Many shops have claimed that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 tends to crash when overclocked to 2. GHz or past, as we described previously this 7 days. The culprit may perhaps be lower-top quality elements employed in RTX 3080 playing cards designed by AIB (insert-in board) partners.
This information arrives from Igor’s Lab, which located that some variations of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 use lower-good quality capacitors on the PCB of the card, ensuing in very low-high-quality energy shipping and delivery. Igor’s Lab identified that some AIB RTX 3080 playing cards (in particular the Zotac Trinity) use POSCAPS (Conductive Polymer Tantalum Reliable Capacitors) as an alternative of the additional costly and usually improved MLCCs (Multilayer Ceramic Chip Capacitors).
The RTX 3080’s reference board layout lets for either flavor of capacitor, but POSCAPs are unable to produce cleanse electric power to the GPU as well as MLCCs can.
Comparing Zotac’s board design versus Nvidia’s personal Founder’s Version (FE) variant, the Zotac card employs 6 POSCAPs when the FE card uses 4 POSCAPs and two MLCC clusters. As a outcome, Igor’s Lab stories that the Zotac card crashes when overclocked to two.01 GHz, whilst the FE can overclock “very evidently past two GHz.”
Other AIB RTX 3080s appeared in the report, such as MSI’s Gaming X Trio, which uses 5 POSCAPs and just one MLCC, and the Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080, which uses only MLCCs in all six spots. (This may well clarify why Asus’ RTX 3080s have done properly.)
While OEMs and Nvidia have been mum on the problem, EVGA notified its forum end users that it encountered issues when making use of six POSCAPs in their design and style. Some of these 6 POSCAP cards ended up with reviewers, but EVGA revamped the board format to use 4 POSCAPs and two MLCC clusters, which brought about a retail hold off.
Whilst this really should continue to be regarded as a rumor till Nvidia or yet another OEM confirms that capacitor excellent is the purpose powering the overclock crashes, it’s a thing to hold an eye on. If you’re thinking of acquiring an RTX 3080, it’s value a swift look to see what variety of capacitors it employs just before finalizing the acquire.