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Aurora R11, RTX 3080 capacitor concerns
As more of Nvidia RTX 3080s get out into the wild, issues of hardware based game crashes are starting to surface for most third-party 3080 card owners due to how the third-parties cut corners on how many capacitors they’ve designed onto their cards.
Nvidia’s own Found Edition cards appear to be working fine, but it leaves me concerned if the new 3080’s being made for the next wave of R11’s I ordered from will go cheap on the capacitors and run into the same problem the third-party cards are having. Those third-parties are not going to recall those cards. Instead they will just reduce the clock speed of those cards less than Nvidia’s own 3080 cards to avoid having crashes.
I’m not familiar with how custom cards are made through Dell Alienware, but for how much we’re paying (as those R11 3080/3090 bundle prices were noticeably rising up over the course of hours) I’m just curious how much quality goes into their own GPUs or do they partner with Nvidia third parties to make them?
Yeah, I'll be opening it up later today once my ram arrives. I can take some general pics of stuff. Anything specific you want to see?
I did have a driver update that needed installed from 10/7 (456.71). Not sure how I missed it since I ran a check yesterday, but I got it installed this morning.
Just a note, I have not been able to get my Watchdogs or Gforce now codes from Dell. It was clearly advertised when I ordered my system, but CS is acting like they do not know what I am talking about... Evening after linking to their site.
So these are actually some really bad pics after looking at them. The room I set up in has really bad lighting so I had to use the flash and it didn't work out that well. One pic I did want to add since it was interesting to see the M.2 drive tucked under the 3080. Wouldn't be a hard swap, but would have to remove the card I think. The screw for the 2280 is just above the card so you might be able to swap it without, but I doubt quicker then removing the card.
@TerrBear Just a direct update for you. I having been trying to understand from Dell how the card was made. The only thing they could provide was generic details, but one person in tech support gave me the below number which leads me to believe MSI built the custom card.
"CRD,GRPHC,NV,3080,10G,R11. MSI"
I have hit 2040MHz peak with no overclocking on my end, but I keep my room very cold (~60F) with my computer sitting in directly front of the portable A/C (low 50F's at that spot). It typically settles at 1950MHz or 2010MHz depending on how quickly the temps rise and what game I am playing.
I sit idle at ~25C and ~55C under load. (rocket league, Horizon zero dawn, MW).
Yeah, Dell/Alienware has been using re-branded MSI Nvidia cards for many years, but since that is subject to change at any time, good to get verification of this on the new series as well.
Also, good to hear that some/all come with the metal back-plate. Not only does it make a better frame for the (delicate) PCB, it also usually dissipates heat (ends-up radiating heat straight-up, away from card).
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So I've had my new R11 with 3080 card for a few days. Max specs, etc. I have a hdmi 2.1 monitor with a 48Gbps cable and can run 4k 120hz hdr with gsync. I was getting symptoms of the known 3000 series card issues at first but after updating my monitor's firmware all was mostly good, but I often get signal loss before boot ups and today for the first time I'm getting a lot of signal drops during gameplay that constantly resets the HDR randomly. It was working mostly stable for a day or so, but now it's being fickle again.
Nate201
12 Posts
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Posted October 19th, 2020 20:00
I received my Alienware RTX3080 system today. Out of the box it ran at 1950MHZ. I ran it for 4-5hrs in RDR2-ultra-1440p as well as MW on highest settings. I did use ACC to overclock to 2070MHZ to get above the 2010MHZ I had read people were crashing at. I could not check the capacitor issues as you have to disassemble the card to view them and I didn't plan to do that. I was going to run 4k in a few days once I move the computer. I do not typically overclock so if anything is a little of sorry.
Out of Box - 1950MHZ
Adjusted in ACC - 2070MHZ