Came home after running some errands on Tuesday to find a black screen and no matter how I did it I could not get the system to wake up. So I swapped the two cards around and the system did boot up and go into Windows 10. Looking at a couple of different hardware monitor programs my second card did not show up even though it was lit up in the case. Did some more swapping and the same card kept coming up as dead. I had only been running this card for a week, I do not o/c and have CM Storm Trooper v2 running multiable fans and radiators for cooling. I called that afternoon to be told an RMA is supposed to happen and that I would be getting an email with instructions but that has not arrived yet. Yes I had done the vbios updates when I installed the cards. Just kinda bummed is all as I had not even gotten a week out of this setup. 

Another victim of VRM/VRAM thermal runaway....

pawelblyskal
Another victim of VRM/VRAM thermal runaway....

Another uninformed guess by pawelblyskal.

_inkubux_
You got me worried about my black edition. I thought the lack of a backplate would put this card at a lesser degree of risk. The pads can't come soon enough.

The lack of a backplate does nothing to reduce the thermal runaway risk of the VRMs. It is only when the backplate is install with the large thermal pad does the backplate actually reduce temps as it acts as a heatsink.

This is now handled. I guess a replacement is soon on its way. Thanks for that EVGA. As to why this happened not really a concern for me as long as it's taken care of. Back to some GOW 4 which does not take advantage of SLI at this point in time.