Nvidia’s RTX 3080 has been marred with issues, from demand outweighing stock to custom aftermarket cards crashing to desktop and displaying black screens. EVGA has now shed some light on what could very well be the cause of many problems, claiming in a forum post that the issue only affects certain reviewers and not customers:
“During our mass production QC testing we discovered a full six POSCAPs solution cannot pass the real world applications testing. It took almost a week of R&D effort to find the cause and reduce the POSCAPs to four and add 20 MLCC caps prior to shipping production boards, this is why the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 series was delayed at launch. There were no six POSCAP production EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 boards shipped.
“But, due to the time crunch, some of the reviewers were sent a pre-production version with six POSCAP’s, we’re working with those reviewers directly to replace their boards with production versions. EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 series with five POSCAPs + ten MLCC solution is matched with the XC3 spec without issues.”
It’s all very technical, but this would explain why Nvidia’s RTX 3080 Founders Edition cards don’t suffer nearly as much as third-party versions do. The RTX 3080 FE uses less of the problematic POSCAP capacitors, pairing them with more of the preferred MLCC capacitors, whereas many cards affected by the crashing issue tend to rely entirely on POSCAPs.
This isn’t to say graphics cards running POSCAP-only designs are all defective, but it could indicate a greater chance of failure. And there’s no telling how responsible capacitors are for all of the issues customers are experiencing, given that the drivers are still in their infancy and Nvidia’s current generation of GPUs requires more power to – don’t worry, we’ve got you covered if you need to know how to install a power supply.
Still, if you’re in the market for an RTX 3080 and want to side-step certain capacitor arrangements, then you’re in luck, as Redditor Roseking has listed each custom cards’ setup.
Given EVGA’s statement, the problem with EVGA’s RTX 3080 XC is being treated as an outlier that’s ready for the RMA road rather than a part of the widespread issue – even if the symptoms do look oddly familiar. If you’re still experiencing issues with any graphics card, however, continue reporting it to the hivemind and there will eventually be a solution.