September 28, 2020 Capacitors seem to be the culprit of some issues, according to EVGA.
Getting your hands on one of Nvidia’s RTX 3080 graphics cards has proven a trial in itself, with scalper-induced stock issues plaguing the market, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for those that manage to get past the checkout, either. Social media and forums have seen owners of the new flagship flock to complain about factory-overclocked RTX 3080s crashing to desktop, and EVGA now has an idea what the cause might be.
Founders Edition GPUs seem to currently be in the clear, but as ComputerBase rounds up complaints, affected parties currently include the Zotac GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity, EVGA’s RTX 3080 XC, and the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X OC – all of which have been overclocked by their respective manufacturers. None of these board partners have given an official comment just yet, but we have reached out in hopes of hearing back soon.
The cause of the crashes and black screens has yet to be found, but many are noting that the problem occurs when exceeding boost clocks of 2.0GHz. Others have indicated that power supplies might be at fault, with power spikes troubling models that meet the necessary capacity to run the RTX 3080. And the final finger is firmly pointed at driver issues, as per usual. It’s difficult to say for now, but stay tuned for answers.
Since we haven’t replicated the problem first-hand, it’s difficult to say what the true culprit is, but many are recommending manually reducing the clock speeds by up to 100MHz as a temporary solution. You could even hop into the latest MSI Afterburner download and undervolt to see if it alleviates the problem.
Once these wrinkles are ironed out, there’s no doubt that Nvidia’s RTX 3080 will be considered one of the best graphics cards of this generation. But for now, people might want to consider holding off for the RTX 3080 20GB instead, depending on how desperate you are for an upgrade.