it seem like EVGA is some sort of exception to other companies with their flawless designs is a bit narrow minded. Even though you'd rather not pay for any customer service you do anyway. Just keep rolling those dice until you get snake eye's and then complain about the issues you have with so-and-so's product.
 
So if you pay more for something its supposed to be better than something that costs less but is essentially the same product? That is not logical. Paying for something at any price has no relevance to its quality. You as well as many millions more seem to believe this fallacy. Cost != quality.
With a $100 graphics card, the manufacturers are typically not making much profit, since that market tends to be much more sensitive to pricing, whereas a $2000 card will have huge profit margins. The manufacturer is making far more money off the sale of a single $2000 card than they are off twenty $100 cards, so it should be expected that corners won't be cut with such a product. With a $100 card, one can assume that the manufacturer will be more frugal with manufacturing and support costs to get customers the most value for their money.

They are not saying that a high-end card will necessarily be without flaws or design oversights, just that it's only natural to expect the manufacturer to put more care into manufacturing, testing and supporting such a product, since they have the profit margins available to put more care into each card.
 
With a $100 graphics card, the manufacturers are typically not making much profit, since that market tends to be much more sensitive to pricing, whereas a $2000 card will have huge profit margins. The manufacturer is making far more money off the sale of a single $2000 card than they are off twenty $100 cards, so it should be expected that corners won't be cut with such a product. With a $100 card, one can assume that the manufacturer will be more frugal with manufacturing and support costs to get customers the most value for their money.

They are not saying that a high-end card will necessarily be without flaws or design oversights, just that it's only natural to expect the manufacturer to put more care into manufacturing, testing and supporting such a product, since they have the profit margins available to put more care into each card.
If a company is expected to make more money on a higher margin product it would be the consumers assumptions that lead the to believe that they are putting that money anywhere but their pockets. All we will ever be able to actually know about where a company puts its money be it R&D, customer service, QA, fat end-of-year bonus, et cetera is anyone's guess. The only things we can know about a company are what they do when faced with an issues related to their product. EVGA did well by their customers by immediately getting them replacements and checking the cards with issues. They went a step further than most companies that would do even the former by giving a public statement on exactly what went wrong with their cards and that it was not Amazon's fault directly.
Bottom line; we can have expectations for a product, but just because it costs more does not mean its better or worse in any way compared to other products of a similar feature set.