EVGA: RTX 3090 cards broke while playing Amazon game due to soldering error

The EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards that burned out while playing Amazon’s mmo New World broke down due to a solder flaw in the graphics card’s mosfets. That is what EVGA says after research. It would be a small part of all RTX 3090 cards from EVGA.

EVGA tells PCWorld that it has analyzed defective graphics cards with X-rays, which would show that the mosfets are soldered defectively. This would have caused the cards to burn out and stop working. The company says it would be a rare problem that would account for “far less than one percent” of all cards produced. EVGA previously said it would be thirty cards.

The error came to light when playing the beta version of the New World game. In certain situations, such as while logging in, in the queue and in the main menu, there was no frame limiter, which put a maximum load on the gpu. After Amazon set a frame limiter, the problem has not recurred.

EVGA also discusses the theory that the GPU’s fan controller would play a role, coming from the German Igor’s Lab. Tools like HWInfo and GPU-Z would show that the fan controller would not react enough to New World’s fluctuating loads, causing the card to not stay cool enough. However, according to EVGA, this was due to noise on the i2c bus. Such tools can misinterpret that noise as a malfunctioning fan controller. In the meantime, EVGA has released a microcontroller update that should fix this problem.

A close-up of the PCB of a faulty RTX 3090. Source: GremaxLP/ElmorLabs Discord