Originally posted by: Mr Fox
Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Originally posted by: Mr Fox
Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
The thing is that most of the "overheating" issues are related to the GPU itself, not because of issues such as the HSF being loose (this is one of those rare freak accidents each happens to almost all products). People with overheating cards tried re-sitting the HSF, using a better thermal adhesive and other various methods to stop their cards from overheating. Obviously these attempts were futile at best and they had to RMA their cards anyway.
My theory is that its a manufacturing problem (TSMC) and maybe a design problem (nVIDIA). However given the fact that working cards do work wonderfully well, the latter seems unlikely. Since nVIDIA is a fabless company afterall, i cant see how they can be blamed for poor packaging/manufacturing of their products although its rather funny how TSMC/UMC have been awfully quiet in recent times.
It would be nice if some of investigation took place, such as which partners are affected, what the issue really is etc etc. It seems like BFG/EVGA are the major partners to be affected by this. (and other partners seems unaffected by this so it could have been a bad batch from the initial wave of G200 cores for example).
edit - Seems to affect the GTX280 the most compared to the GTX260.
All nV Cards are built on Foxconn Assembly lines in Taiwan, and PRC (Shenzhen). The cards are built to nV BOM, and then packaged, and shipped to the partners.
EVGA, and BFG are the more dominant brands, the more exposure in the field (Sales) the more you will see the issue.
I'll make an attempt to find someone that has pulled one apart...
Does Foxconn build to exact BOM products? Or Values?
Example: Foxconn needs to purchase 50000 mosfets/capacitors/resistors whatever
that have certain values in their function. ohms resistance value, charge value, etc.
Does Nvidia explicity say which vendor to purchase from? Or is that left up to Foxconn to find parts with these exact values, no matter who manufactures them? Or are they restricted to purchasing mosfet X from company Y? And even then, what kind of QC does the mosfet company have? There are hundreds of parts that go into making these cards, so it could very well take some time to track down any problems with various parts, or even combinations of these parts. We'll eventually know what is going on.
Foxconn builds per reference BOM, that is supplied from nV Product Engineering...
Still doesn't tell us if Foxconn buys from specified parts manufacturers. Foxconn could very well be buying equal "value" (not monetary value, but specification value) parts from a broad spectrum of manufacturers. Foxconn may be following the BOM values, but might not be purchasing from the same manufacturer every time. They could even be buying the same part (e.g. capacitors) from multiple manufacturers even though they have the same "technical value". Different brand, same value or purpose.
I have seen Two Posts that this seems to be the case, yes...
From whom?
where the guys power consumption went from 350 to like 550 watts...
This again points to power regulation, to me anyway.
Something like that can be drivers, or hardware also,
there were a few posts in the NZone, and nVNews trying to help trouble shoot.
As you can probably tell by now, this can get pretty complicated and almost impossible to single out any specific entity to blame for it. It will take time to find out what exactly is going on. I can see a poor cooler contact a cause for overheating, but according to these users, they are reporting super hot cooler enclosures telling me that the cooler IS making good contact with the core and other respective parts that need cooling. If the cooler was NOT making good contact, I don't think the cooler would be so hot to the touch.
The ones that I was talking about were the ones over at Xtreme, and the one guy found an airgap in the Thermal Material between the Copper Contact Pad, and The GPU, and two or three that had loose Screws that when tightened fixed the issue.. Unfortunately no pictures..
While I could see a poorly seated cooler can be tightened to improve cooler to card contact, I don't see how anyone can say they found an "airgap" without physically removing the cooler from the core, all the while the actual "act" of removing the cooler from the card can cause the thermal compound to "appear" like it had an airgap. I'm not saying that it isn't possible, but I am saying that it is not very conclusive.
). You implied with your post that the thread is about sensationalism (and THIS thread certainly wasn't if you actually read through the posted links) and shouldn't have been posted...but I think it should so I responded.
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