Nvidia Confirms RTX 2080 Ti Problem — The Same Day One Bursts Into Flames

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Here’s what an Nvidia employee quietly posted on the official GeForce forums yesterday:

Limited test escapes from early boards caused the issues some customers have experienced with RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition. We stand ready to help any customers who are experiencing problems. Please visit www.nvidia.com/support to chat live with the NVIDIA tech support team (or to send us an email) and we’ll take care of it.

What are "test escapes?" That’s a gentle way saying that the underlying cause for "the issues" made it past quality control and into the hands of consumers. Potentially faulty resistors, capacitors or other components of a PCB. Test escapes can occur because of both hardware and human error.

And while it’s appreciated that Nvidia is finally acknowledging the problem, the admission lacks any level of detail. What percentage of RTX 2080 Ti shipments do they estimate are faulty? If they’ve identified the test escapes, can they be pinned down to a certain batch? What is the faulty component? Should users avoid overclocking? Should gamers feel confident buying any currently available RTX 2080 Tis?

I have sent all of these questions to Nvidia PR and hope for a quick response.

As ExtremeTech reports, several forum users are speculating the problem may be tied to Micron’s GDDR6 memory, mainly because the replacements they’ve received from Nvidia after the RMA process shows the Micron memory swapped out for Samsung. But that is, of course, speculation.

Which is what happens in the absence of facts.

Further testing from HardOCP’s Kyle Bennett — who himself had one of his RTX 2080 Ti cards die after only two hours — tested the card on an open-air test bench and after only 45 seconds of running the Heaven benchmark, measured his backplate to be a scalding 138F. This was at stock settings with an ambient temperature of 68F.

At the time Bennett joked about his card catching fire. Then someone’s RTX 2080 Ti actually caught fire.

Of his now retired EVGA 2080 Ti XC, "shansoft" writes: "I was just doing some web browsing, wasn’t even doing anything else at the time. Everything in its stock form, never even opened it before. Suddenly, the PC just turned off itself. I was wondering what went wrong by looking into the side panel, then suddenly graphic card starts to shoot flame at the edge of PCB.

Here’s the aftermath:

Look, this is definitely an edge case. But there are simply too many reports coming in from RTX 2080 Ti owners about various problems, all of which seem to require an RMA procedure and repair or replacement. Curiously, HardOCP also reports that its sources in China are seeing AIBs (the companies like EVGA and ASUS who make custom versions of graphics cards) complaining about lack of 2080 Ti GPU stock from Nvidia.

Nvidia needs to get in front of this to put existing and future customers at ease. I’ve reached out to Nvidia PR for any official response or clarification. In the meantime, please don’t build your RTX 2080 Ti system inside a wood case, or near anything flammable. . .

“>

I recently covered a suspiciously high number of reports from Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti owners complaining that their new graphics cards were causing blue screens of death, exhibiting ugly artifacting or straight up dying. Well, there’s a new development in this story. Nvidia just admitted the RTX 2080 Ti does indeed have a problem. In a case of tragically hilarious timing, this occurred on the same day one gamer’s card literally burst into flames.

Here’s what an Nvidia employee quietly posted on the official GeForce forums yesterday:

Limited test escapes from early boards caused the issues some customers have experienced with RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition. We stand ready to help any customers who are experiencing problems. Please visit www.nvidia.com/support to chat live with the NVIDIA tech support team (or to send us an email) and we’ll take care of it.

What are “test escapes?” That’s a gentle way saying that the underlying cause for “the issues” made it past quality control and into the hands of consumers. Potentially faulty resistors, capacitors or other components of a PCB. Test escapes can occur because of both hardware and human error.

And while it’s appreciated that Nvidia is finally acknowledging the problem, the admission lacks any level of detail. What percentage of RTX 2080 Ti shipments do they estimate are faulty? If they’ve identified the test escapes, can they be pinned down to a certain batch? What is the faulty component? Should users avoid overclocking? Should gamers feel confident buying any currently available RTX 2080 Tis?

I have sent all of these questions to Nvidia PR and hope for a quick response.

As ExtremeTech reports, several forum users are speculating the problem may be tied to Micron’s GDDR6 memory, mainly because the replacements they’ve received from Nvidia after the RMA process shows the Micron memory swapped out for Samsung. But that is, of course, speculation.

Which is what happens in the absence of facts.

Further testing from HardOCP’s Kyle Bennett — who himself had one of his RTX 2080 Ti cards die after only two hours — tested the card on an open-air test bench and after only 45 seconds of running the Heaven benchmark, measured his backplate to be a scalding 138F. This was at stock settings with an ambient temperature of 68F.

At the time Bennett joked about his card catching fire. Then someone’s RTX 2080 Ti actually caught fire.

Of his now retired EVGA 2080 Ti XC, “shansoft” writes: “I was just doing some web browsing, wasn’t even doing anything else at the time. Everything in its stock form, never even opened it before. Suddenly, the PC just turned off itself. I was wondering what went wrong by looking into the side panel, then suddenly graphic card starts to shoot flame at the edge of PCB.

Here’s the aftermath:

Look, this is definitely an edge case. But there are simply too many reports coming in from RTX 2080 Ti owners about various problems, all of which seem to require an RMA procedure and repair or replacement. Curiously, HardOCP also reports that its sources in China are seeing AIBs (the companies like EVGA and ASUS who make custom versions of graphics cards) complaining about lack of 2080 Ti GPU stock from Nvidia.

Nvidia needs to get in front of this to put existing and future customers at ease. I’ve reached out to Nvidia PR for any official response or clarification. In the meantime, please don’t build your RTX 2080 Ti system inside a wood case, or near anything flammable. . .