Over the past few months, an increasing number of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 owners have alleged that these pricey graphics cards leverage poor-quality thermal pads that are incapable of properly cooling their GDDR6X memory modules during use. The first and most obvious solution for this is to swap out these pads for better, aftermarket ones, but there is some lingering concern over whether doing so officially voids the warranty or not for NVIDIA’s Founders Edition cards. Green team’s customer service seems adamant that it does based on a support log shared on r/NVIDIA last month, but now, Hardware BBQ has reported that the company would prefer not to comment on the issue.
They really are, anyone who has an RTX 3080 FE or RTX 3090 FE should look at replacing the stock NVIDIA thermal pads, many are dropping 20-30c on GDDR6X temps by doing sohttps://t.co/Y8MvLNrNr8
— Don Charlie (@ghost_motley) March 22, 2021
This is a serious issue for many reasons, even though thermal pad swapping is not hard for enthusiasts. Depending on the country you’re in, you’re likely to void the warranty of your graphics card. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission said the warranty stickers are not valid. At the time, it warned companies to reverse this in 30 days or it would result in law enforcement action. But the FTC regulations are only applicable in the United States.
Sources: Hardware BBQ, r/NVIDIA