Had another EVGA 5173 burn out on me. I only had one failure until I started OCing their memory. The only thing I can think of is they didn't engineer the cards capable of handling full TDP including the memory. They were operating just fine for about a month and a half until I OC'd the memory like two weeks ago. Now I'm getting a chain of failures.
However, I have seen delayed failures which have nothing to do with OCs at all (MSI cards).
Failures goes like this > rig turns off > either refuses to turn back on until faulty card is removed OR shower of sparks that shoot out of the burned out component on the EVGA card.
This is the second one I've had fail specifically at this spot. I've had others fail, but it's under the heatsink and frontplate (above the PCB) so I can't determine where the sparks are coming from. I assumed it had to do with the thermal pad cooling issue, however, there is no way a thermal pad would help this little guy on the back of the card.
As I've mentioned the only failures I've been having are 5173s, not 6173s or FTW cards. It could be due to the backplate? It's hard to tell if the backplate actually makes contact with this specific component. Either way it looks like multiple things are going wrong with these cards. This failure is on the back of the card and there is no way a thermal pad would help. Read on.
These specific cards are kept very close to a air intake which is currently about 20f. There is no way they're overheating, this can only be an eventual stress failure due to utilizing too much voltage for either a underrated component or one that is of very low quality. However the front failure I'm pretty sure is different from the back failures I've been having. It's not just the fans spinning to low as well (back components aren't even cooled by the fan). I have them in machines further away from the intake and they do the same thing.
If you have these cards and you're running them at low TDP to save on efficiency you're playing with fire, quite literally. I run mine full TDP (112%). You probably can avoid failures by running them at 100% as well. I haven't tested this, but I assume so.
Either way, highly avoid getting these cards. So far I haven't had any failures with any of the other models though.