So recently I did a ton of overtime at work and put in 60 extra hours. During this time my trusty R9 270x decided to kick the bucket and Gigabyte refused the RMA because I changed the thermal paste on it (that is a story for another day). With the extra cash I figured I would upgrade and I picked up a GTX 980ti from a bud of mine (He recently upgraded from SLI 980ti to a single 1080ti). The card I got from him was an EVGA GTX 980ti classified. Got it home installed it about 30 seconds into Unigine Valley it black smoked! So Reached out to EVGA and started the RMA process on Oct 19th. Last night(the 26th) I got the GPU back the RMA time I have to say was pretty quick and I was impressed and happy with it. So I got home from work super excited, plugged it into my computer and loaded up Unigine Heaven to benchmark it. The card was turboing up to 1400Mhz according to GPUz and doing great but I noticed the temps where getting high and only going up. Around this time I noticed the fans where not working AT ALL and the GPU was turning it self down to stay alive, when the card hit 91C I hit the power button to turn off the benchmark as fast as possible since it was being slow to respond. I pulled out the card and yes the fans are plugged into the header the issue is the fans are just not working. So I called up EVGA and while on the phone with them attempted to max out the fans in Precision X I set the fan speed to 100% and the fans still stayed dead. The rep on the phone said I should RMA the card again and approved an RMA for me on the spot, and they are paying for return shipping.

This is my first EVGA card besides the 1050ti I picked up on Saturday for my GF's rig to replace her aging HD 6870 (Nothing wrong with the 6870 just OLD). I have been an Ati/AMD purist for the longest time last Nvidia card I owned was a GeForce 2. When moving from AMD/Ati to Nvidia I went to EVGA because of the name and reputation they are the XFX of Nvidia cards. They are known for being high quality and 5 star customer support. So you guys out there with more experience with EVGA and their RMAs is this common? Am I the one in a million bad luck customer? I am the guy that is unlucky enough to get struck by lighting twice?

I will give props to EVGA overall because they have been very friendly, fast with responses, VERY fast with the process as a whole, and paying for the return shipping on this second RMA. When it comes to the customer Service side of the RMA process it really has been a 5 star experience I have to really give them props for being really good with the RMA process. But I am just worried that my RMA will end up being DOA again. SO has this happened to any of you guys out there?

Thank you for the quick response and the flagging Andrew :)

I will be shipping out the card today on my lunch break. There is a UPS store about 5 min from work so I will get it out to you guys as soon as possible.

Yeah, the 900 series cards just seem to be bad.
Its like nvidia put out a stop-gap video card because ATI were kicking their buttinskies, when nvidia wasnt expecting then to.
Its kinda like Intel 9 with what AMD did with the Ryzen cpu's.
The 1000 series cards seem to be the better cards, in terms of everything (although EVGA had to pull some of their 1080 cards to put more cooling on them at first).
I used to be an ATI guy back in the day, and just got tired of their drivers bogging down my new games. But, it seems nvidia has been resting on their lorals and taking it easy lately, and doing like intel, since they have no competition, and using the long in the tooth tech until it cant squeeze anymore out. And that squeeze was the 900 series. Its the worst cards I have seen nvidia have, ever.
I am on my 4th Titan X (900 series), and wish I would have stuck with the 780 until the 1000 series came around.

The  900 series cards are powerful, you should be happy with the replacement card when it arrives
 
I personally own:
 
2 EVGA Titan X SC (900 series) they are great cards, 4K capable no problem, currently water cooled, running 24x7
 
2 EVGA 980 SC they are great cards, on stock ACX cooler

So an update. my card was shipped out and just got an update from UPS that EVGA put the WRONG ZIP CODE on the return package because of this my card will be arriving late. I am beginning to question if one of my Exes or someone who didn't' like me from my past works for Evga's RMA department :/