Warning: EVGA has changed their pinout on some PSUs

Hello EVGA, can ya smell what the BBB, AG, CPSC, and my lawyer be cookin ?

Cause it's not gonna smell very good for you....

IF EVGA had been smart, they never would have admitted to changing the pin-outs, but since they did, then it's their responsibility to advise the customer of that fact AND provide the new cables to avoid this exact issue... I'm not a lawyer, but have a pretty good understanding of liability clauses, so IMO, they have painted themselves into a corner, and it would be way cheaper to just buy the guy some new drives to avoid a potentially very expensive lawsuit, which they would most likely lose anyways :D
 
Lakados said:
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...in-layout-and-killed-all-sata-powered-devices

TLDR;
Guy RMA'd his EVGA PSU
The one they sent back (same model name) had a different pin out but fit his existing cables.
Plugged everything back in and pop.
EVGA acknowledged that the pin out had changed but said no to replacing the blown hardware.
Click to expand...

Yikes.

At the very least they should have changed the connectors to make sure old modular cables didn't fit.

That is terrible risk based engineering. Always do a DFMEA and put design mitigations in place to stop things like this from happening.

All of us who do this eventually wind up with a box full of cables, and the modular cables are notoriously terribly labeled, and it is only a matter of time before a mixup happens. I try to stay on top of it, keep the cables in packages specifically related to the PSU they came with, but this is my number one fear when I go to grab a modular PSU cable. I didn't screw up and put this one in the wrong box did I?

And if EVGA fucking RMA'd one PSU with another, they should totally own this one and replace hardware. That is totally 100% on them. I used to think of EVGA as one of the better companies in this regard. I guess I was wrong.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
And if EVGA fucking RMA'd one PSU with another, they should totally own this one and replace hardware. That is totally 100% on them. I used to think of EVGA as one of the better companies in this regard. I guess I was wrong.
Click to expand...
The person or persons could caused this fuckujp should have their asses fired by EVGA pronto.
 
EVGA is likely circling the drain. I recall some of their new PSUs they sell have a 3 year warranty. Not sure what design they are, but 3 years is exceptionally low for a PSU warranty. Typically it is 10 for the good ones, 6-7 for mid range models. I don't think they've been updating their motherboard BIOS too much as of late either.
 
Flogger23m said:
EVGA is likely circling the drain. I recall some of their new PSUs they sell have a 3 year warranty. Not sure what design they are, but 3 years is exceptionally low for a PSU warranty. Typically it is 10 for the good ones, 6-7 for mid range models. I don't think they've been updating their motherboard BIOS too much as of late either.
Click to expand...
I mean, I think they started circling the drain when they discontinued GPUs. Yes I know their official excuse was that nVidia was mean and wouldn't let them make enough money... but I don't buy that. I don't see all these other manufacturers continuing to sell a product that doesn't make any money or loses money. I think it was that they wanted to downsize a bunch of staff and this was the excuse they came up with.

It's sad, because I loved eVGA GPUs but ya, I would be real wary of buying any of their products now because I think they are in the corporate death spiral where they cut people to try and save money, which makes their products shittier, which hurts sales, so they cut more people, so their products suck more, etc, etc.
 
Sycraft said:
I mean, I think they started circling the drain when they discontinued GPUs. Yes I know their official excuse was that nVidia was mean and wouldn't let them make enough money... but I don't buy that. I don't see all these other manufacturers continuing to sell a product that doesn't make any money or loses money. I think it was that they wanted to downsize a bunch of staff and this was the excuse they came up with.

It's sad, because I loved eVGA GPUs but ya, I would be real wary of buying any of their products now because I think they are in the corporate death spiral where they cut people to try and save money, which makes their products shittier, which hurts sales, so they cut more people, so their products suck more, etc, etc.
Click to expand...
EVGA's owners have been looking to retire for a while, they made more in 1 year during COVID selling GPUs to miners than they made on GPUs in the decade beforehand. If you are looking for an out that is as good as it will get.
EVGA outsources 90% of their construction and manufacturing, they can't match the profit margins of the other AIBs who are fully integrated and it was gradually bringing them down and their much-beloved warranty process was a noose around their neck, because all those mining cards, getting worked into the ground, you know every one of them was bound to come back to them sooner than not.

They made a big show of the exit as a smoke screen.
 
Assuming that the story actually played out as described, then that is 100% unacceptable on EVGA's part. If they had included replacement cables, then that would be different. But they were literally setting this person up for failure. EVGA's only possible reasons are that they either didn't know or didn't care, and neither of those reasons are acceptable.
 
Lakados said:
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...in-layout-and-killed-all-sata-powered-devices

TLDR;
Guy RMA'd his EVGA PSU
The one they sent back (same model name) had a different pin out but fit his existing cables.
Plugged everything back in and pop.
EVGA acknowledged that the pin out had changed but said no to replacing the blown hardware.
Click to expand...
Well that is pretty bad,
Seasonic kinda did this to me, I had a X750 I needed to RMA they send a X750 MkII which had totally different cables and caused some confusion... luckily it was physically possible to use the old (now wrong) cables and blow my pc up, However it did mean waiting some additional days for Seasonic to send me the cables for the power supply they sent me.
 
Sounds like they didn't even send him the new cables that had the correct pin layout at first. mean, that's really low EVGA. What did you expect the person to do?
 
cpufrost said:
You would think after ~20 years of modular power supplies there would be a standard that everyone followed.
Click to expand...
For whatever reason, it is just something that has never happened on the PSU side. On the other side we have plenty of standardization, of course. But on the PUS side? Nope, manufacturers do what they like.

I THINK that is one thing that has changed with 12V-6x6 I believe that is standardized on both the GPU and PSU end for the PSUs that actually have the dedicated connector. But in general with modular PSUs there is no standard on the PSU end.
 
cpufrost said:
You would think after ~20 years of modular power supplies there would be a standard that everyone followed.
Click to expand...
^^ So many other interfaces are industry-standardized. I just don't get it, unless the owners of EVGA plan to fold up their tents in the middle of the night and head out to parts unknown.

I got a 3060 Ti from them at MSRP when they had that program. I thought that was very customer-friendly of them. "Hey, WE aren't going to gouge you, the retail customer." So I liked EVGA, but that was so then. Now I wouldn't buy a damn thing from them and they go on my vendor shitlist, along with O R I C O and M U S H K I N.
 
cpufrost said:
You would think after ~20 years of modular power supplies there would be a standard that everyone followed.
Click to expand...

There's two pretty solid standards for wire color. Standard 1: black : ground, red: 5v, yellow: 12v, orange: 3.3v, etc. Standard 2: black: everything.

Standard 2 is a lot more popular these days. But if your cables and your PSU were marked by color standards, at least you could see something was wrong when you were plugging in.
 
toast0 said:
There's two pretty solid standards for wire color. Standard 1: black : ground, red: 5v, yellow: 12v, orange: 3.3v, etc. Standard 2: black: everything.

Standard 2 is a lot more popular these days. But if your cables and your PSU were marked by color standards, at least you could see something was wrong when you were plugging in.
Click to expand...
Not really as you don't know how the PSU side pinout. Few, if any, PSUs have labels depicting the voltage of each pin.
 
Why not use the same justification for not including cables/chargers for cell phones? Force every psu manufacturer to standardize to reduce "e-waste".
In the end it would probably be more profitable for psu manufacturers if they didn't have to provide cables with every psu sold. Smaller packages, smaller Bom, copper price volatility, etc.
 
Wat said:
Why not use the same justification for not including cables/chargers for cell phones? Force every psu manufacturer to standardize to reduce "e-waste".
In the end it would probably be more profitable for psu manufacturers if they didn't have to provide cables with every psu sold. Smaller packages, smaller Bom, copper price volatility, etc.
Click to expand...
Phone companies used the guise of going green to be cheap and stop supplying free cables so you have to buy more. There is no danger element in this decision.
Reusing cables on PSU's is dangerous if the cables are damaged or slightly out of spec. I certainly would expect vendor guaranteed spec cables in the box of a PSU that can harm you or your system if something goes wrong. Lawsuit central which I hope the guy who found this issue starts with EVGA.
 
I don't have firsthand knowledge, but I was active on the EVGA forums and their reddit in the past. EVGA is effectively gone, and has been for about a year. Their engineers and motherboard teams were let go and nothing new is coming that isn't a copy/paste rebrand from another vendor. The support people who were technical and cared about the products are gone (see also, "EVGA" Jacob went to Nvidia last year). What's left are a handful of butts-in-seats people doing basic support and RMA or coordinating the marketing and sales of the rebranded stuff.

philb2 said:
The person or persons could caused this fuckujp should have their asses fired by EVGA pronto.
Click to expand...
They should be be, but there may not be any accountable, "career"-level people left at EVGA. Not much to be gained firing an overseas, teir-1 helpdesk guy who did this RMA and didn't know enough to warn the customer.
bigdogchris said:
Sounds like they didn't even send him the new cables that had the correct pin layout at first. mean, that's really low EVGA. What did you expect the person to do?
Click to expand...
Unskilled support people and no one left to direct the guidelines for such things. They're following their old policies from the the high-end PSU / Super Flower days when designs didn't change and the cables were (mostly) interchangeable. That system doesn't work when you've switched to lower-end manufacturering partners.

Flogger23m said:
EVGA is likely circling the drain. I recall some of their new PSUs they sell have a 3 year warranty. Not sure what design they are, but 3 years is exceptionally low for a PSU warranty. Typically it is 10 for the good ones, 6-7 for mid range models. I don't think they've been updating their motherboard BIOS too much as of late either.
Click to expand...
They're down the drain and gone already, coasting on the brand and built-up goodwill. Last BIOS updates were a year ago and those are probably the last ever as the motherboard team and engineers are all gone. As for the PSU's... EVGA stopped using Super Flower in 2019-2020. The high quality, high wattage, 10-year warrantied models were all Super Flower.

Heard some speculations about this: COVID supply shortages, component tarriffs, changes in OEM pricing (EVGA wasn't getting the profit they wanted per unit). All that matters is this - they dropped Super Flower as manufacturer and switched to FSP (GQ , P+, others). Cannot stress this enough: most FSP units are dogshit by comparison (cheaper components, noiser, lower efficiencies in general). Hence the 3-year warranties.

Sycraft said:
I mean, I think they started circling the drain when they discontinued GPUs. Yes I know their official excuse was that nVidia was mean and wouldn't let them make enough money... but I don't buy that. I don't see all these other manufacturers continuing to sell a product that doesn't make any money or loses money. I think it was that they wanted to downsize a bunch of staff and this was the excuse they came up with.

It's sad, because I loved eVGA GPUs but ya, I would be real wary of buying any of their products now because I think they are in the corporate death spiral where they cut people to try and save money, which makes their products shittier, which hurts sales, so they cut more people, so their products suck more, etc, etc.
Click to expand...
Lakados said:
EVGA's owners have been looking to retire for a while, they made more in 1 year during COVID selling GPUs to miners than they made on GPUs in the decade beforehand. If you are looking for an out that is as good as it will get.
EVGA outsources 90% of their construction and manufacturing, they can't match the profit margins of the other AIBs who are fully integrated and it was gradually bringing them down and their much-beloved warranty process was a noose around their neck, because all those mining cards, getting worked into the ground, you know every one of them was bound to come back to them sooner than not.

They made a big show of the exit as a smoke screen.
Click to expand...

I'd wager it was a perfect storm of events: owner getting old, big paydays during the GPU/mining madness of 2017-18 and the pandemic, tarriffs (or the threat of future ones), losing/moving on from quality OEMs like Super Flower, Nvidia's disdain for their AIB partners, subsequently killing off their core GPU business, etc.
 
souper82 said:
I've seen this awful news in several other places online, makes you wonder what their endgame is...
Personally i prefer Corsair or Seasonic for my PSU's.
Click to expand...

The endgame is likely to just limp along as much as possible until they’re forced to close up shop. The owner doesn’t want to sell the company so the ship is just going to keep sinking until it’s hit the bottom the ocean.
 
Derangel said:
The endgame is likely to just limp along as much as possible until they’re forced to close up shop. The owner doesn’t want to sell the company so the ship is just going to keep sinking until it’s hit the bottom the ocean.
Click to expand...
Anyone know is is/are the owner(s)? Where are they based out of?

Reading through this thread, EVGA is "dead to me."
 
SamuelL421 said:
switched to FSP (GQ , P+, others). Cannot stress this enough: most FSP units are dogshit by comparison (cheaper components, noiser, lower efficiencies in general). Hence the 3-year warranties.
Click to expand...
FSP = ???
 
Please standardize the PSU cable pin layout for fk's sake...
I think Corsair also swapped the pin layout on their modular PSU's a while back, and an older generation cable would fit on a newer generation and would basically fry your hardware.
 
Derangel said:
The endgame is likely to just limp along as much as possible until they’re forced to close up shop. The owner doesn’t want to sell the company so the ship is just going to keep sinking until it’s hit the bottom the ocean.
Click to expand...

Which is disappointing. I know he didn't want to sell the company. But letting it die a slow, painful death is probably worse and tarnishes the once great name.

I know it would have been a massive undertaking but it would have been nice if Corsair, another California company, took over EVGA's GPU division. Corsair has already done some water cooled GPU coolers in the past. They have a decent reputation. Would have been nice to see them effectively pick up EVGA's employees and GPU division.
 
Flogger23m said:
Which is disappointing. I know he didn't want to sell the company. But letting it die a slow, painful death is probably worse and tarnishes the once great name.

I know it would have been a massive undertaking but it would have been nice if Corsair, another California company, took over EVGA's GPU division. Corsair has already done some water cooled GPU coolers in the past. They have a decent reputation. Would have been nice to see them effectively pick up EVGA's employees and GPU division.
Click to expand...
I'm sure they would have but with slim margins and nvidia undercutting them constantly it just doesn't seem worth it.
 
cpufrost said:
You would think after ~20 years of modular power supplies there would be a standard that everyone followed.
Click to expand...

This is especially true when you consider that 90% of top tier PSUs are little more than whitelabeled selections from one of the two actual PSU manufacturers. It's not like EVGA and Corsair actually do any design work on their PSUs beyond the logo stickers and fancy boxes.

MooCow said:
I think Corsair also swapped the pin layout on their modular PSU's a while back, and an older generation cable would fit on a newer generation and would basically fry your hardware.
Click to expand...

This is actually a real concern of mine right now. Cosair is in the middle of screwing up an RMA replacement for me. They did require that the original cables be sent back to them, but I have a custom cable set in the build already. I'm not really sure how to check that the replacement PSU, if it ever arrives, will be pin compatible without googling some pinouts and checking with my DMM.

Flogger23m said:
I know it would have been a massive undertaking but it would have been nice if Corsair, another California company, took over EVGA's GPU division. Corsair has already done some water cooled GPU coolers in the past. They have a decent reputation. Would have been nice to see them effectively pick up EVGA's employees and GPU division.
Click to expand...

Corsair is doing some pretty deep cost cutting these days. They shut down all of their live customer support for everything but their prebuilts. If it's not a Twitch stream of RGB blinking, they're probably not interested.
 
My friend got that "99% efficient" gallium nitride capacitor Corsair PSU. He bought 2 of them. One of them was defective. When he contacted Corsair, they said they could either send him a "Grade B unit" as a replacement, or give him $ for credit towards his next Corsair purchase (but not a full refund). He wasn't too thrilled to hear the "Grade B" replacement plan. Otherwise, the PSU is very small and compact for being rated as 1500+ watts. It's like 30% smaller in size for PSU's of that class.
 
That's actually the same unit that I had fail on me, the AX1600i. The bootstrap circuit died, so it couldn't power on after it had been turned off.

It's actually a pretty decent PSU. It is efficient and it is a full 20mm shorter length than the 1600W EVGA units. The difference means basically doubling the available space for routing cables in many cases. That space really makes a difference when you need to route all 10 PCI cables.

The OCP on it is pretty touchy though. I've found that it trips far more easily than on the EVGA units. That can be a really big deal with spiky loads like when Octane hits the denoiser stage. The difference means the Corsair can't be used in 4x3090 builds while the EVGA could.

To bring it back to the OP, if EVGA ends up dead to me as a result of this, I'm not sure where I'll go instead. I've been dreaming of Cooler Master finally shipping their high output PSUs, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.
 
MooCow said:
My friend got that "99% efficient" gallium nitride capacitor Corsair PSU. He bought 2 of them. One of them was defective. When he contacted Corsair, they said they could either send him a "Grade B unit" as a replacement, or give him $ for credit towards his next Corsair purchase (but not a full refund). He wasn't too thrilled to hear the "Grade B" replacement plan. Otherwise, the PSU is very small and compact for being rated as 1500+ watts. It's like 30% smaller in size for PSU's of that class.
Click to expand...

Like it was dead on arrival? If something is DOA return it to the store and let them handle it. Absolutely do not contact the manufacturer and go through any of their BS.
 
Lesson? Don't buy EVGA PSU's...

They are throwing away all of the goodwill they had built for their brand...

Seasonic is the way to go.
 
sharknice said:
Like it was dead on arrival? If something is DOA return it to the store and let them handle it. Absolutely do not contact the manufacturer and go through any of their BS.
Click to expand...
The whole PC would shut off randomly under load. I brought a test rig PC of much slower / older specs and the same thing kept happening. I sold it for parts only for about $80 on eBay, but I really wish I knew how to fix it.

When my friend bought two of them, I knew they were a SICK DEAL at the time. He got his first one for $340. I knew that was a killer deal. The price quickly went up to $550 or so before Corsair discontinued it.
 
dogDAbone said:
Hello EVGA, can ya smell what the BBB, AG, CPSC, and my lawyer be cookin ?

Cause it's not gonna smell very good for you....

IF EVGA had been smart, they never would have admitted to changing the pin-outs, but since they did, then it's their responsibility to advise the customer of that fact AND provide the new cables to avoid this exact issue... I'm not a lawyer, but have a pretty good understanding of liability clauses, so IMO, they have painted themselves into a corner, and it would be way cheaper to just buy the guy some new drives to avoid a potentially very expensive lawsuit, which they would most likely lose anyways :D
Click to expand...
OCZ sold me a defective PSU in 2005 and my mom was a lawyer and had sued them in Federal Court with her friend that was also a lawyer but more experienced in federal court. They settled for $5,000 very quickly.
 
Wade88 said:
OCZ sold me a defective PSU in 2005 and my mom was a lawyer and had sued them in Federal Court with her friend that was also a lawyer but more experienced in federal court. They settled for $5,000 very quickly.
Click to expand...
What happened, did it damage your other components and they wouldn't replace them?
 
MooCow said:
My friend got that "99% efficient" gallium nitride capacitor Corsair PSU. He bought 2 of them. One of them was defective. When he contacted Corsair, they said they could either send him a "Grade B unit" as a replacement, or give him $ for credit towards his next Corsair purchase (but not a full refund).
Click to expand...
Huh? That's BS. Makes a joke of the warranty. Maybe this friend should contact the Federal Trade Commission.

Corsair used to be one of my GO TO brands. Loved my 800D case, kept it for years and years, and wish I still had it. But now with the cost-cuttiing and this incident, it's now on my brand shitlist , which just got EVGA added to it.
 
This was during 2020 - 2021, around the height of the supply chain disruption. So I'm sure that had some influence on the situation. But yes, it was a pretty shit response from Corsair to only provide a Grade B Unit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top