The Life Expectancy of VRMs: Understanding the Risks and Consequences

When it comes to building high-performance computers, one of the most critical components is the power supply unit (PSU). Specifically, the voltage regulator module (VRM) plays a crucial role in regulating the voltage supplied to the CPU. However, like any other component, VRMs are not immune to failure. In this article, we will explore the risks and consequences associated with VRM failures and what it means for your system's reliability.

A Faulty Capacitor: The Common Cause of VRM Failure

One of the most common causes of VRM failure is a faulty capacitor. Capacitors are used to filter out unwanted frequencies in the power supply, but over time, they can degrade or fail. When a capacitor fails, it can cause the VRM to malfunction, leading to a range of problems, including overheating, overvoltage, and even catastrophic failure. According to Tom's Hardware, thermal images taken from thermal cameras have shown that capacitors in failing VRMs become significantly warmer than other components on the PCB.

The Consequences of VRM Failure

When a VRM fails, it can have severe consequences for your system. One of the most immediate effects is overheating, which can cause damage to surrounding components or even lead to a fire. In addition, a failed VRM can also lead to overvoltage, which can damage other components and compromise the stability of the system. Furthermore, if the failure goes undetected for an extended period, it can lead to catastrophic failure, resulting in data loss or system crashes.

The Role of Capacitors in VRM Failure

Capacitors play a critical role in VRM failure, as they are responsible for filtering out unwanted frequencies and regulating voltage. However, capacitors are not perfect and can degrade over time, leading to increased resistance and decreased performance. When a capacitor fails, it can cause the VRM to malfunction, leading to a range of problems.

The Importance of Thermal Monitoring

Thermal monitoring is critical in detecting VRM failure early on. By using thermal cameras or other thermal imaging tools, system builders and enthusiasts can identify potential issues before they become major problems. This can help prevent overheating and overvoltage, which are common causes of VRM failure.

What to Do If Your VRM Fails

If your VRM fails, there are several steps you can take to mitigate the damage. First, turn off your system immediately to prevent further damage or instability. Next, remove the screws that hold the heat sink in place and inspect the VRM for any signs of damage or degradation. If the failure is caused by a faulty capacitor, it may be possible to repair or replace the component. However, if the failure is more extensive, it may be necessary to replace the entire PSU.

How to Identify VRM Failure

Identifying VRM failure can be challenging, as the symptoms may not be immediately apparent. However, there are several signs that can indicate a failed VRM, including:

* Overheating: A failing VRM can cause the system to overheat, leading to damage or instability.

* Overvoltage: A failed VRM can also lead to overvoltage, which can damage other components and compromise system stability.

* System crashes: In severe cases, a failed VRM can cause system crashes or data loss.

What to Do with a Failed VRM

If your VRM fails, there are several options for dealing with the situation. One option is to replace the component with a new one from the manufacturer. However, this may not always be possible, especially if the failure is caused by a faulty capacitor. In such cases, it may be necessary to replace the entire PSU.

The Importance of VRM Testing

VRM testing is critical in ensuring that your system's power supply unit is functioning correctly. By testing the VRM regularly, you can identify potential issues before they become major problems. This can help prevent overheating and overvoltage, which are common causes of VRM failure.

Conclusion

In conclusion, VRMs play a critical role in regulating voltage supplied to the CPU, but like any other component, they are not immune to failure. A faulty capacitor is one of the most common causes of VRM failure, leading to overheating, overvoltage, and even catastrophic failure. By understanding the risks and consequences associated with VRM failure, system builders and enthusiasts can take steps to prevent or mitigate damage. Regular thermal monitoring, testing, and maintenance can help identify potential issues before they become major problems.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI'm going to say it's the capacitors they have a bad batch of cap like cuz the one consistent thing that's like starting to show up is you have Scorch marks coming like this latest one it comes right off of like you have The Scorch Mark coming right off the capacitor right there was a really early one where somebody had a blown out capacitor just like capacitor completely fried in pieces um that was like the first report and there I was like oh no that's that's just a manufacturing defect that's not a thermal issue right um so this most recent one as well is just like the capacitor well it's not blown to bits but you can see that the solder on one side of it just like got shot right off so that one's another like that's a capacitor failure um and basically all of the other ones are like varyingly more severe capacitor failures could cause those exact types of damage and then along with the fact that EVGA is claiming that oh there isn't a thermal issue that would line up with why there isn't a thermal issue you have a bad batch of capacitors so I'm thinking it's like cuz I read through the like the capacitor failure stuff which I gave you a link to and basically all of it's going to lead to pretty much short short circuit explosion sort of scenarios where the capacitor will be damaged um partially over time it'll get worse at some point it's going to short Happ and it's going to blow up and since this isn't really temperature bound um that explains why it blows up at idle why it blows up without the capacitor actually being like properly powered or anything you know the one where it blows up from the pcie slot right at start up um it it like especially considering that the thermals even without the thermal pads for most people won't be that bad right considering like the temperatures you showed me from the testing it it's like that's normal for a vrm 100 De here 100 De there is fine it's just like so I I don't see so it's basically I'm like I'm almost certain that EVGA just has a bad batch of capacitors on some of the cards hopefully not all of them that that would be a disaster but um I think they probably just have a bad batch of capacitors and they're just going up in flames and now it's really up to Eva to just State probably that that's the case and confirm it or just prove it because they obviously don't have a thermal issue with the mosset because yeah and we should we talk about that too because um in the testing I was doing you the hottest these things that I hottest I could get them was a really worst case scenario dumping CPU radiator heat with prime 95 running straight into the vrm fan like 3 inches away uh so ambient like 40ish 41 as far as the vrm is concerned turned or the the GPU and uh we're hitting like with overclocking with overvolting with the old V bios and with no thermal pads 126 Celsius on the back plate and then about 100 on mosfets number seven and number two which we've seen are the hot spots so and Seven's actually running hotter than the number two so number two is the one at the bottom seven is like the middle one yeah and we've a bunch of them where it blows up on the bottom one yeah yeah no cuz the power N I was just wondering about the the pcie slot failure if the wiring was lining up with that right but no it isn't so then the I think the thing to point out is uh for folks is you know I think a lot of people see basically be prepared that some cards are going to blow up right it's just what's going to happen hopefully it won't be too many of them and yeah and it won't be because thermals as far as we can tell uh so yes I mean I think I think thermals will like cause the issue to show up faster yeah but they won't like they'll cause the de like they'll cause the downward spiral of the capacitor to speed up a little bit but it's not like it's going to prevent it if you get the thermal pads or something it's just going to blow up anyway right so yeah yeah uh so I think the uh one thing to point out though is that people I think see this 100 Celsius or 105 Celsius or whatever on the vrm and just immediately think holy crap that's really hot but these aren't it's not the same as like a GPU or a CPU where 100 Celsius is TJ Maxx or greater than TJ Maxx and you have a thermal shut down yeah no no no uh TJ Maxx for mosfets is 150 right but that's like standard industry standard is 150 TJ Maxx and so the casing I mean really highend stuff is rated at 125 like they're rated to work at 125 there's mosfets actually if I look at say a um I have a 68 yeah a 6894 which like is really popular on AMD cards that has a temperature rating which assumes okay this is a fun one uh ambient temperature 70° no airf flow no air flow except for the convection of the mosfet itself no heat sink nothing 70° ambient and yeah I mean the rating is crap but it's a rating right they tell you yeah you can run it at that just don't overload it yeah so so really like it's it's a case of yeah you can run vrms really really hot because the problem is like it's a combination of the current and the temperature because uh the heat output of a vrm grows as it gets warmer right so its efficiency decreases and basically at some point you're going to end up and the the efficiency is basically bound to the thermal Junction temperature so that's the internal of the MOs fat so the external temperature just sort of like cuz the way h i I'm make GNA be making a video about how vrms fail sometime soon so I might as well get over this so in a in a mosset you have your silicon well it's not necessarily silicon but you have a semiconductor which is the actual switching component and then you have all of the casing around it which is the wiring hook up to the Silicon the ceramic that basically covers it and protects it from damage uh and all of that and you basically have a temperature rating where the the current specs for the mosfet are basically set up that if your case of the mosfet is at 100° and you put this much power through it the mosfet is going to put out x amount of heat which will lead to the internals to be at 150 which is perfectly safe and that's a good current rating and if you exceed that 150 rating and continue 150 degree um Junction temperature then the problem is that your resistance of the mosfet is going to go up the power dissipation because of that is going to go up as well that's going to further increase internal temperatures and basically you get a thermal runaway scenario where the extra heating is causing higher resistance which causes extra heating which eventually leads to it getting so hot that it blows itself to bits and actually that's a thing because it causes a decrease in efficiency that's actually if you've ever seen power supply reviews from Johnny Guru where he does some of the ones that blow up actually right he always notes that you see a massive drop in efficiency and then it just the efficiency starts falling falling falling and then the power supply eventually explodes the same happens to the RMS you basically see that your efficiency falls off a cliff because the internals are overheating and that's basically yeah I actually said that that the best way to figure out if vm's about to fail is to monitor the efficiency if it suddenly starts going downhill turn it off right so yeah so yeah that's basically sort of the scenario for actually getting the vrm to blow up is that it's going to just overheat itself really really quickly at some point right um I think the question then is now that we've done the thermal testing shown obviously thermal pads and the V bios are beneficial and if you own one of these cards there's really no reason not to at least do the V bios and the only reason to not do the thermal pads is because of like fear that you're going to damage it or laziness uh or maybe you're not in a country they ship to um yeah so definitely do those but with thermals not really being a source of concern the question I think becomes if I own one of these cards should I be worried about damage you know we've seen two other components right yeah at this point like we can't actually say the cards will or won't fail because it seems to be just a manufacturing defect and it's going to be random on how many cards it shows up I yeah so it's really up to EV good to figure out what batch of cards they have that got screwed up right and then basically say yeah this set of serial numbers is bad right need to go they recall it or something yeah and hopefully they'll figure that out sometime soon make a statement about it but because I I mean yeah it's not thermals at this point so they're right about claiming that The Thermals are fine cuz they are um yeah and then as for damaging other components if you have a bad power supply and you get a short circuit on a capacitor going bad that power supply is probably going to go with it and I mean I've had uh I actually had like a you know not a great power supply but like a decent unit where it didn't kill anything else except itself but it was like 12 volts short circuit power supply dies so I would be sort of yeah basically just make sure you have a good power supply if you have an FTW but I'd hope most people have that anyway it's expensive enough where they should in general yeah yeah uh motherboard what should we be concerned about those um I mean there's been a few like there's been a few like I think there was one case where he said he had Scorch marks that like reached all the way to the motherboard but I think that's going to be superficial just bits of the card just ending up you know on the motherboard not actual apparently somebody had one where it cascaded where the power supply went out and the motherboard died with it basically everything in the computer got toasted but that's again the power supply failed because the power supply is supposed to stop that that's the whole point like if you're if you have a short circuit in the system the power supply should detect that uh and shut down which would protect all your components if it doesn't shut down fast enough then the issue is that the regulation the power supply is going to go out of spec and it's going to just well it's going to basically do what the GPU does to the rest of the system right which sucks very badly but you know um so I think I think the uh sort of conclusion here thermals largely were uh not a red herring because they it was an oversight to not have thermal pads on there and run the fan speed that they did like those the temperatures seem okay but they could be better and it was with not much effort they could definitely get better temperatures um but that wasn't the heart of the issue the heart of the issue seems like it's it's something that we can't necessarily figure out uh at least not easily and it's uh probably I would think at this point a manufacturing defect of some kind yeah and that's there's nothing it might not even be a manufacturing defect from epa's side if my capacitor suspicion is correct so yeah yeah yeah so I guess if you have one of these cards I don't really know what to what to suggest don't like I would just say Don't run it when you're not in the same room as the computer because that just like that just exasperate like if that fails and you have a terrible power supply like the nightmare scenario let's think okay you have some horrific 500 watt power supply which will power an FTW just fine you have an FTW which has the defect that's causing the vrm to blow up the vrm blows up you get a short circuit power supply goes out and i' have heard of power supplies where they go out and they melt their own casing because of how terrible they are it's just like they burn themselves out worst case scenario is going to Buren your house down so just don't run it when you're not near it so that you can catch it right cuz like yeah but that's not this isn't like the most common is like I have no IDE like I've heard very few cases of this happening like power suppli is failing this badly right and even then it's like really really rare and like it's not like cheap power supply we are talking garbage absolute garbage like this is below the worst Power like this is the it's not even like Diablo Tech levels of bad right Diablo Tech is considered a terrible power supply company these are companies that take power supply where it's like you know the the design is barely capable of half the power they rate it for you know it never saw a testing scenario they cost like 20 bucks right you know like they don't even necessarily have pcie connectors because they're that outdated for most people though I don't think this is really it's like basically if if your card goes contact EVGA get a replacement or refund and buy something else uh and if you haven't done th pad or B bios mods you might as well do them because it is better and who knows maybe it prolongs the life of the device but a little bit yeah yeah for all we know if you have a defective card if you have a defective card I'm pretty sure it'll just fail anyway so yeah you're not going to you're probably not going to have warning signs like one of the ones we saw just failed on Windows desktop allegedly according to the user I mean I'll I actually think that if it is the capacitors I'll like that then it's totally reasonable because those things like once they short like they basically the defects are all basically there's a crack or some kind of other failure in the capacitor which causes it to slowly get higher and higher like more and more short circuited until eventually it reses that like because capacitors aren't perfect like insulators right they leak a little bit of current and basically if they're bad then they'll leak more and more current until eventually the amount of current they're leak that's leaking through them actually just completely shorts out the capacitor and then it blows up so you can get that happening basically as long as the card is running that can happen essentially I mean we have thermal images from the thermal images from the Tom's Hardware and everything and you can actually see the capacitors because they're colder than everything else on the back of card so they have a fine like their card is obviously fine because like yes if you had a thermal camera pointed at the PCB as it's about to die you would see the capacitor be significantly warmer than everything else and then it would get basically once it thermal runaways you'd see it Spike really quickly yeah it would go from something like I think once it shorts it's going to because we've heard people basically get flashes of white light and I did tell you that to get a red glow you need 525 to get a flash of white light Celsius fortification yeah yeah you're going to need like couple thousand degrees which do like it's basically going to Arc weld itself at that point cuz you 12 volts shorted straight to ground at that point right through a tiny little SMD component that's not meant to handle that kind of like it has no chance of dissipating that that much energy in such a short period of time which is why it's so dramatic when it's a relatively meh like failure in terms of like grandio like how bad it is yeah yeah how uh theatrical it is yeah like the amount of like the amount of drama you get for a very simple failure is rather high with capacitors failing because they basically short out and yeah that's why actually you have so much like the The Scorch marks and such significant PCB damage because they basically get easily to the melting point of copper right so once you get a short circuit with that much power available because also you have the delay before the power supply notices that it's pushing too much current then the ocp kicks and yeah basically that's that's plenty of power TOA kind of drama that you see every I will say it's worth kind of noting if anyone does have a card that fails uh send us a photo you can tweet it at us Gamers Nexus or do you have a Twitter account or what's the best way for people to send you one uh I don't have a Twitter account so post it in your comments maybe a video that you post yeah yeah yeah actually I have a the YouTube discussion section I that so they can just post it there as well um and I do want uh back and front side yes because depending like just seeing the back you see damage but you know you don't know yeah because if one side gets really really hot then it'll transfer through to the other side anyway um yeah so if it's send us photos if you if both sides send us photos both side it's really easy you take out four screws to get the heat sink off that exposes the front side and then you take out the back plate screws and that'll take the base plate and the back plate off and the PCB is bare and at this point you shouldn't be worried about damaging it anyway cuz it's not recoverable yeah so there's no reason to be afraid to take it apart uh and then send it back to EJ in a box I guess throw all the parts in a box um but that will help us catalog things and see if there's any any Trend but uh yeah I guess that's that about Recaps the issue so um yeah yeah yeah thank you for joining me build Zoid from actually hardcore overclocking he has a YouTube channel search for actually hardcore overclocking pretty cool stuff uh and I guess it sounds like you've got a couple vrm videos in the future anyway y most of them are vrm videos so but yeah so if you want to learn more about this stuff go thereI'm going to say it's the capacitors they have a bad batch of cap like cuz the one consistent thing that's like starting to show up is you have Scorch marks coming like this latest one it comes right off of like you have The Scorch Mark coming right off the capacitor right there was a really early one where somebody had a blown out capacitor just like capacitor completely fried in pieces um that was like the first report and there I was like oh no that's that's just a manufacturing defect that's not a thermal issue right um so this most recent one as well is just like the capacitor well it's not blown to bits but you can see that the solder on one side of it just like got shot right off so that one's another like that's a capacitor failure um and basically all of the other ones are like varyingly more severe capacitor failures could cause those exact types of damage and then along with the fact that EVGA is claiming that oh there isn't a thermal issue that would line up with why there isn't a thermal issue you have a bad batch of capacitors so I'm thinking it's like cuz I read through the like the capacitor failure stuff which I gave you a link to and basically all of it's going to lead to pretty much short short circuit explosion sort of scenarios where the capacitor will be damaged um partially over time it'll get worse at some point it's going to short Happ and it's going to blow up and since this isn't really temperature bound um that explains why it blows up at idle why it blows up without the capacitor actually being like properly powered or anything you know the one where it blows up from the pcie slot right at start up um it it like especially considering that the thermals even without the thermal pads for most people won't be that bad right considering like the temperatures you showed me from the testing it it's like that's normal for a vrm 100 De here 100 De there is fine it's just like so I I don't see so it's basically I'm like I'm almost certain that EVGA just has a bad batch of capacitors on some of the cards hopefully not all of them that that would be a disaster but um I think they probably just have a bad batch of capacitors and they're just going up in flames and now it's really up to Eva to just State probably that that's the case and confirm it or just prove it because they obviously don't have a thermal issue with the mosset because yeah and we should we talk about that too because um in the testing I was doing you the hottest these things that I hottest I could get them was a really worst case scenario dumping CPU radiator heat with prime 95 running straight into the vrm fan like 3 inches away uh so ambient like 40ish 41 as far as the vrm is concerned turned or the the GPU and uh we're hitting like with overclocking with overvolting with the old V bios and with no thermal pads 126 Celsius on the back plate and then about 100 on mosfets number seven and number two which we've seen are the hot spots so and Seven's actually running hotter than the number two so number two is the one at the bottom seven is like the middle one yeah and we've a bunch of them where it blows up on the bottom one yeah yeah no cuz the power N I was just wondering about the the pcie slot failure if the wiring was lining up with that right but no it isn't so then the I think the thing to point out is uh for folks is you know I think a lot of people see basically be prepared that some cards are going to blow up right it's just what's going to happen hopefully it won't be too many of them and yeah and it won't be because thermals as far as we can tell uh so yes I mean I think I think thermals will like cause the issue to show up faster yeah but they won't like they'll cause the de like they'll cause the downward spiral of the capacitor to speed up a little bit but it's not like it's going to prevent it if you get the thermal pads or something it's just going to blow up anyway right so yeah yeah uh so I think the uh one thing to point out though is that people I think see this 100 Celsius or 105 Celsius or whatever on the vrm and just immediately think holy crap that's really hot but these aren't it's not the same as like a GPU or a CPU where 100 Celsius is TJ Maxx or greater than TJ Maxx and you have a thermal shut down yeah no no no uh TJ Maxx for mosfets is 150 right but that's like standard industry standard is 150 TJ Maxx and so the casing I mean really highend stuff is rated at 125 like they're rated to work at 125 there's mosfets actually if I look at say a um I have a 68 yeah a 6894 which like is really popular on AMD cards that has a temperature rating which assumes okay this is a fun one uh ambient temperature 70° no airf flow no air flow except for the convection of the mosfet itself no heat sink nothing 70° ambient and yeah I mean the rating is crap but it's a rating right they tell you yeah you can run it at that just don't overload it yeah so so really like it's it's a case of yeah you can run vrms really really hot because the problem is like it's a combination of the current and the temperature because uh the heat output of a vrm grows as it gets warmer right so its efficiency decreases and basically at some point you're going to end up and the the efficiency is basically bound to the thermal Junction temperature so that's the internal of the MOs fat so the external temperature just sort of like cuz the way h i I'm make GNA be making a video about how vrms fail sometime soon so I might as well get over this so in a in a mosset you have your silicon well it's not necessarily silicon but you have a semiconductor which is the actual switching component and then you have all of the casing around it which is the wiring hook up to the Silicon the ceramic that basically covers it and protects it from damage uh and all of that and you basically have a temperature rating where the the current specs for the mosfet are basically set up that if your case of the mosfet is at 100° and you put this much power through it the mosfet is going to put out x amount of heat which will lead to the internals to be at 150 which is perfectly safe and that's a good current rating and if you exceed that 150 rating and continue 150 degree um Junction temperature then the problem is that your resistance of the mosfet is going to go up the power dissipation because of that is going to go up as well that's going to further increase internal temperatures and basically you get a thermal runaway scenario where the extra heating is causing higher resistance which causes extra heating which eventually leads to it getting so hot that it blows itself to bits and actually that's a thing because it causes a decrease in efficiency that's actually if you've ever seen power supply reviews from Johnny Guru where he does some of the ones that blow up actually right he always notes that you see a massive drop in efficiency and then it just the efficiency starts falling falling falling and then the power supply eventually explodes the same happens to the RMS you basically see that your efficiency falls off a cliff because the internals are overheating and that's basically yeah I actually said that that the best way to figure out if vm's about to fail is to monitor the efficiency if it suddenly starts going downhill turn it off right so yeah so yeah that's basically sort of the scenario for actually getting the vrm to blow up is that it's going to just overheat itself really really quickly at some point right um I think the question then is now that we've done the thermal testing shown obviously thermal pads and the V bios are beneficial and if you own one of these cards there's really no reason not to at least do the V bios and the only reason to not do the thermal pads is because of like fear that you're going to damage it or laziness uh or maybe you're not in a country they ship to um yeah so definitely do those but with thermals not really being a source of concern the question I think becomes if I own one of these cards should I be worried about damage you know we've seen two other components right yeah at this point like we can't actually say the cards will or won't fail because it seems to be just a manufacturing defect and it's going to be random on how many cards it shows up I yeah so it's really up to EV good to figure out what batch of cards they have that got screwed up right and then basically say yeah this set of serial numbers is bad right need to go they recall it or something yeah and hopefully they'll figure that out sometime soon make a statement about it but because I I mean yeah it's not thermals at this point so they're right about claiming that The Thermals are fine cuz they are um yeah and then as for damaging other components if you have a bad power supply and you get a short circuit on a capacitor going bad that power supply is probably going to go with it and I mean I've had uh I actually had like a you know not a great power supply but like a decent unit where it didn't kill anything else except itself but it was like 12 volts short circuit power supply dies so I would be sort of yeah basically just make sure you have a good power supply if you have an FTW but I'd hope most people have that anyway it's expensive enough where they should in general yeah yeah uh motherboard what should we be concerned about those um I mean there's been a few like there's been a few like I think there was one case where he said he had Scorch marks that like reached all the way to the motherboard but I think that's going to be superficial just bits of the card just ending up you know on the motherboard not actual apparently somebody had one where it cascaded where the power supply went out and the motherboard died with it basically everything in the computer got toasted but that's again the power supply failed because the power supply is supposed to stop that that's the whole point like if you're if you have a short circuit in the system the power supply should detect that uh and shut down which would protect all your components if it doesn't shut down fast enough then the issue is that the regulation the power supply is going to go out of spec and it's going to just well it's going to basically do what the GPU does to the rest of the system right which sucks very badly but you know um so I think I think the uh sort of conclusion here thermals largely were uh not a red herring because they it was an oversight to not have thermal pads on there and run the fan speed that they did like those the temperatures seem okay but they could be better and it was with not much effort they could definitely get better temperatures um but that wasn't the heart of the issue the heart of the issue seems like it's it's something that we can't necessarily figure out uh at least not easily and it's uh probably I would think at this point a manufacturing defect of some kind yeah and that's there's nothing it might not even be a manufacturing defect from epa's side if my capacitor suspicion is correct so yeah yeah yeah so I guess if you have one of these cards I don't really know what to what to suggest don't like I would just say Don't run it when you're not in the same room as the computer because that just like that just exasperate like if that fails and you have a terrible power supply like the nightmare scenario let's think okay you have some horrific 500 watt power supply which will power an FTW just fine you have an FTW which has the defect that's causing the vrm to blow up the vrm blows up you get a short circuit power supply goes out and i' have heard of power supplies where they go out and they melt their own casing because of how terrible they are it's just like they burn themselves out worst case scenario is going to Buren your house down so just don't run it when you're not near it so that you can catch it right cuz like yeah but that's not this isn't like the most common is like I have no IDE like I've heard very few cases of this happening like power suppli is failing this badly right and even then it's like really really rare and like it's not like cheap power supply we are talking garbage absolute garbage like this is below the worst Power like this is the it's not even like Diablo Tech levels of bad right Diablo Tech is considered a terrible power supply company these are companies that take power supply where it's like you know the the design is barely capable of half the power they rate it for you know it never saw a testing scenario they cost like 20 bucks right you know like they don't even necessarily have pcie connectors because they're that outdated for most people though I don't think this is really it's like basically if if your card goes contact EVGA get a replacement or refund and buy something else uh and if you haven't done th pad or B bios mods you might as well do them because it is better and who knows maybe it prolongs the life of the device but a little bit yeah yeah for all we know if you have a defective card if you have a defective card I'm pretty sure it'll just fail anyway so yeah you're not going to you're probably not going to have warning signs like one of the ones we saw just failed on Windows desktop allegedly according to the user I mean I'll I actually think that if it is the capacitors I'll like that then it's totally reasonable because those things like once they short like they basically the defects are all basically there's a crack or some kind of other failure in the capacitor which causes it to slowly get higher and higher like more and more short circuited until eventually it reses that like because capacitors aren't perfect like insulators right they leak a little bit of current and basically if they're bad then they'll leak more and more current until eventually the amount of current they're leak that's leaking through them actually just completely shorts out the capacitor and then it blows up so you can get that happening basically as long as the card is running that can happen essentially I mean we have thermal images from the thermal images from the Tom's Hardware and everything and you can actually see the capacitors because they're colder than everything else on the back of card so they have a fine like their card is obviously fine because like yes if you had a thermal camera pointed at the PCB as it's about to die you would see the capacitor be significantly warmer than everything else and then it would get basically once it thermal runaways you'd see it Spike really quickly yeah it would go from something like I think once it shorts it's going to because we've heard people basically get flashes of white light and I did tell you that to get a red glow you need 525 to get a flash of white light Celsius fortification yeah yeah you're going to need like couple thousand degrees which do like it's basically going to Arc weld itself at that point cuz you 12 volts shorted straight to ground at that point right through a tiny little SMD component that's not meant to handle that kind of like it has no chance of dissipating that that much energy in such a short period of time which is why it's so dramatic when it's a relatively meh like failure in terms of like grandio like how bad it is yeah yeah how uh theatrical it is yeah like the amount of like the amount of drama you get for a very simple failure is rather high with capacitors failing because they basically short out and yeah that's why actually you have so much like the The Scorch marks and such significant PCB damage because they basically get easily to the melting point of copper right so once you get a short circuit with that much power available because also you have the delay before the power supply notices that it's pushing too much current then the ocp kicks and yeah basically that's that's plenty of power TOA kind of drama that you see every I will say it's worth kind of noting if anyone does have a card that fails uh send us a photo you can tweet it at us Gamers Nexus or do you have a Twitter account or what's the best way for people to send you one uh I don't have a Twitter account so post it in your comments maybe a video that you post yeah yeah yeah actually I have a the YouTube discussion section I that so they can just post it there as well um and I do want uh back and front side yes because depending like just seeing the back you see damage but you know you don't know yeah because if one side gets really really hot then it'll transfer through to the other side anyway um yeah so if it's send us photos if you if both sides send us photos both side it's really easy you take out four screws to get the heat sink off that exposes the front side and then you take out the back plate screws and that'll take the base plate and the back plate off and the PCB is bare and at this point you shouldn't be worried about damaging it anyway cuz it's not recoverable yeah so there's no reason to be afraid to take it apart uh and then send it back to EJ in a box I guess throw all the parts in a box um but that will help us catalog things and see if there's any any Trend but uh yeah I guess that's that about Recaps the issue so um yeah yeah yeah thank you for joining me build Zoid from actually hardcore overclocking he has a YouTube channel search for actually hardcore overclocking pretty cool stuff uh and I guess it sounds like you've got a couple vrm videos in the future anyway y most of them are vrm videos so but yeah so if you want to learn more about this stuff go there\n"