Back in July, HEXUS reported upon the great success of Amazon’s New World beta, but also on an unusual teething problem for PC gamers enjoying testing out this upcoming MMO. New World was programmed such that when a user entered the game menus the frame-rate was unlocked and this caused GPUs in some PC configurations to go crazy, running at full-pelt with max fans, coils whining, and so on.
Putting it bluntly, New World broke a number of GPUs that didn’t have sensible frame rate limiting settings in place. Amazon fixed the issue quite quickly with a UI frame limiting game patch, without admitting responsibility. Meanwhile, it seemed like EVGA caught most of the flak on the hardware side – reports proliferated highlighting EVGA branded graphics cards were most severely affected, especially the top-end GeForce RTX 3090 models. EVGA did the right thing and set up an RMA process, allowing users to select ‘New World’ as the reason for dead video card swap-out, and it even sent out new GPUs to affected customers before bothering to receive the dead ones.
It is several weeks later, with the dust settled, and PCWorld has heard from EVGA about its analysis of the graphics cards problems caused / exposed by Amazon’s New World. A spokesman told the magazine that the only GPU in its stables to be affected by the bricking issues were GeForce RTX 3090 cards. Apparently, only “about two dozen” GPUs were affected, and they were all early production models from 2020.
EVGA admits that the failure of some of its products was due to a “rare soldering issue,” limited to the aforementioned early batch of RTX 3090s. More specifically, an X-ray PCB analysis of failed products revealed “poor workmanship” on soldering around the card’s MOSFET circuits. Elsewhere in the statement garnered by PC World, EVGA asserted that there was no fault present in its cooling system (or the fan controller, which was put under suspicion by Igor’s Lab). EVGA has subsequently provided patches to its users to update its fan controller software, but this is for sensor monitor tool reporting errors, not for fan operation errors.
Last but not least, EVGA recommends customer download the latest EVGA Precision X1 accessory software which will determine if your GPU needs any updates, such as this fan microcontroller update.