GamerSX

Greene MaChine
That's normal modern business practices.  I expect return policies like that with anything purchased.
Your fortunate your retailer did a refund, alot of them nowadays won't.
Did they ding you a restocking fee ?

restocking fee in a warranty case? how? anyways i am in the EU so we do not have the concept of a restocking fee here even during the first 14 or 30 days return period, all they did was give me about 80% of what i originally paid because i have used the product for one year, so they deducted that, still a pretty good deal for having the freedom of buying any other product i wanted instead of being stuck with a problematic SKU ... 

Yikes. If this is the cause of the issue they claimed they fixed, I wonder what they did to ensure this wouldn't continue. 

Arsenic13
Yikes. If this is the cause of the issue they claimed they fixed, I wonder what they did to ensure this wouldn't continue. 

It seems there would need to be a physical fix to this like additional thermal dissipation where the hotspot is. It's the same spot where my card and others I've seen have fried components. It may not be affecting every card now but I wonder what will happen once these cards have some age on them.

libneon

Arsenic13
Yikes. If this is the cause of the issue they claimed they fixed, I wonder what they did to ensure this wouldn't continue. 

It seems there would need to be a physical fix to this like additional thermal dissipation where the hotspot is. It's the same spot where my card and others I've seen have fried components. It may not be affecting every card now but I wonder what will happen once these cards have some age on them.

One thing is for certain, age won't make the issue less apparent...

Annuminas on reddit dug up some interesting heatsink images:
 

Compare the ROG Strix cooler http://i.imgur.com/Z7vUjkX.jpg
TO the FTW ACX cooler http://i.imgur.com/ZJ2ykXQ.jpg

The Asus card has a nice strip of thermal compound over the VRM and EVGA does not.

 
Link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/..._explain_black/d8zcpnd

NetQvist
Annuminas on reddit dug up some interesting heatsink images:
 

Compare the ROG Strix cooler http://i.imgur.com/Z7vUjkX.jpg
TO the FTW ACX cooler http://i.imgur.com/ZJ2ykXQ.jpg

The Asus card has a nice strip of thermal compound over the VRM and EVGA does not.

 
Link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/..._explain_black/d8zcpnd

There is a heatspreader covering the VRM and entire PCB separate from the core heatsink.  There is (or should be) thermal tape under the heatplate for the VRM section.  
 

 

 
The ROG strix cooler does not have a heat spreader under the cooler, the rest of the components are bare, which is why they have to add this small section of thermal tape and heat spreader onto the cooler itself.
 

Scarlet-Tech

NetQvist
Annuminas on reddit dug up some interesting heatsink images:
 

Compare the ROG Strix cooler http://i.imgur.com/Z7vUjkX.jpg
TO the FTW ACX cooler http://i.imgur.com/ZJ2ykXQ.jpg

The Asus card has a nice strip of thermal compound over the VRM and EVGA does not.

 
Link to original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/..._explain_black/d8zcpnd

There is a heatspreader covering the VRM and entire PCB separate from the core heatsink.  There is (or should be) thermal tape under the heatplate for the VRM section.  
 

 

 
The ROG strix cooler does not have a heat spreader under the cooler, the rest of the components are bare, which is why they have to add this small section of thermal tape and heat spreader onto the cooler itself.
 

Why do the other cards not show such hot spots then?
 
The founder's edition shows no hot spot: http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-10.html
 
EVGA makes great products, I've been buying them for years, but there is definitely a hot spot over the VRM/memory area that seems to exceed the safe range for those components...and I can't even imagine what it's like if someone's case isn't ventilated right or kept clean.
 
 

libneon
 
Why do the other cards not show such hot spots then?
 
The founder's edition shows no hot spot: http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-10.html
 
EVGA makes great products, I've been buying them for years, but there is definitely a hot spot over the VRM/memory area that seems to exceed the safe range for those components...and I can't even imagine what it's like if someone's case isn't ventilated right or kept clean.

 
 
I do not have a way to measure these hot spots, nor am I an electrical engineer that could figure out why adding twice the amount of VRMs would cause a hot spot.  
 
The SeaHawk (MSI) has a relatively hot VRM section compared to the FounderEdition, and they utilize nearly the same VRM section with a few minor differences. http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-2.html
 
The gigabyte G1 Gaming has less VRM with no full coverage heatplate, and has a hotspot in a completely different section: http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-4.html
 
If I had to go with best guess, the heat plate is not dissipating enough heat due to the low fan speeds and strive for silent operation.  
 
The Galax HOF would be a good example, as the PCB contains extra VRM kind of like the FTW: http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-6.html  Notice that the heat plate has fins to assist with dissipating the heat, and the cooler utilizes more fans.  
 
I also notice that they utilize furmark, which NVidia black listed because it was killing GPUs. I mean, if they are going to torture test a GPU, why not use a program known to overheat and kill GPU's?

Scarlet-Tech

libneon
 
Why do the other cards not show such hot spots then?
 
The founder's edition shows no hot spot: http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-10.html
 
EVGA makes great products, I've been buying them for years, but there is definitely a hot spot over the VRM/memory area that seems to exceed the safe range for those components...and I can't even imagine what it's like if someone's case isn't ventilated right or kept clean.

 
 
I do not have a way to measure these hot spots, nor am I an electrical engineer that could figure out why adding twice the amount of VRMs would cause a hot spot.  
 
The SeaHawk (MSI) has a relatively hot VRM section compared to the FounderEdition, and they utilize nearly the same VRM section with a few minor differences. http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-2.html
 
The gigabyte G1 Gaming has less VRM with no full coverage heatplate, and has a hotspot in a completely different section: http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-4.html
 
If I had to go with best guess, the heat plate is not dissipating enough heat due to the low fan speeds and strive for silent operation.  
 
The Galax HOF would be a good example, as the PCB contains extra VRM kind of like the FTW: http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-gtx-1070-grafikkarten-roundup,testberichte-242137-6.html  Notice that the heat plate has fins to assist with dissipating the heat, and the cooler utilizes more fans.  
 
I also notice that they utilize furmark, which NVidia black listed because it was killing GPUs. I mean, if they are going to torture test a GPU, why not use a program known to overheat and kill GPU's?

Ya, I think Furmark results can to some degree be disregarded but the Metro Last Light loop was still hitting 97.7 C which still seems way too high for that part of the card. That was right in the area where my card died as well. It seemed fine for the couple of months I had it before that.

It looks like (selfish bastard) people using an EK block are OK?

I had a fun time placing that TIM on, the blue backing drove me nuts lol... now I'm so glad it's there!