As per a statement from NVIDIA and multiple board partners, the crashes faced by users of the RTX 30 series graphics cards aren’t due to the use of POSCAP capacitors, but due to unstable drivers and firmware. The below statement is from Gigabyte which claims that the vendor has designed its RTX 3080 and 3090 models in accordance with the specifications provided by NVIDIA.
However, this makes you wonder whether NVIDIA gave its partners enough time after sharing the technical details, as it’s a well-known fact that this was a rushed launch. If we do go by what the partners are saying, then the boost curve with GPU Boost 5.0 was too aggressive, resulting in quick bursts in the frequency to 2GHz+. The POSCAP capacitors which are slower to react to changes in voltage couldn’t keep up with this. This is the reason why not all partner cards faced crashes.
- ASUS RTX 3080 GPUs Use the Best Caps, Followed by FE
- EVGA Blames RTX 3080 Crashes on Poor POSCAP Capacitors: Why did EVGA say this if the POSCAPs aren’t to blame?
However, if the second theory is true, that still means that the POSCAPs are partly responsible for the crashing. It implies that either NVIDIA gave incorrect PCB specifications to its partners or they had to kind of guess them as the GPU chips were provided at the last moment. Neither is a cheery thought. Der8auer did a test to confirm this and came to the same conclusion. You can watch that video below:
