Imagine that. You just paid a ton for one new GPU RTX 3090 Founders Edition. Plug in the card, turn it all on and … wait, why does my expensive GPU run at 230 degrees??
Reddit user antonyjeweet they asked the same question. Given that GPUs should not operate above 195 degrees fancestry/90c well, never, they thought there was something wrong with their internal functions.
These kinds of things are pretty weird, but yes. Igor Lab reported earlier this month as a user received an AMD Radeon 6700 XT with all thermal bearings still installed. Thermal pads are basically small pieces of plastic or tape that are supposed to be removed before sending GPUs to users.
And after rolling the dice and disassembling the GPU to replace the thermal pads, antonyjeweet discovered an unpleasant surprise: a finger glove, hidden inside the thermal pads:
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“Now I know why my memory time reached 110c very quickly. They now stay at 86c maximum after 1.5 [hours] of stress tests. Also the core dropped 10c (from 75 to +/- 65c after the stress tests), ”they wrote.
Interestingly, Nvidia initially followed the procedure. They refused to comply with the card warranty because antonyjeweet had disassembled the GPU, which is pretty standard. However, after discovering that someone from the Founders Edition assembly line had left the little plastic surprise behind, they have agreed to help antonyjeweet if they want to.
“Nvidia told me at the beginning that I lost the warranty. But after seeing this, they said we will give you a guarantee (which you will get by mail). Without exchange or anything. If it works well, save it, if not, contact us and we will fix it, “wrote the user based in the Netherlands.
If you’re wondering how something like this happens, the real answer is that there is one global shortage of chips. Usually, customers don’t care too much about how and why, just that they get the supply of their new flash consoles, CPUs, GPUs and everything else as soon as possible. This pressure and crushing demand often produce paralyzing conditions for those working on the factory floor. A factory in Vietnam that is part of the supply chain of Samsung and Apple has about 150,000 workers live in the factory full time, while another major Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer forced some migrants to return to shared accommodation despite the intensity of the COVID wave of this country.
In the positive case, everything worked fine in this case. But it reminds everyone that luxury consumer technology will not always work as advertised. If you want to leave thousands of them to track rays in real time and all the bells and whistles in 4K, you can also spend a little more time making sure it works properly.
This story originally appeared on Kotaku Australia.