Hi guys,
 
I am new to this forum, but wanted to ask for your opinion on the situation I am currently in with the EVGA Support.
Here is my story/issue.
I used to have a GTX 460 SC that broke an year ago. Because I was happy with how the card performed and it's life span and knew that EVGA had really good warranty I decided to get a new GTX 980 again from EVGA. 
An year later, present day my first GTX 980 SC decided to show black screen when under load. I opened a ticket and after few messages with two different support engineers I got an approved RMA.
Today I received my RMA card and I was "pleasantly" surprised so find out that they send me a card that had a lot of white residue on its back and the fan was making some funky noises and not working like my previous card. 
Opened a ticket again and got a reply that everything is fine with this card and I should not worry about the residue as it was solder flux and if I want the can send me a new fan. Researching the solder flux residue, I found out that this is not something that should be still on the board and has to be cleaned as it can capture moisture and create shorts between the components. And there is a lot of the white stuff on the card. My brother studies in Technical University of Sofia and I went to talk to one of his professors about the residue and he also confirmed that it can cause electrical problems with time and has to be professionally removed from the card.
 
I have asked twice for my ticket to be escalated to the next level of support or to some kind of manager/supervisor, as I don't think the replacement product is adequate to the one I purchased, but so far nothing has happened. 
I am really furious about how I got played with this card. Paid 550 euros a year back and now I get treated like I want to RMA some 9800GT card. And can't find a logical explanation why would EVGA do this? Is the EVGA support no longer what it used to be, or at least what it used to be marketed for? 
 
What do you think I should do now? I feel like they played me big time and just send me someone else used card that is making funny noises and have the potential to blow up at any time. I don't want to stress it up so it does not blow my entire machine and take any other components with it. 

-------------
A week ago even ordered one of the EVGA 1000W PSU from the T2 series from my local shop. It will ship on 29th and I am thinking of returning it and getting a Corsair, so that I don't have to deal with EVGA support again.

Hello BHteam,
 
I am sorry to hear about the issues you have experienced with the replacement card you have received. 
Can you please register the replacement into your EVGA Account and drop me an Email with the S/N and your forums name to dungermann@evga.com then I will set up the RMA for you. 
In case of a DOA replacement we can also offer a UPS Pick Up service so you do not have any further costs on this, please do also put in the email an address where UPS can pick up the card on a daily base then we will set this up. 
If you have any further questions about the new exchange just let me know!

Hello again,
 
it's been 3 weeks and I just received the second replacement card. 
It looks great, there are no bad sounds coming from the fan. I had high hopes that this is going to be the one that will be finally OK. 
Installed it, initially worked great. Then almost 3 hours after WoW was started my screen froze for 5 seconds. I thought, may be it was just some kind of a glitch or something. 
Unfortunately few minutes later another freeze and black screen. This time I made a video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z0S_YogwCM
The sound that you hear are the waves in Winterfin Retreat - Northrend. The only way to restore the screen was to reboot the PC.
Then I went in to windows Event Viewer to check on the logs and see what is happening.
Here is what I found:
imgur.com/hSx2zGA
imgur.com/LH9Yzwd
So, the card stops responding, the driver crashes a lot and I have to reboot to gain my screen again. 


So, let's recap. 
I opened the first ticket on 25.June.2016. Today is 11.August.2016. 47 days and 2 replacements later I still do't have a card that can run a basic game for more then 3 hours, does not make cranky noises and has no flux residue on it.
 
Now I need to know how are we going to proceed forward again.
If I am not eligible for any support / replacements any more, I will need you to provide me your company legal information for the EU.
 
Awaiting your reply
Milen

Those imgur you posted are only a driver failure and a unexpected shutdown. The causes for these could be many. Even a bad corrupted storage drive/files/OS could cause these. 
 

 
All the test (excluding the Heaven Mark) were performed initially under the guidance of the EVGA Support before they approved the RMA. Also I have a R9 290 from PowerColor that works for days and does not fail. This is a clean Windows, DDU was run before installing the latest replacement card, so there were no AMD or any drivers at all.
 

Cool GTX
Your upset, got it -- we have to eliminate the other possibilities
 
Looks more like a Temp, Power, or game issue
 
Run Heaven benchmark
 
Temps we need Temps
 
Room Temp
 
CPU Temp
 
GPU Temp
 
Test the PSU
 
 
PLEASE - List your complete PC build info: Brand & part number
GPU - part number ?
CPU & cooler
MB, what version & BIOS version - (latest ver?)
RAM
PSU - age
Case - size & number of fans - blowing in or out

+1

wmmills

ragevirusqq
Those imgur you posted are only a driver failure and a unexpected shutdown. The causes for these could be many. Even a bad corrupted storage drive/files/OS could cause these. 
 

Agreed. Judging by those images he uploaded he has def Nvidia driver conflict/corruption or driver settings conflict. He also has rebooted the pc a few times, kernel-boot info in log, which could break reg entries in windows which would lead to all types of headaches if it wasn't done properly. @op... we def need you to answer the question coolgtx laid out before anyone could tell you more. The card is most likely fine, its the driver and maybe your bios settings that may be the issue or some combo of the things that's giving you issues. You say you have a new psu so its probably not the delivery of power from the psu.

+1

BHTeam
Hello again,
 
it's been 3 weeks and I just received the second replacement card. 
It looks great, there are no bad sounds coming from the fan. I had high hopes that this is going to be the one that will be finally OK. 
Installed it, initially worked great. Then almost 3 hours after WoW was started my screen froze for 5 seconds. I thought, may be it was just some kind of a glitch or something. 
Unfortunately few minutes later another freeze and black screen. This time I made a video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z0S_YogwCM
The sound that you hear are the waves in Winterfin Retreat - Northrend. The only way to restore the screen was to reboot the PC.
Then I went in to windows Event Viewer to check on the logs and see what is happening.
Here is what I found:
imgur.com/hSx2zGA
imgur.com/LH9Yzwd
So, the card stops responding, the driver crashes a lot and I have to reboot to gain my screen again. 


So, let's recap. 
I opened the first ticket on 25.June.2016. Today is 11.August.2016. 47 days and 2 replacements later I still do't have a card that can run a basic game for more then 3 hours, does not make cranky noises and has no flux residue on it.
 
Now I need to know how are we going to proceed forward again.
If I am not eligible for any support / replacements any more, I will need you to provide me your company legal information for the EU.
 
Awaiting your reply
Milen

Since you're running a brand new evga 1000w t2 psu I'd recommend trying to run the card in debug mode to see if it helps make the issues go away. If the issues go away while running the card in debug mode you most likely have another defective card.