As we are all aware there have been a lot of reports of 3080s and 3090s (especially FTW models) dying. I think what we all want to know is the rate at which this is happening, not to mention why it’s happening, but we apparently don’t have access to that information.
 
There are some questions that occur to me, though, which some people here might have answers to, that could give perspective on the situation.
 
1. Does anyone know or have a reasonable estimate of the total number of 3080s and the total number of 3090s that EVGA has sold? Consider that if 200,000 3080s were sold, with a failure rate of 3% there’d be 6,000 dead 3080s, certainly far fewer than the number of reports we’ve seen (not sure what the timeframe for failure would be in a normal run of cards, though—would most of them happen so soon after launch?). 3% would be lower than the failure rate of the 2080 Ti from at least one company if I recall correctly (5%, can’t remember which company though).
 
2. Can any long-time EVGA customers comment on how reports of 30 series failures compare to those for past generations of cards? A lot of people are claiming there have never been so many failure reports before, but others have disagreed—one way or the other, though, I haven’t seen much discussion about this so more info would be good. One thing we should all keep in mind is that if the 30 series is selling in record numbers—which may be true, but given the stock problems I’m not sure (if anyone knows please chime in)—some increase in the raw number of failure reports would be expected even if the failure rate hasn’t changed since past generations.
 
3. Are RMA replacements always brand new cards? Or are they, say, often or even frequently repaired cards? If they are often or frequently repaired cards, that would make the many reports of second and third cards dying (pretty much always 3090s from what I’ve seen) in proper setups a lot less surprising. If they’re always or almost always brand new, though, those second and third card deaths really seem to suggest that something is seriously wrong, because it’s hard to imagine so many people could get bad cards two or three times in a row if the percentage of faulty cards is small.
 
At the moment I’m hoping that the failure rate isn’t as bad as it might seem right now. But on the other hand I worry that this could be on the order of the Xbox 360 “red ring of death” fiasco. When that was happening, there were claims that failures were uncommon despite tons of failure reports. Yet it was eventually revealed that somewhere around 20-50% of 360s of the original make died.

It's not just 3080 and 3090 cards, my 3070 lasted a day before frying. Sent the defective card back waiting for the RMA replacement. This is the danger with getting newly released products sometimes you have to deal with early revision card issues that are fixed with later revisions.  

Osif91

dalten22
The thing is this isn't the first generation of Nvidia cards having this issue. The 2080 TI's were pretty bad too at launch, I had 2 2080TI RMA's (dead within 24 hours or so each) before I got a working card and at the time I saw comments of people saying that was nothing new, that there were a ton of 1080 TI's with the same problem at launch. If your card works for more than a week or two it seems like it's probably not affected by whatever is killing these cards. 
 

I had my 3080 FTW3 for almost 2.5 months before it died on me. 

Hard to say but that's probably not the same issue, but maybe it is. There's a startling high number of people with back to back RMAs and in most cases, their new cards die within hours and sometimes minutes of installing them. Some people like to go on some kind of crusade claiming it must be PSUs or Motherboards or gremlins, but there definitely seems to be some kind of "hump" around the 2 day mark and especially the 2 week mark where if you can survive for that long your card is likely to work normally for quite awhile. Then again, there could be 50,000 working cards for every double/triple RMA experience. Does anyone remember seeing this with AMD cards in recent years?

Hefbn87
Yes, this is why I'm wondering how many 30 series cards in total EVGA has told.

Nobody knows.  EVGA is a private company.  Since they aren't publicly traded, they have no requirement to publish this sort of data.
 
Your best bet is to pressure some respected journalist with clout to dig into this and give us some details.  EVGA clearly doesn't want to spill the beans, but maybe there is some figure who they will bend to.

You know what I mean, right?  Publicly traded companies have to provide information to their investors.  Private companies do not.  Securities and exchange has nothing to do with publicity or livestreams.  Publicly posting crap no one cares about != publicly posting information about sales volume, profits, and investment risks.  The definition of a public company vs a private company has nothing to do with livestreams.

A public company has to share information publicly which could affect investors, otherwise the company can be sued. The public company cannot hide information and cannot retaliate against any employee who leaks pertinent information to investors which indicates that the company is withholding information about problems. A private company, on the other hand, does not have to release information to anyone, and can fire employees for releasing 'confidential' information which hurts the company. Very different, and very different protection mechanisms at play.
EVGA will or will not tell us. It's up go EVGA. All we can do is create pressure.

ty_ger07
You know what I mean, right?  Publicly traded companies have to provide information to their investors.  Private companies do not.  Securities and exchange has nothing to do with publicity or livestreams. 

Yes. I simply cannot resist opportunities to point out global product mismanagement. Mindshare is dwindling by the day, EU store is vaporware, etc..but there’s always time for cringe livestreams.
I miss the days when companies released statements saying they did nothing wrong. Sure, it often was a lie, but it at least acknowledged customer sentiment in some regard.

ice water
You are unlucky. RMA it.

The OP's point is there are quite a few of us who are 'unlucky' and have opened up RMA's with EVGA.

*rolls eyes*
 
The anecdotal evidence is strong with this one.
 
 

dalten22
The thing is this isn't the first generation of Nvidia cards having this issue. The 2080 TI's were pretty bad too at launch, I had 2 2080TI RMA's (dead within 24 hours or so each) before I got a working card and at the time I saw comments of people saying that was nothing new, that there were a ton of 1080 TI's with the same problem at launch. If your card works for more than a week or two it seems like it's probably not affected by whatever is killing these cards. 
 

I must be 1 lucky person then since I still have 1 1080Ti Hybrid that still works plus 2 2080Ti's(1 on watercooling which I currently use and 1 with a installed Hybrid kit I put on myself) since Oct 2018 and now a 3090 FTW3 Ultra that has lasted me 4 months now when I got it back in Oct. 27th still going strong with 500+ hours in gaming and at least 75+ 3DMark benchmarks on it. Of all the eVga video cards I had over the years never did 1 die period. Well I am not gonna make any replies for aleast 6+ hours since I am going to bed because I work 3rd shift and just got home a hour ago.