User discovers a missing thermal pad in the VRAMs of his Asus RTX 3080 Ti TUF OC
And it's not the first time we hear about stuff like this happening. It's either reported more or getting more common. Kamaloo92, a Reddit member, found that his Asus RTX 3080 Ti TUF OC's GDDR6X VRAMs were missing a thermal pad after observing that the graphics card's graphics were suffering from extreme overheating.
The customer initially ran an extensive entire software review, and after concluding that everything was in working order, he proceeded to dismantle the graphics card in order to check the hardware, where he discovered this unexpected surprise.
My RTX 3080 Ti had a temperature of VRAM very high, usually 110 ° C . So I finally opened it to find that a thermal pad was missing on four VRAM chips.
There are some marks on the heat sink, as if the pad has been in place for a few seconds, but the VRAM chips are clean. So I guess the thermal pad somehow fell off before I put the heatsink on the board .
It worked normally, without any kind of reboots, it only suffered from constant thermal throttling.
Other Reddit users approached him and inquired as to which heating pads he used as a substitute. The habit of replacing thermal pads for improved performance is typical among more experienced users, however this particular replacement was not motivated by performance improvement but rather by necessity. In this regard, kamaloo92 provided the following explanation:
I added the missing pad and replaced the others, just to be safe. I also added additional pads as recommended for the 3080 TUF (not Ti) and the temperatures dropped to a maximum of 80 ° C. So I hope everything works fine.
Just in case, I have used Gelid GP-Extreme. 1.5mm between the heatsink and VRAM, 1.5mm at the end of the video connectors, 3mm between the heatsink and the main heatsink, 3mm at the end of the power connector. I haven't removed the back plate so I don't know what's there. On the GPU I have used Kryonaut.
Another the user obamaprism3 identified a flaw with the thermal pad that should have been covering the VRAM of his RTX 3080 Founders Edition in the same Reddit r / nvidia forum, which was only 7 days ago. This causes the GPU to pull up and not establish appropriate contact with the GPU, resulting in overheating of the graphics card's graphics.
These are only a few of the numerous incidents that have come to light in recent months in which manufacturing faults or foreign objects have been discovered in various pieces of gear. The pandemic, it is claimed, may have resulted in several issues, including overworked assembly-line workers and a workforce without the appropriate experience, which may have been hired to make up for the shortage of workers. In addition to determining the root cause of these issues, it is critical to monitor the temperatures of our gear in order to avoid similar difficulties in the future.
Senior Member
Posts: 5537
Joined: 2007-05-05
There have always been single incidents in QC like this, nothing new really, just catches more attention these days caused by widespread social media outlets.
Seen some and experienced a couple of these Monday incidents myself, it is what it is.
Worst thing I have seen is a friend getting 4 stick of quality RAM, 2 of the sticks came with completely loose chips, they simply fell off when he opened the package, that was around 10 years ago.
Single and very few incidents is still nothing one should be afraid of, it's when there is a rise in reports of failures with a given product that things start to be serious.
Senior Member
Posts: 1320
Joined: 2003-07-02
Welp. Don't expect card prices to move if isolated incidents that DO happen to any company, happen. This will only ramp up more QA costs when nothing really needs to be changed here, except a single card.
Senior Member
Posts: 965
Joined: 2015-11-21
guys don't forget we didn't have the tools (I don't think so) for that, nobody really cared about or knew the memory temps before apps gave us that number and the gpu hotspot
that's definitely why people notice this more, we can see our ram temps now
reasony why I ditched my alphacool 3090 water block and went ek+backplate on the 3090 (a special case but still)
Senior Member
Posts: 372
Joined: 2001-09-09
So essentially... you pay a premium to purchase an improperly assembled item.
You then have to take it apart to figure out that thermal pads were left out.
In so doing, you possibly void the warranty.
Nice!