RTX 3090 owner finds an old glove inside a $1,500 GPU

Imagine this. I just paid a ton for a New RTX 3090 Founders Edition GPU. You plug in the card and turn everything on and… wait, why is my expensive GPU running at 230 degrees?

Reddit user antonyjeweet They asked themselves This is the same question. Given that GPUs should not operate above 195°FAncestral/90^NS Well, never, they find out that there is something wrong with the internal parts.

This kind of thing is very rare, but it does happen. Inform Igor . Laboratory in advance this month How the user received an AMD Radeon 6700 XT with all thermal pads still installed. Thermal pads are small pieces of plastic or tape that are meant to be removed before GPUs are shipped to users.

After rolling the dice and disassembling his GPU to replace the thermal pads, antonyjeweet discovered an unwelcome surprise: a finger glove hidden inside the thermal pads:

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“Now I know why my memory temps easily hit 110c very very fast. Now they stay at 86c max after 1.5 [hours] of the endurance test. The core also decreased by 10 °C (from 75 to +/- 65 °C after the stress test),” they wrote.

It is interesting that Nvidia initially followed the procedure. They refused to honor the card’s warranty because antonyjeweet disassembled the GPU, which is quite standard. However, after discovering that someone in the Founders Edition assembly series has left the little plastic surprise behind, they agree to help antonyjeweet if they want to.

“Nvidia initially told me I lost the warranty. But after seeing this they said we’ll give you one (I got it in the mail). No swap or anything. If it works just keep it, if not, call us and we’ll fix it,” he wrote. User residing in the Netherlands.

If you are wondering how something like this happens, The real answer Is there Global chip shortage. Customers usually don’t care much about how and why, they just get new flash consoles, CPUs, GPUs, and everything else ASAP. This pressure and crushing demand often results in crippling conditions for workers on the factory floor. A factory in Vietnam that is part of the Samsung and Apple supply chain employs about 150,000 workers Living in the factory full time, while a major Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer forced some immigrants to return to shared accommodation despite The severity of the COVID wave in that country.

On the bright side, everything went well in this case. But it’s a reminder to everyone that luxury consumer technology won’t always work as advertised. If you’re going to be dropping thousands for real-time ray tracing and all the bells and whistles in 4K, you might as well spend some extra time making sure it works the way it should.

This story originally appeared Kotaku Australia.