EVGA Quietly Changes Warranty Policy

And?

Remember the DeskStar, or DeathStar hard drives? Yea, those weren't meant to be used 24/7/365 but turns out that's how servers work. Gaming cards aren't meant to work 24/7 but we've all had our binge moments when 1 hour turned into 15 hours. Doesn't exactly give confidence saying mining cards get abused when they're under similar conditions as gaming, just running all day everyday.

I would look at mining as a very extensive stress test. If the card can't last under mining, it was a shit card.


You work for EVGA? That's exactly what someone would say if they worked for EVGA.


Waiiiiit wait wait wait you're being far to harsh now. In no way is mining 24/7/365 a reasonable workload. I just can't get behind that idea at all. Gaming in an internet cafe all day and all night yeah sure but crunching hashes no. Graphics cards aren't cpus they skirt enough physical limits fitting all those power burning components on a tiny ass pcb and trying to cool that with a skimpy bit of copper and aluminium to fit in most peoples cases while at the same time not bending the horizontally hanging pcb, which only gets supported along 2 of its 4 sides. That's why whole swathes of cards don't make it past 2 years anyway let alone the mining ones and it's been that way for years and years and years.

Not to mention cards having more and more owners in these mining times were in and the multiple trips in the hands of clumsy couriers. That's an untold source of failures. Doesn't matter how well its packed any drop with a metal lump attached to the pcb could cause traces to crack.
 
Was looking to buy second hand evga 1080ti because of the warranty policy. Good thing I went gigabyte because they still base warranty on the serial number and not a receipt. Hope this is not a trend for other manufacturers following suit.
 
I was never impressed with EVGA, sure their warranty was great (and still seems good), never had to use it myself though.
Stayed away from them after buying 2 gtx 670 4gb with the SHITTIEST cooler I've ever seen on recent a video card (very loud and high temperature, no heatpipes).

Then ~2 years ago I got a reference EVGA 1080ti because it was all I could find in stock at launch.
But since it was a reference card I knew what to expect at least and it got swapped with AIO water cooling.
 
dont think it changes much, when you register the card you upload the invoice anyways
 
Waiiiiit wait wait wait you're being far to harsh now. In no way is mining 24/7/365 a reasonable workload. I just can't get behind that idea at all. Gaming in an internet cafe all day and all night yeah sure but crunching hashes no.
So 24/7 running in an internet cafe is OK but mining is not? It's obvious that EVGA is anticipating the cryptomining lull that'll put a ton of graphic cards on Ebay, and they just don't wanna honor their warranty. Which is really bad for us consumers as we're gonna snatch up a ton of cheap graphic cards and there's a good chance the seller won't have a copy of the original receipt. When I say cheap, I mean closer to MSRP as everybody turned a blind eye to the crypto price gouging for a while now.

Graphics cards aren't cpus they skirt enough physical limits fitting all those power burning components on a tiny ass pcb and trying to cool that with a skimpy bit of copper and aluminium to fit in most peoples cases while at the same time not bending the horizontally hanging pcb, which only gets supported along 2 of its 4 sides. That's why whole swathes of cards don't make it past 2 years anyway let alone the mining ones and it's been that way for years and years and years.
Now's a good time to make better quality PCB's with better full copper coolers with better capacitors and VRMS. Cause none of the potential failures you just described is the fault of the consumer. If EVGA saved a dollar by using lesser quality components, I would think all these warranty mining cards are the perfect method to get them to think twice about the quality of their components for the future.

Few years ago we had an issue with Intel's Haswell being tested with PRIME95 that made use of AVX, and that would burn up some Intel chips cause apparently the AVX section of the chip is sensitive. People would blame PRIME95 when in reality the fault is that Haswell is a shit chip. Unrealistic work load until someone makes a similar application that makes use of AVX. What if people started to use their graphic cards to do similar math for days if not weeks that wasn't crypto related? You can't blame the work load.
Not to mention cards having more and more owners in these mining times were in and the multiple trips in the hands of clumsy couriers. That's an untold source of failures. Doesn't matter how well its packed any drop with a metal lump attached to the pcb could cause traces to crack.
And again I would encourage manufacturers to make better PCB's with better traces. None of this is bad for the consumer cause we'll benefit. People tend to own graphic cards for more than 2 years now, so again if the card failed within warranty even due to mining, at least it was caught early before it went out of warranty. Cause that failure was gonna fail at some point, so it might as well been within warranty.
 
It's namely painful if you buy a product with a rather long warranty on it, heh.

But yeah, I can see it with the whole mining thing.

It's an annoying requirement but I think that they're doing this because of the current mining craze. I also never have any issues finding my receipt unless it was a local purchase made at Altex or Fry's. Even Best Buy will email you receipts.



I still find them preferable but I have had nothing but good experiences with them in comparison to MSI and ASUS.



Exactly.
 
Well, what if you move country, and you're the original owner, with the receipt?

Have you been to other parts of the world? In certain countries, receipt is the only proof of purchase. No distributor will entertain a warranty claim without any proof of purchase. Even though a product has lifetime warranty, the distributor wants to know the source of the product, whether its meant for this region or oversea. (A product with XX country receipt is not valid in YY country). Lost your receipt and try to get the purchase record from the hardware store? Nope, the storekeeper will not entertain such data retrieval. Trying to register your hardware serial number online? No, there is no such website tailored for that country. Trying to sell a week old GTX1080 online? Your selling price is badly impacted if you don't have a receipt. There's also stolen goods or smuggling issue.
 
And?

Remember the DeskStar, or DeathStar hard drives? Yea, those weren't meant to be used 24/7/365 but turns out that's how servers work. Gaming cards aren't meant to work 24/7 but we've all had our binge moments when 1 hour turned into 15 hours. Doesn't exactly give confidence saying mining cards get abused when they're under similar conditions as gaming, just running all day everyday.

I would look at mining as a very extensive stress test. If the card can't last under mining, it was a shit card.


You work for EVGA? That's exactly what someone would say if they worked for EVGA.


You keep making incorrect comparisons. A 15 hour gaming session is not a 6 month stint of 100% use.

I don't work for EVGA. I just used to be in the mining game, and I also have a fundamental understanding of how businesses work.

Also I'm fully aware of how servers work. If you hard drives are being 100% maxed out 24/7, then there's something wrong with your application.
 
The best warranty is the one you never have to use. It makes me suspect of a company when the best thing people say about the products is how easy it is to get replaced when they break, instead of bragging about how reliable the product is.
 
The best warranty is the one you never have to use. It makes me suspect of a company when the best thing people say about the products is how easy it is to get replaced when they break, instead of bragging about how reliable the product is.

This is exactly the thing..... and what the phrase "lifetime warranty" used to mean: product so reliable that they weren't worried at all about you needing to call in for your warranty because it rarely happened.

Personally, I wrote off EVGA when they changed their warranty policy a couple years ago and made it so that only certain hardware got certain duration of warranty. Basically the further down the stack you went from the ungodly expensive top of the line, the shorter the warranty period got. And who wants to go search the list and match part numbers to find out anyway. It's like when website say, "click this link to read TOS and privacy policy" instead of putting it on the same damn page because they know the majority of folks won't bother clicking that extra link. Yes, we users are humans and lazy as well.
 
EVGA has the WORST customer support and return policy. I now avoid all their products. If quality matters, look elsewhere. If you're looking for someone that honors their warranty, look elsewhere.
 
In this day in age, who buys computer hardware in a store? Pretty much most online websites keep records of your purchase for a good while, and even MicroCenter will print out a receipt from years ago. Of course, who will go through the trouble to print a receipt for someone buying your card off Ebay? Some store receipts aren't even accepted for warranty, which just complicates things more. Also what's to stop me from Photoshop'ing a receipt, cause I doubt the people at EVGA call NewEgg or Amazon to confirm purchases. A paper receipt is just outdated and can be exploited.

Also, why is a receipt needed for warranty? It says EVGA on the card, I don't think there's many other EVGA companies that exist. It has your model and serial numbers on it, therefore it is made by EVGA. The only reason companies want a receipt is cause they know nobody keeps those fucking things around and use that to deter from people claiming warranty.
I don't know about other B&M stores, but Best Buy asks if you want a printed receipt, an electronic copy sent to your e-mail, or both. They have been doing this for a while. Hell, the frickin locally owned place I go to get my car detailed sends me receipts to my e-mail.
 
I have very mixed feelings about EVGA. My 980Ti caught fire (literally) which is very concerning. If I wasn't home it could have burned down my house, killed my dog, etc... I know the chances are low, but fire is fire. When I googled "video card on fire" the first 3 pages of google results are all EVGA. That's pretty concerning.


On the other hand, their customer service and warranty process was exceptional.


I think overall my next card won't be an EVGA anyways just because the fire thing worries me and it seems like I'm not the only person that had an EVGA card catch fire, in fact, it seems common.

edit: Corsair also has the same warranty policy. If you google it, you 100% need an invoice/receipt or you're screwed.
 
I have very mixed feelings about EVGA. My 980Ti caught fire (literally) which is very concerning. If I wasn't home it could have burned down my house, killed my dog, etc... I know the chances are low, but fire is fire. When I googled "video card on fire" the first 3 pages of google results are all EVGA. That's pretty concerning.


On the other hand, their customer service and warranty process was exceptional.


I think overall my next card won't be an EVGA anyways just because the fire thing worries me and it seems like I'm not the only person that had an EVGA card catch fire, in fact, it seems common.

edit: Corsair also has the same warranty policy. If you google it, you 100% need an invoice/receipt or you're screwed.
Shit can happen to any card. I hate a 780 from MSI catch fire. Computer shut down and went out on its own. Didn't freak me out.
 
This is what it says: ( on the EVGA page)

"Subject to the terms and conditions of this Limited Warranty, the Transferable Limited Warranty is available to second-hand purchasers with a valid proof of purchase from a reseller. The limited warranty on any Product which was originally shipped from EVGA or an Authorized Reseller as a demo or prize is not transferable to second-hand purchasers and is not covered by the Transferable Limited Warranty."

I don't get all the stink here.
Now, I don't buy EVGA products unless they are exactly what I want and the best price at the time. In my opinion EVGA has way too many models of the same thing, just sayin'.

Back on point. You can still get a second hand warranty from these guys if you have a receipt, which is unheard of anywhere else.

Again, my opinion, if you buy a used product it's "as is", you should not expect anything else.
 
You know how many stick of ram i have that have a lifetime warranty, that i have zero purchase history for? Into the bin they go.
 
I keep proofs of purchase for every single item I buy which costs more than $20. I never delete electronic receipts, and I have huge box full of paper receipts going back years.
 
You keep making incorrect comparisons. A 15 hour gaming session is not a 6 month stint of 100% use.
It isn't but I'd like to believe that if I decided to run my hardware for 6 months that my EVGA graphics card is going to work just fine. God forbid that even I jump on the whole crypto-mining craze and make some money for myself. EVGA is punishing their consumers for literally using their graphic cards... a lot.

If you're making a product that wasn't designed to run for 6 months, let alone 6 years, you're making graphic cards wrong. Look at what happened to Nvidia with their gpu's in the past that failed due to them overheating. They were clearly not designed to be under load for a long time with the cooling solution used, and no amount of effort will fix one of these chips. They're gone, dead, needs a new machine, and they got in big trouble for it.


I don't work for EVGA. I just used to be in the mining game, and I also have a fundamental understanding of how businesses work.
I also have an understanding of how business works and it's called money, pools of money. Planned obsolescence is a thing, and companies do work it into their products. For example my Corsair CX600 PSU makes this obscene noise when under load cause the fan is obviously going bad. So I do what anyone does with soldering skills, I replace the fan, but I noticed the old fan had this clear plastic shroud that blocked nearly 50% of the fan surface area. Why the fuck would they do that? It literally cuts have of the air flow plus will probably make more noise. My guess is to push more air to the back of the PSU, but I doubt it cause the PSU is much cooler now without it as the fan rarely spins up to max speed.

Another example of this is my Sapphire RX480, which also made a loud leaf blowing noise and I recently decided to replace the thermal compound with a better quality one, and yes it made a huge difference. So much so that it created a new problem, in that the VRMS would get super hot cause the fans would rarely spin up now. That's cause the software only cares about the GPU temp and not the VRM temp, so I have to force Wattman to keep the fan speed at a bare minimum to avoid the VRMs having a meltdown. The graphics card is still way quieter than before, but I will be changing the thermal pads for higher quality. I do have some Fujipoly thermal pads but I don't know if they're thick enough.

My point is manufacturers have a tendency to omit quality components in favor of not only cutting costs but eventually letting the product fail past its warranty to have a hopefully higher turn over rate.
Also I'm fully aware of how servers work. If you hard drives are being 100% maxed out 24/7, then there's something wrong with your application.
The DeskStar were called DeathStars for a reason. Which is odd cause when IBM sold their business to Hitachi, those drives are now some of the most reliable in the industry. Also servers at nearly 100% load for most of the day is not uncommon.
 
I buy EVGA almost exclusively as I have never had to use their warranty service. I have GTX 400 in a friends machine that is bulletproof. My EVGA mobo running my 8 year old i5 750 is apparently bulletproof and I bought a GTX 1070 becuse of all this.

I have fought with MSI, Asus, Gigabyte and Zotec twice, over time, and I buy EVGA because of this. I also only buy Seasonic power supplies.
 
wall of text

TL;DR:
You agreed I'm right about redlining hardware (and changed goalposts)
Companies exist to make money
Talking about reballing Laptop GPUs (Made by nVidia)
Some platitude about planned obsolescence that has nothing to do with the EVGA warranty
Some thing about changing thermal compound (because no one in [H] understands how that works) for a different GPU company that EVGA doesn't even make (they are nVidia only)
A bad hard drive series somehow correlates with EVGA warranty policy

Did I get all that?
 
TL;DR:
Some platitude about planned obsolescence that has nothing to do with the EVGA warranty
Has everything to do with EVGA warranty. The graphic cards were clearly not built well enough to deal with crypto-mining, and now EVGA is afraid of the incoming swarm of warranty repairs from 2nd hand purchases.
Some thing about changing thermal compound (because no one in [H] understands how that works) for a different GPU company that EVGA doesn't even make (they are nVidia only)
Just an example of what many board manufactures do, which of course EVGA is one of them. Everyone cuts corners to save money and create planned obsolescence. If EVGA didn't, why are they afraid of dealing with so many warranty repairs? Clearly this is a response from a possible influx of faulty graphic cards. What the fuck did EVGA do that would make them afraid of a bunch of faulty cards?
A bad hard drive series somehow correlates with EVGA warranty policy
Yes because some of us are justifying this change of warranty because of the crypto miners, because graphic cards aren't meant to run at max load for months, which is bunk.

Did I get all that?
You see what you wanna see.
 
Has everything to do with EVGA warranty. The graphic cards were clearly not built well enough to deal with crypto-mining, and now EVGA is afraid of the incoming swarm of warranty repairs from 2nd hand purchases.

Video cards are literally not built well enough for crypto-mining. They are built to be video cards. You want cards built for mining, you look for ASICs.

Just an example of what many board manufactures do, which of course EVGA is one of them. Everyone cuts corners to save money and create planned obsolescence. If EVGA didn't, why are they afraid of dealing with so many warranty repairs? Clearly this is a response from a possible influx of faulty graphic cards. What the fuck did EVGA do that would make them afraid of a bunch of faulty cards?

They aren't afraid of dealing with warranty repairs. They are afraid of dealing with 4th hand repairs for cards that have changed hands multiple times and been abused well beyond the spirit of the warranty they provided.

Yes because some of us are justifying this change of warranty because of the crypto miners, because graphic cards aren't meant to run at max load for months, which is bunk.

It's not bunk, they are not designed to do that. This isn't rocket science dude. Perhaps you mean months total over 5 years instead of months at a time...those are 2 different use cases.

You see what you wanna see.

I see someone who's mad at literally nothing.
 
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Nearly every recommendation for EVGA products come because of their customer service and warranty policies, and with that gone, there isn't much keeping buyers tied to the brand.

same warranty as always but second-hand buyers will need a copy of your Newegg Invoice ... what's the big deal? You made it sound like EVGA was abandoning their warranty and stellar Customer Service.
 
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same warranty as always but second-hand buyers will need a copy of your Newegg Invoice ... what's the big deal? You made it sound like EVGA was abandoning their warranty and stellar Customer Service.

Yeah, I'm sure that guy on Craigslist will bring it with him. For sure. 100%
 
I also have an understanding of how business works and it's called money, pools of money. Planned obsolescence is a thing, and companies do work it into their products. For example my Corsair CX600 PSU makes this obscene noise when under load cause the fan is obviously going bad. So I do what anyone does with soldering skills, I replace the fan, but I noticed the old fan had this clear plastic shroud that blocked nearly 50% of the fan surface area. Why the fuck would they do that? It literally cuts have of the air flow plus will probably make more noise. My guess is to push more air to the back of the PSU, but I doubt it cause the PSU is much cooler now without it as the fan rarely spins up to max speed.

Uh, that plastic shroud is to direct the airflow to cool the specific area that needs to be cooled (so when the fan runs the air won't just flow everywhere because of the least resistant path)
 
They aren't afraid of dealing with warranty repairs. They are afraid of dealing with 4th hand repairs for cards that have changed hands multiple times and been abused well beyond the spirit of the warranty they provided.

Spirit of the warranty? You either have a 3 year warranty or you don't. It's just that simple. All that's really going on is they are hoping to save money by discouraging 2nd hand sale warranty claims by being able to deny the claim for a paperwork issue.
 
Spirit of the warranty? You either have a 3 year warranty or you don't. It's just that simple. All that's really going on is they are hoping to save money by discouraging 2nd hand sale warranty claims by being able to deny the claim for a paperwork issue.

Keep the paperwork then. It's not hard.
 
Well, what if you move country, and you're the original owner, with the receipt?
Invalid in the new country. You can blame the manufacturer and the distributor for this policy. That's why there's international warranty where you have to pay a premium.
 
Who the fuck keeps their receipt or invoice for every single computer part they buy? Warranty should be time based, not require a piece of paper everyone throws out shortly after buying the item.

Most people aren't interested in being a receipt accountant.

This isn't a realistic requirement...

How hard is it to snap a picture of it with your cell phone and file it away? It isn't as inconvenient as you are making it out to be.
 
I noticed the old fan had this clear plastic shroud that blocked nearly 50% of the fan surface area. Why the fuck would they do that?
It's to protect you from the high voltage circuitry that sits behind the plastic. They don't want you sticking a screwdriver past the fan blades and getting electrocuted. Without that plastic, it won't get a UL listing. Cooling took a hit, yes. It's called safety compromises.
 
How hard is it to snap a picture of it with your cell phone and file it away? It isn't as inconvenient as you are making it out to be.
Oops, that invoice picture was on the hard drive that just died and I need to RMA. Hahaha. Irony.
 
Who the fuck keeps their receipt or invoice for every single computer part they buy?

This isn't a realistic requirement...

Are you serious? Don't we all buy our shit 99% of the time online? Every time I order something and get a order confirmation/receipt/invoice I put it in a "Receipt and Invoices" folder in my email. Or, if you buy your stuff in a store then just take a photo or use a scanning app on your phone to save the receipt to your computer.

This isn't a big deal unless you make it out to be.
 
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It's a big deal because they are changing the policy so they can deny RMAs that were previously legitimate.
 
Has everything to do with EVGA warranty. The graphic cards were clearly not built well enough to deal with crypto-mining

And why would they be? They are not designed for that type of use.

and now EVGA is afraid of the incoming swarm of warranty repairs from 2nd hand purchases.

A warranty is not a free pass to abuse something, it's to protect against defects.

no matter what it is, using a product for other than its intended purpose and breaking it is not a defect and should not be covered under warranty
 
So.......don't let them?

It's not so much the first buyer as it is the second hand market (or third hand market). Sure, I can always look up an invoice on a website where I purchased a video card. But I don't know that I've ever received an original invoice when I bought used.

Just call it what it is. A money saving grab in the wake of cryptomining. I'm sure eVGA sits there sacrifices small animals to appease their gods everyday until the 3 year warranty window on Pascal cards runs out.
 
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