EVGA Goes Insane with 1080 Ti FTW3 PCB (VRM Analysis)

[@TheWarTube]

They even put a thermal pad on the missing GDDR5X chip, that's the definition of overcompensating...

[@ignasanchezl]

Could you like solder another memory chip flash a Titan X big P bios in?

[@_BangDroid_]

just crank up your soldering blower, ball up the pads, and mount that sucker! Someone should try this!

[@theLuigiFan0007Productions]

Quick get Louis Rossmann to "repair" the missing memory. I heard he loves BGA soldering. d:

[@mocotonio]

gotta cool those solder balls, man

[@stevethea5250]

stamp?

[@michaelrw10]

its really cool seeing someone who clearly knows a little something about electrical engineering and can identify the various components and ICs being used.. and explain what they do. This info is often hard to come by. Very nice work, thanks

[@Simon74]

What a cool Motherboard! Oh wait... It's a GPU.

[@ignasanchezl]

GPU's Motherboard

[@dlou1337]

Motherboards are made of Polychlorinated biphenyl, learn to logic.

[@DanielCardei]

its not a motherboard its a daughterboard

[@ignasanchezl]

Its a board.

[@ignasanchezl]

This is the GPU, its mother is this PCB, and the Aunt is the PC's Motherboard, who also has a son, the CPU.

[@cybercat1531]

Over-engineered you say? :Proceeds to rub money on screen:

[@frighteningspoon]

nice

[@MATTP545]

you need to rub even more money on the screen for it to work says nvidia

[@5ch4cht3l7]

You need to cool your Fan Controllers if you want to overclock them

[@shea3580]

and your fans too

[@Cust0mBuilder]

Water cooled fan controllers incoming...

[@camelCased]

Keeping your head cool is even more important when overclocking. Especially in cases when your GPU goes on fire.

[@KC-bg1th]

They've been around for almost 200 years! In fact, there was much experimenting in the 1830's and in 1836 it was successfully used on the Paddington Canal. Ever since then, the controllers used with them have become much more efficient in reducing energy consumption as well as overall performance.

[@KC-bg1th]

*GET IT?* You fucking better; I just read a wiki page on cork-screw propellers just for that joke.

[@SchmidtP89]

Woah, that live timetable is awesome! Great first 3 mins! :)

[@zushiba]

Agreed, coolest live updating time-table I've seen. Only one suggestion I'd like to see is clickable zones over it to let you skip to those sections.

[@GamersNexus]

We have absolutely no way to implement that, unfortunately. KZbin does not allow such functionality.

[@zushiba]

It doesn't? I've seen other videos overlay annotations /w links to specific times within a video. Usually used to skip intro's and stuff. Your timetable is still the best I've seen though so, still very well done.

[@Jalexster]

KZbin has removed support for video annotations. Older videos still support them, but newer videos ONLY support information cards (that little i button in the upper right) and end cards. This is because video annotations aren't supported on mobile, and KZbin wants to provide a uniform experience across all platforms. Also, a lot of uploaders simply abused the annotations function to spam the crap out of people watching.

[@zushiba]

That they did, I personally turned annotations off on the vast majority of videos I watched.

[@SilviAllDay]

Love the left loading bar!

[@imabeapirate]

lessons learned became lessons applied. well done EVGA

[@GregoryCunningham]

Not really, only If this trickles down to every card. Keep in mind the GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080 had this issue.

[@Jordan_Jetter]

Im pretty sure it was only the 1070 and 1080 that were blowing up, and they were blowing up in small numbers. Regardless of this they released a revised version of the 1080 and 1070 not to mention offering a free RMA to fix the issues on earlier cards.

[@666Daheretic]

EVGA gets my money because they never let me down in an RMA process (only ever had to RMA an 850w supernova G2 which was also my fault it died) and they still sent me a new one. And by the way the 1070 FTW2 and SC2 both have this same design layout for cooling. I have both cards, the SC2 in my white NZXT H700i build and the FTW2 in my fancy Fractal define R6 RGB build.

[@666Daheretic]

Also i had a Gigabyte GTX 970 that had the VRM blow up so quit acting like this is only EVGA.

[@stevethea5250]

@@Jordan_Jetter will this one blow up? www.mwave.com.au/product/evga-geforce-gtx-1070-ftw2-gaming-icx-8gb-video-card-ac02242?gclid=CjwKCAjwqLblBRBYEiwAV3pCJvh5XOOrQJ9M98LVWWQXGIAdvwcI2kTnoAWRMZ2EPdwoqbzds9Y8xBoCaTYQAvD_BwE ​@Vape&Game44035

[@Kureiji-Desu]

awesome breakdown and i really appreciate the time line slots on the bottom left

[@thesearchlightsCW]

As an engineer, over engineering is a good thing most of the time, as long as it is within reason. Hopefully this is, can't wait to watch!

[@LazyMcCrazy]

As an engineer, over engineering is inefficient.

[@TheEchelon]

Josh Sisson, it depends. Optimizing can be a lot of work and can consume a lot more time. If over engineering means cooler temps and safer power delivery (without affecting other things negatively) I'd say it's not a bad thing.

[@joshnull6132]

I'll take my ice cold card that last longer than most except liquid cooled ones thanks.

[@maxfacts1]

As a engineer, OVER ENGINEERING is the best FAIL SAFE way of insuring that marginal components exceed performance requirements. I am impressed with EVGA and will recommend their over engineered cards. It's good to see Nvidia's many partners designing beast cards for beast Pascal 1080Ti GPUs giving smart gamers many over engineered 1080Ti cards to pick from.

[@xellestar]

Their behavior is great to see. They f'd up previously and now went well out of their way to ensure it didn't happen again. Another company may well have said oh well shit happens and carried on the same as before. There's often not much between the various gpu manufacturers and it sometimes makes a hard choice when getting a new card, little things like this will make me lean towards evga over others.

[@mrbtripp2]

Can't get enough of the AHOC w/Buildzoid!

[@Bobbelebob]

Incredibly good and detailed video, keep that stuff up! I feel like you're one of the last channels to really do stuff like this instead of going for clickbait titles and not giving any information.

Absolutely awesome analysis, insanely detailed but easy to understand somehow. Thx a ton!

[@FolixOrision]

Found you based on this video. You earned my subscription and a like

[@codyroberts1555]

EVGA is always my go-to for GPU. They always seem to go the extra mile for consumer level customers/fans/loyalists.

[@F7GOS]

great analysis, really enjoy how thorough you guys can be!

[@ignasanchezl]

The thermal pad on the inductors might help prevent coil whine, something manufactures seem like they give a shit about.

[@stephenhill9820]

Thanks for putting in the work--this has to take a long time to make.

[@KoseChris]

men I love your reviews/presentations, its nice that i finally know a bit more about this.

[@cybercat1531]

EVGA is an anagram for VEGA.

[@joak-web]

Half Life 3 confirmed

[@Couyou]

Love your videos man!!

[@kamikazemelon787]

I am so glad I got this card, and before the huge crypto bubble too. With the slightly disappointing 2080ti release, I feel like I keep getting lucky. I think the first I got myself was the FX5600, then 6600GT, 8800 Ultra, GTX280, GTX580, GTX670, and now the 1080ti. That's not bad. Managed to skip the 400 series crap, though I did miss the 7 series.

[@fusionpit1429]

The segment progress bars are great, but you should stick the timestamps in the description so it is easier for us viewers to jump to what is relevant for us

[@snrd]

This. Please Gamers Nexus, listen to this and in addition put them as a comment unter the video for mobile users because timestamp links in the description do not work on mobile.

[@paulosullivan3472]

Huh that's good design imo. I like seeing more cooling in general as well I think I may well be purchasing one of these.

[@amarucarrasquillo6691]

Well I'm glad that I bought a overbuilt card. Good on you evga, keep it up. They defiantly gained my confidence.

[@PCGoblin]

That was the most interesting video on the 1080ti I think will ever be made...... Thank you!

[@oliverrowe8648]

love that little table in the bottom left, awesome idea

[@umeng2002]

The other issue with EVGA was not the Vreg temps per se, but the fact that other competing GPU manufacturers offered better Vreg cooling.

[@stylesoftware]

Love the technical details, I learnt a lot.

[@JJSideshowBob]

Still very happy with this card, recently switched to a waterblock but it wouldn't have been necessary in terms of heat dissipation. Letting go of this one will be difficult

[@intech7863]

Its worth to buy 1080ti right now?

[@bartekowca666]

B U I L D Z O I D B O Y Z

[@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

see if they were using cheapo components I would've pointed it out when I did a breakdown of one of the FTW cards. Except the components that failed were from a manufacturer that has been used by basically every GPU/mobo maker in existence and are still being used right now.

[@harmonicseries6582]

Yeah, but they can make different deals with parts manufacturers. The parts manufacturer can supply the same part for different price ranges depending on the requirements. So buying from the same supplier doesn't necessarily mean buying at the same price or the same quality. This can be easily seen as other manufacturers are doing fine.

[@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

yeah which is why EVGA got a refund from the manufacturer that supplied the dodgy parts for the FTW cards. If those parts could reach the specs the datasheet for the faulty parts specs then EVGA would never have had any of the exploding VRM failures.

[@harmonicseries6582]

They get refunded for the parts, that doesn't mean they didn't buy lower grade parts for cheaper. If the part supplier had supplied parts that had a higher failure rate than expected there would have been a lawsuit for losses occurred to EVGA due to misleading specs, not just a refund for the failed parts.

[@170adamb1]

I feel a bit sorry for evga. Only a few of their 1080's actually failed, yet they allowed all owners including me. To return their perfectly working cards for the newer improved vs. Gotta give kudos to evga for that.

[@7511fsm]

For clarification he means milliamps not amps. If you were drawing that much current your breakers would have tripped for the outlet it was plugged in too. And if they didn't trip, your house would burn down.

[@newrez]

Flick I like this comment. It made me laugh

[@nicholasscholten]

And now we know (yet another reason) why EVGA is one of the best card makers you can go with!

[@JakeWagemann]

Videos like this give me a chub. Partially because I know what you're going on about. Partially because I know a lot of others don't.

[@GamersNexus]

Thanks for watching! Our review for the EVGA GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 is forthcoming. We are finalizing some testing, then will post all the content live. In the meantime, we've got a tear-down of the card here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q3PNhZxmqs9paqc Our EVGA SC2 1080 Ti review is also live already: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nWXbeHSultZjf8U Buildzoid's channel is here: goo.gl/69AD2H

[@kaladabong]

I love the time stamp stuff in the videos now.

[@andreipelle6205]

Gamers Nexus. just wanted to say that timestamps probably make videos 15-30 minutes longer to make but they are so worth it. Please keeep doing them! Great work!

[@baddog9188]

Can you compare the FTW3 with the SC2 in your benches? Would really appreciate it :)

[@GamersNexus]

Wouter Gunst SC2 will be in there, yes.

[@trancefreak64]

I just got my SC2 and sold my GTX1080 FTW2 for $550 and the SC2 is freaking beast. I too want to see the difference between the 2 GPU's from EVGA but I am very happy with my SC2 @ $719 with a free game. I know it is expensive but I plan on using it for 4-5 years to get my dollars worth.

[@dazextralarge]

that missing VRAM chip tingles my OCD. Actually, everytime I see a PCB with "missing" components, just lables and solder points tingles my OCD. Makes me want to solder something over myself. Even if it doesnt work.

[@samirprince3719]

Its amazing PCB for ftw3 I'm thinking to buy one. Thanks for the PCB

[@cdoublejj]

freaking awesome! subscribed! amazing info!

[@altimmons]

It’s the inductors that blew. They need to be cooled. Independent testing shows that it floats around 114C at 22C ambient. Mine, now replaced hits 72C. I do because I owned one of these cards. I was able to replace the inductor s and fix the card.

[@st0nedpenguin]

I almost jumped at that surprise Steve moment after the first part of the video.

[@australmike]

Great Scott!

[@joak-web]

Buildzoid is like the jonnyGuru of video cards

[@rars0n]

Really, really informative. I like.

[@Bannockburn111]

This VRM is pretty to me, I want a window so I can see it! Not possible to do that and still cool it of course (without some kind of tricky mineral oil rig) so I'd just have to use my imagination. :) Thanks for another great analysis vid Buildzoid!

[@ralanham76]

Penterax actually glass is heat contacting think about people cook in glass and some parts of large AC use glass to cool and be insulated

[@kasperlindstrom9990]

Know this is pretty late and all but a Zotac 1080 Mini PCB Breakdown here or on AHOC would be awesome!

[@frankmoolah]

EVGA has always used dual BIOS's on their motherboards but it's nice to know they've implemented them on their GPU's as well.

[@TrueRegulators]

from my experience you'll also need to short the PCIe slot shunt at the bottom, as the monitoring always uses the highest of the 3 for determining power draw.

[@HewroPreez]

Buildzoid sounds like he's evolving into a Turian. Something's up with that modulation :>

[@Interrobang212]

It took me a full ten seconds to get used to the voice not being Steve's haha

[@durborough8484]

could you please create a video explaining the art of supllying your hardware with power by going over how a psu works and what happens on the pcb of the gpu and mainboard? it would be much appreciated :)

[@Geekpoint0]

How do you do the live timetracking you added at the bottom. It's magnificent. Every video should have it. Podcast videos especially.

[@Razor2048]

The VRMs for the fans can sometimes be required to deliver upwards of 15 watts to the fans. Do you think in a future model, they will make a cutout in that aluminum plate,and then give the fan controller VRM a dedicated heatsink with proper fins?

[@mike_purple]

Thanks for the analysis.

[@josejuanandrade4439]

The 1080 Ti is already an insane card...

[@ABCEDEFG911]

jose juan andrade wait for volta

[@ABCEDEFG911]

Morning Xanax im a student and i need xanax

[@Zubiscamulu]

Volta is Q3 2017

[@ilikeanalpoopoo3441]

pretty sure nvidia is going with 2060 2070 2080

[@ilikeanalpoopoo3441]

GDDR6 comes out in 2018.. maybe wait a little longer? 970's are still good.

[@bluephreakr]

Hey Buildzoid ever thought bout grabbing one of Neonode's Airbars and affixing that onto your display? Should be a cheap and easy way to make the display touchable, and thus make drawing on it easier. Depends on the display however; if the display is too big, most likely a touchscreen-enhanced model will do instead.

[@endijs.ogrins]

Sound like dude from Actually Hardcore Overclocking ! :D

[@endijs.ogrins]

I read description later ! :D

[@Poofu]

glad to say that my 3/4ths of an electrical engineering degree has prepared me for this video

[@ask4kobebeef]

0:30 is incorrect. It wasn't a few people with the problem, it was very common like the xbox360 rrod with people complaining all over the web including on amazon reviews that their evga ftw boards were overheating and killing themselves. Evga tried to fix it by adding thermal pads and when it still kept on happening they brought out bios 'fixes' to run the fan at full speed and downclock the board but the issue was still there. thats why they had to go back to the drawing board and redesign the pcb adding in all these thermal sensors and better cooling. And they brought out the step up program so people could get away from their ticking time bombs with a bit of cash. This was a far reaching problem and not just something that only a 'few people' got like the video suggests.

[@Multimeter1]

What is stupid is this card has a 127% power limit at 1.093V. I think the limit should be 1.2V and 135% that sounds more fair for the amount of hardware that isn’t even being utilized on this amazing card. Nvidia locked it down on the vbios though...

[@ForceMassAcc]

Great breakdown thanks. KBO.

[@ignasanchezl]

600A on the VCore would mean 55A@12V in the 8 pins, that would probably melt them. (9.2A+ per pin)

[@tylercoombs1]

920 Amps the caps will blow long before the Fets die lol. I'd like to see it though. 5 years later this board is still an absolute monster

[@erikvanderbijl6305]

love these video's even though i don't even understand half of it.

[@slap_my_hand]

The thermal pads on the capacitors could cause them to get hotter, because they can transfer heat into the component.

[@MrKillswitch88]

Mosfets can only run at those temps for short periods of time without degrading their life span, seen too many cards fail over the years due to high vrm temps. Seen some cards shipped stock with vrms hitting upwards of 140-150c on stock clocks!

[@DaBombDiggidy88]

i'm actually wondering how much of a difference their new cooling design will make when it actually matters when nvidia starts releasing bigger/hotter chips near the end of squeezing out a generation that isn't voltage locked.

[@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

Nvidia scrapped unlocked voltages with the 600 series. They are not coming back.

[@DaBombDiggidy88]

thanks for the info :) pretty new to the whole pc building thing. From a technical perspective i really appreciate your channel!

[@TN-qk8jf]

how do you know all this stuff about gpu's? did you had education on a school about it? genuinly curious, like the live timetable!

[@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

I have contacts in mobo and GPU R&D.

[@stephenallen4635]

Actually Hardcore Overclocking I dont think he realises this is your teardown of the card

[@dazextralarge]

What would be awesome is giving us the link to that picture that Buildzoid uses to analyze the bcp.

[@GamersNexus]

We take the photos. They'll be in the review article, like they always are.

[@RealismFTW]

Hey GN, will you be doing a FTW 3 "review" like you did with the SC2? Would love to see some temps and stuff :)

[@GamersNexus]

Yes, we are working on a review.

[@MB-cm3tl]

I hope EVGA can reuse this amazing cooling method on the upcoming NVIDIA GTX 2080 Ti (Due to release in Q4 2018)... If 2080 Ti FTW3 will have an amazing cooling solution such as the 1080 Ti, then I will no doubt buy it... Currently running on an EVGA GTX 1080 FTW ACX3 with EVGA's updated BIOS found on EVGA website to improve temps...Didn't do any overclocking...

[@pyronical]

Buildzoid, can you do one of these vids for an old school 3dfx Voodoo card? That would be quite interesting and it would make me happy.

[@RodFitzpatrick]

If i wanted to short the shunts with liquid metal, would i just simply run i line/strip of it from shunt to shunt, making sure it's touching metal on the shunts ?

[@rfouR_4]

I wonder how well these undervolt. Was able to undervolt my 1080 to 0.8v at 1800mhz. Total system power draw with my 6600K at 4.4@1.15v is sub 200w in stress testing. GPU fans are absolutely dead silent even in full load. Not even a whisper. I think the same way how you get through the roof power draw upping voltage, you get the opposite in undervolting. If you live in a small space, that can heat up quickly and become uncomfortably warm during long gaming sessions, and you enjoy quiet computing, I think it's the way to go with Pascal cards.

[@TCBYEAHCUZ]

After losing two 7970 Ghz editions to VRM's exploding I CAN tell you that what EVGA did was correct.

[@nicopeters8298]

I have no problem with over-engineering, as long as the price isnt ridiculous for the added engineering, and the cost to benefit is still reasonable.

[@LAG09]

I'm going to have to disagree with the notion that EVGA bears no blame for all the cards where the VRMs blew up. Asking them to test all the components they got would have been unreasonable, but you'd expect them to at least to at least take a few of each component and test those.

[@matthewfennell7886]

19:18 Call the firemen, this vrm is lit!

[@SweMisterB]

Rather then liquid metal, graphite pencil? It may not get you quite the same drop in reported current use, but try it on the capacitors, and it should get you a good bit?

[@xiaxia686]

10ohms resistor on top of the capacitor actually cuts your pwr reading to 1/5, not 1/3, since nVidia change serial resistors from 10ohms on the GTX1080 to 20ohms on GTX1080Ti.

[@marcinkapinski9537]

Hopefully this means better, more stable OC on their cards. Cos all we care about is "moar frames".

[@atvkid0805]

What about the EVGA SC2 Hybrid 1080 Ti? Is the FTW3 better even though it uses an air cooler ?

[@jg0909]

Reminds me a lot of the Strix Fury. Nice design overall.

[@Murlock2000]

the danish heats ? what is he talking about there ? @ 1:04

[@ployth9000]

when is the final part of the titanxp video coming out

[@icemancy]

What is the voltage on the 2x gray small buck corverters?, I have on the one 5v and the other shows nothing, it suppose to be 1.8v correct?

[@Zodiack1319]

Hello, could you please tell me that one of the chip capacitors on the gold hand on the back of my ASUS 1080ti graphics card fell off, but it can run normally now, what role does this capacitor play? Thank you.

[@jsharp9735]

Would I be able to use the vrm plate for cooling with a raijintek Morpheus instead of using heat sinks ?

[@b747xx]

Yep, components.. You can't guess in advance. Remember the capacitor plague on the motherboard for the CPU VRM?

[@Blinkation]

some thermal pads are used as an isolation to prevent a short.

[@davidtan8984]

Is there a video where you explain how to calculate the Amperage Ratings for any given VRM? I suppose it would start with reading the numbers on the chips and looking up their specifications, but how do you actually calculate it?

[@newrez]

David Tan data sheet

[@newrez]

Ohms law I = V/R

[@cataria3903]

so was it a batch of faulty capacitors or sth. else that made the vrms go poop? u said it's probably faulty caps in one video analyzing it, gamers nexus did test the vrm without issues, so please clarify what actually was the issue. caps? or sth. else.

[@data9k]

It is possible underclock and use only one 8-Pin PCI-e connector? For lower target TDP

[@reav3rtm]

My late Sapphire ATI x1950 PRO would disagree with the thesis of overcompensating on VRM cooling.

[@Madmax23419]

Test the end product form every batch and stress the product to speedup the aging, that is how other company do it most of the time.

[@KillJD]

Where do you get the VRm heat dissipation numbers from, out of curiosity? Thanks.

[@HarryLin]

This card is monstrous!!!

[@VintageCR]

isn't it funny that the 3 fan evga card comes out on top of every other 1080Ti of being 1. the thinnest (2 slot) card and 2. the coolest..

[@ronhenderson9258]

is there any point to all this if you are not going to run ln2? It seems to me that all of these cards clock about the same, even the founders editions;, 2000 to 2020mhz on air and 2088 to 2113 on water. so is there really any reason to pay more for a third party card if they are just going to be air or watercooled?

[@Hellrazor0916]

"BIOLS switch"

[@shea3580]

bi-ahs

[@stevethea5250]

@@shea3580 I'm curious to peoples thoughts here. I've made it known before I'm all for the DCA side of things but I'm also down for doing lump sum investments. At the moment the Aus market seems to follow the US market (fortunately or unfortunately, you decide). The last few days the US market has done well, subsequently the Aus market has done well the next day. Same when it detracts. When the market has pulled back a little, I've put money in and it's worked well. Today, for example, would have been a great day to throw a lump sum in. I ask you guys, how would you feel if Raiz allowed Poli Payments, where you could invest in your acc in the same day. Say you woke up overnight and hear the US market was up by like 2% and you thought crap I want to invest today so you use Poli and in the same day you invest like $200. What are your thoughts? I think it's more for the people who like a little risk than those who are only down for the DCA.