Another EVGA GTX 1080 FTW Sets on Fire

The GTX 10-series launch is turning into a nightmare for EVGA amid reports about the FTW line-up suffering from overheating problems. Apparently, the issue stems from poor VRM cooling although EVGA was adamant that their custom solution conformed to the original specification:

“The results in both tests show the temperature of PWM and memory is within the spec tolerance under the same stress test, and is working as originally designed with no issues.”

Despite this, they offered a fix in the form of thermal pads, which the end-user can install themselves. Still, it’s not an ideal situation for those without technical experience dismantling GPUs. Unfortunately, it appears this sorry saga is far from over and another EVGA GTX 1080 FTW owner has experienced a dramatic hardware failure. According to a post on the company’s official forums, the user was gleefully playing CounterStrike: Global Offensive and noticed the GPU began to set on fire and destroyed his entire system. Bizarrely, the GPU was functioning as normal during the first match and hovered around a perfectly fine thermal reading of 65C. Once the second match was on, the GPU failed and it’s unknown if the temperatures increased beyond 65C. Here we can see the damage to the PCB:

An EVGA US representative’s reply was really defensive and didn’t appear to help the user’s situation:

“There’s no proof that the card caused damage to the rest of the computer”

Thankfully, EVGA Germany was much more sympathetic and said:

“Sorry, please send photos followed by the card and we’ll see what we can do”

This is an embarrassing situation for EVGA and it’s made some people question if the cooling hardware is adequate. Personally, I’d recommend all users to take the thermal pad offer or contact EVGA so they can install them for you.

Do you think the company’s 10-series FTW design is flawed?