In the past few days there have been reports of several crashes/CTDs, and random black screen issues while Gaming, with factory-overclocked custom NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. The issues were reported on several tech forums and also social media platforms. Users have been experiencing severe crashes during Gaming sessions. According to posts made on various Forums, the card seems to crash to the desktop while gaming, which is commonly referred to as CTD. Some users have also reported black screen issues as well, where the GPU driver simply bugs out. Many users claimed that the crash occurs when the GPU tries to exceed a boost clock value of 2.0 GHz. The problem was widespread. On September 25^th igor's LAB published the first analysis of the problem, suggesting that the capacitors/CAPs used in the GPU are the main culprit. The capacitors can be seen at the back of the GPU, since most of these cards don't have a backplate. The reference board PG132 design was used as base design by AIB partners to architecture their custom cards. But the issue here is that apparently NVIDIA's BOM/ bill of materials left an open choice in terms of power cleanup and regulation in the mounted capacitors. The Base Design actually features six mandatory capacitors for filtering high frequencies on the GPU voltage rails, NVVDD and MSVDD. There are a number of choices for capacitors to be installed here, with varying levels of capability. The better the filtering the less likely the GPU is to encounter any crash or instability issue at high GPU clock frequencies, including factory-overclocking. The point that Igor makes about improper power design causing instability is a very plausible one. Especially with first production runs where it indeed could be the case that they did not have the time/equipment/driver etc to do proper design verification.

An electrical engineer who specializes in PCB design @Mirrormaster85 has posted more info on these capacitors. At this time, NVIDIA has not responded back. But the chaps over at DSOGaming have some statements from some AIBs.

COLORFUL:

The manufacturer was the first to report on a issue unofficially to the press. Review samples that were already sent out, were later recalled.

EVGA:

“Recently there has been some discussion about the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 series.

During our mass production QC testing we discovered a full 6 POSCAPs solution cannot pass the real world applications testing. It took almost a week of R&D effort to find the cause and reduce the POSCAPs to 4 and add 20 MLCC caps prior to shipping production boards, this is why the EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 series was delayed at launch. There were no 6 POSCAP production EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 boards shipped.

But, due to the time crunch, some of the reviewers were sent a pre-production version with 6 POSCAP's, we are working with those reviewers directly to replace their boards with production versions.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 series with 5 POSCAPs + 10 MLCC solution is matched with the XC3 spec without issues. Also note that we have updated the product pictures at EVGA.com to reflect the production components that shipped to gamers and enthusiasts since day 1 of product launch. Once you receive the card you can compare for yourself, EVGA stands behind its products! — Jacob Freeman, EVGA Forums.”

ASUS:

ASUS has changed the design in pre-production. No official statement was made.

MSI:

MSI acknowledged the issue during the MSI Insider Livestream, suggested it could be a driver issue.

ZOTAC:

Igor'sLAB reports that PC Partner, Zotac's mother company, seems to have recognized this and is obviously changing its cards.

GIGABYTE, GALAX and other brands:

No official statement, at this time of writing. Check back again for any updates.