ASUS Quietly Changes ROG Strix GTX 1080 Ti PCB Design

Megalith

Megalith

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ASUS’s ROG Strix GTX 1080 Ti features a custom PCB, which has reportedly been changed. This is a pretty big issue for companies such as EK WB, which offers custom water blocks for it: customers are now being warned of potential incompatibilities.

EK Water Blocks called out Asus for a change to one of its graphics card PCB designs, claiming that several of its GPU waterblocks are no longer compatible with recently minted versions of a previously compatible Asus graphics card, the ROG Strix GTX 1080 Ti. Based on the range of serial numbers, Asus ROG Strix GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards manufactured before November 2017 are still compatible with EKWB’s purpose-built GPU waterblocks.
 
This happened to me with an MSI GTX 970 revision for which I had ordered a listed compatible waterblock for. Bummer deal. Performance-PCs made me eat the restock fee, haven't dealt with them since, felt to me that this was their beef with EK/MSI not updating their sites to reflect a revision had been made.
 
0ptional said:
This happened to me with an MSI GTX 970 revision for which I had ordered a listed compatible waterblock for. Bummer deal. Performance-PCs made me eat the restock fee, haven't dealt with them since, felt to me that this was their beef with EK/MSI not updating their sites to reflect a revision had been made.
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That's not on PPCS. It's on you, EK and the really the card maker. Everyone downstream of the change gets screwed.
 
0ptional said:
I purchased a listed compatible product, a change was made that was not known to either party, or the purchase would have never been made. Sorry, I disagree on that one.
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Actually, no one makes guarantees for fitment. It's always been that way with wc'ing gear. You seem to think it's their job to make sure your parts fit their blocks? I've never seen any vendor even attempt to make any sort of claim. And where do they get their list I wonder? Now the actual culprit is Asus or X AIB. No one ever seems to place blame on them and instead blasts the vendor and the block maker. Now all that said I do really feel for you. And when it comes to gpu blocks, I've always said to never buy before having the card in hand and verifying because as it typically happens, card makers will and do cost cut and change pcb designs to suit their bottom line screwing everyone else in the process. Do you think EK is kosher with this? They just had their R/D wasted. PPCS noe has to deal with revisions on a product they weren't informed about. It is what it is.

MavericK said:
I don't see how the customer would be at fault at all in this case.
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Bolded part above.

Buying w/o first hand confirmation is a risk. It's always been a risk and to say otherwise is ignoring the reality of the hobby.
 
thesmokingman said:
Bolded part above.

Buying w/o first hand confirmation is a risk. It's always been a risk and to say otherwise is ignoring the reality of the hobby.
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I don't buy custom water blocks but from what I can see of EK's site, they do not have exact measurements or specs on the water blocks themselves, so how would you verify exact fit before buying?
 
MavericK said:
I don't buy custom water blocks but from what I can see of EK's site, they do not have exact measurements or specs on the water blocks themselves, so how would you verify exact fit before buying?
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With card in hand, remove the cooler and inspect, take pic of pcb and compare with reference pic from block maker of choice. This isn't always a guarantee but its as close as you can get. Sometimes AIBs change shit w/o telling anyone and that as noted screws everyone in the process. There is always that X factor that is out of eveyone's control. That's why I wrote that its not PPCS' fault, nor EK. And usually, the AIB gets out of this mess scot free. It seems the non-wc crowd hasn't faced this situation much. Around 2013 it was a pandemic, AIBs were changing pcbs on a regular basis, anyone remember the 7950s, evga 580s?
 
I wonder what Asus had to gain by changing the design... unless they are planning on coming out with their own water blocks for it?
 
Burticus said:
I wonder what Asus had to gain by changing the design... unless they are planning on coming out with their own water blocks for it?
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It comes down to cost. If the design was good to begin with (ie not needing to fix a problem) the most likely reason is they want to use cheaper components.

Alternatively its an issue of scale. They may change a design so that all their cards currently being manufactured use as many similar parts as possible. This allows them to use the same parts across multipe products which usually also leads to cost savings and/or flexibilty in production line utilisation.
 
ASUS can suck an egg because some dumb ass reason on all their cards but the bare ass basic reference model one they converted one of the display ports to HDMI . Now this.
 
They made bad bet on VR. A lot of older TVs don't have DP and the Vive and Oculus work better over HDMI. Two HDMIs are useful for the Vive and Rift for some... too bad VR really isn't the "next big thing" people were thinking it would be in 2016.
 
God damn FFS! After many years I decide to build a new PC and going from surprise to surprise!

First I find out about Trident Z RGB memory bricking issues due to bad software controlling the LEDs (solution found), then the Intel Security breach, then Asus Rampage VIE issues with the VROC Key and RAID support not working (found a key), then Samsung botches 960 Pros with bad firmware and had to wait till I receive mine to see it is f...d up (it's not), then I read about this and my plan for watercoolign the Asus Stric 1080Ti goes to hell (pheww mine is not included in the incompatible serial numbers range).

There are also issues with several installtions on the above H/W and Windows Creators Update.

And not to mention the magnificence of the professional 4K monitor market!



Since when did the PC market became an endless Beta Testing arena?
 
I had this problem with a gigabyte motherboard I purchased. I no longer shop at the water cooling parts store (online) that refused to take back an unused block.


GreenOrbs said:
They made bad bet on VR. A lot of older TVs don't have DP and the Vive and Oculus work better over HDMI. Two HDMIs are useful for the Vive and Rift for some... too bad VR really isn't the "next big thing" people were thinking it would be in 2016.
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AAA games are now coming out in VR form and the 1st gen HMDs plus controller kits have fallen to reasonable prices. There's now even skyrim VR on the PSVR. There's 254 games listed with the tag VR on steam and it's doing just fine.. roadtovr.com is a pretty good site for all things VR.
 
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Stick to reference designs... more reliable. ASUS probably found a flaw or some way to cut costs even further.
 
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I actually just helped a friend order parts today, in the neighborhood of 3k. We saved a bunch by not buying the Asus and ek we planned on.

Went evga instead and will refit it for custom piping later. Thanks for the save H
 
JargonGR said:
God damn FFS! After many years I decide to build a new PC and going from surprise to surprise!

First I find out about Trident Z RGB memory bricking issues due to bad software controlling the LEDs (solution found), then the Intel Security breach, then Asus Rampage VIE issues with the VROC Key and RAID support not working (found a key), then Samsung botches 960 Pros with bad firmware and had to wait till I receive mine to see it is f...d up (it's not), then I read about this and my plan for watercoolign the Asus Stric 1080Ti goes to hell (pheww mine is not included in the incompatible serial numbers range).

There are also issues with several installtions on the above H/W and Windows Creators Update.

And not to mention the magnificence of the professional 4K monitor market!



Since when did the PC market became an endless Beta Testing arena?
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It's even worse, people pay for Alpha stage Software, put up with bugs and errors and think it'Äs normal, it is NOT !

Buy finished products only i
 
JargonGR said:
Since when did the PC market became an endless Beta Testing arena?
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Hmmm lets see it became that way about the time you had to have cutting edge product made on short product cycles and you handed over cash for it.

If all the gotchas are going to give you heartburn wait a cycle out and you'll have a year worth and thousands of pages of research and experiences to go off of and your performance will probably only be 6% lower.
 
0ptional said:
This happened to me with an MSI GTX 970 revision for which I had ordered a listed compatible waterblock for. Bummer deal. Performance-PCs made me eat the restock fee, haven't dealt with them since, felt to me that this was their beef with EK/MSI not updating their sites to reflect a revision had been made.
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It's called "good" customer service for a reason. They should have refunded your money with no restocking fee and thanked you for alerting them to the issue.
You did the right thing by not shopping there again.
 
gunbust3r said:
Hmmm lets see it became that way about the time you had to have cutting edge product made on short product cycles and you handed over cash for it.

If all the gotchas are going to give you heartburn wait a cycle out and you'll have a year worth and thousands of pages of research and experiences to go off of and your performance will probably only be 6% lower.
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Although all of the issues I mentioned have already been dealt with and I am lucky to not have to face any, what you propose has indeed crossed my mind before purchase.

However, all of the hardware I bought has been released before several months or even earlier (1080Ti, Samsung 960Pro) so besides the motherboard and CPU most should be mature already.
Both of these the Asus Rampage VI Extreme and i7940x offer quite a lot more compared to the previous generation, certainly more than 6% in performance.

It simply made no sense to buy an x99 nor was there a 14 Core CPU on the previous gen platform (besides going XEON) and X299 also brought some improvements not available before.

With this motherboard I got:

Fastest Wifi available (ad)
NVMe RAID arrays only possible with expensive hardware controllers (+bootable with VROC)
10Gbe Networking
USB 3.1 Gen 2
Lots of PCIE lanes for expansion
Unprecedented Blink onboard (LEDs etc should anyone care)
Great amount of FAN, Water pumps and other headers all controled by FAN Expert 4 (and upconming AI Suite 4)

I did not find it prudent to spend a lot of money for an older 10 Core CPU and X99 when this was available. Only buying second hand at a great price would make sense.

In my case though the Hardware is only half of the story. Setting up my PC for work is time consuming process before I have all the software configured and running the way I want it + storage. Doing it regularly is not something viable. Even when I am up and running with the new build there will be some time before I switch to the new machine and totally abandon my old one.

But in essence you are right - waiting a cycle might be prudent in some cases but HEDT is supposedly a platform implementing this practice already.
 
LBJM said:
Not for longevity. Custom PCBs are made with better parts...
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No they aren't generally, there are a few exceptions for the stupidly overbuilt LN2 cards. Most of the time companies like Gigabyte etc, use cheaper parts to cut costs. A good example of this is AIB's use sleeve bearing fans that die quickly.
 
Well here is an analysis of the Asus Strix 1080Ti - I am no expert but to me it looks better than reference but I might be wrong.

 
LBJM said:
Not for longevity. Custom PCBs are made with better parts...
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Not necessarily true in all cases. Historically, AMD pcb designs have been overbuilt and Nvidia pcb designs have left some things to be desired however Nvidia has improved as of recently. They've learned some lessons as we hoped. That said, with customs sometimes they improve and sometimes they just make shit more complicated for no reason, like Asus who has had a historically troubled gpu division.

JargonGR said:
Well here is an analysis of the Asus Strix 1080Ti - I am no expert but to me it looks better than reference but I might be wrong.

Click to expand...


It's Asus, they always find a way to screw up, hence this thread. Doh!
 
thesmokingman said:
Not necessarily true in all cases. Historically, AMD pcb designs have been overbuilt and Nvidia pcb designs have left some things to be desired however Nvidia has improved as of recently. They've learned some lessons as we hoped. That said, with customs sometimes they improve and sometimes they just make shit more complicated for no reason, like Asus who has had a historically troubled gpu division.
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I said custom PCB Ie not made by AMD or Nvidia. The reference designs by both companies are NOT rebust.


aokman said:
No they aren't generally, there are a few exceptions for the stupidly overbuilt LN2 cards. Most of the time companies like Gigabyte etc, use cheaper parts to cut costs. A good example of this is AIB's use sleeve bearing fans that die quickly.
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I was most or less talking about Asus custom PCB designs. I don't buy gigabyte anymore because of their quality issues and poor support.. I currently own an asus 1080 ti strix, but it's the first rev and my EK waterblock fits fine.
 
0ptional said:
This happened to me with an MSI GTX 970 revision for which I had ordered a listed compatible waterblock for. Bummer deal. Performance-PCs made me eat the restock fee, haven't dealt with them since, felt to me that this was their beef with EK/MSI not updating their sites to reflect a revision had been made.
Click to expand...

This is par for the course from PPCs. I've had absolutely horrible CS with them in the past. They even threatened me at my school address over items they accidentally shipped to me. Which they didn't. Which even had they done so - would have become my property as receiving anything in the mail makes the property the legal possession of the signor. Ironically, it was for a few products that I had absolutely no use for - and would gladly have returned had they shipped to me in error (supposedly it was for a motherboard I had no use for, for a different platform and chip). Morons.
 
LBJM said:
I said custom PCB Ie not made by AMD or Nvidia. The reference designs by both companies are NOT rebust.
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You're not making any sense. AMD reference designs have always been overbuilt. That means there is literally no need to buy a custom AMD card. On Nvidia, their reference designs have generally been weaker but they've improved a bit as of recently so your point applies here. But not with AMD.
 
LBJM said:
I said custom PCB Ie not made by AMD or Nvidia. The reference designs by both companies are NOT rebust.




I was most or less talking about Asus custom PCB designs. I don't buy gigabyte anymore because of their quality issues and poor support.. I currently own an asus 1080 ti strix, but it's the first rev and my EK waterblock fits fine.
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Bullshit lol.... NVIDIA reference designs are very robust, designed alongside the GPU and will handle anything you throw at them. Just because you can blow the ass out of the VRM with LN2, doesn't mean they are poorly designed, you are pusing them well beyond spec.

AMD/ATI have never made their own cards, they are built by AIB's
 
aokman said:
Bullshit lol.... NVIDIA reference designs are very robust, designed alongside the GPU and will handle anything you throw at them. Just because you can blow the ass out of the VRM with LN2, doesn't mean they are poorly designed, you are pusing them well beyond spec.
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Some of the VRM parts Nvidia has used are not the best, just the easiest to source. If you look at custom PCBs designed out of the box for overclocking you will see the higher quality parts. Look at pictures of the 980 ti custom PCBs and compared them to the titan of that generation.

aokman said:
AMD/ATI have never made their own cards, they are built by AIB's
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ATI made their own cards in the past. Nvidia uses Asus for the most part when it comes to their first run reference designs.

thesmokingman said:
You're not making any sense. AMD reference designs have always been overbuilt. That means there is literally no need to buy a custom AMD card. On Nvidia, their reference designs have generally been weaker but they've improved a bit as of recently so your point applies here. But not with AMD.
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The Sapphire custom PCB version of an AMD card is always better in design than the AMD reference. I do agree that AMD's PCB design tend to be more rebust than Nvidia's reference designs, but that has been changing.
 
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