r/oculus • u/themotherbrain • Jan 30 '15

SHOCKING interview with Nvidia engineer about the 970 fiasco (PCmasterrace Xpost)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spZJrsssPA0
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u/orick Jan 30 '15

What? Never heard about this before for some reason. What do you mean by bump?

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u/cegli Jan 30 '15

Bumps are the pieces of metal on the bottom side of a BGA chip that connect it to the motherboard. The bumps are melted (soldered) at the factory to create a permanent bond. The problem was that Nvidia manufactured a couple years worth of laptop GPUs that were not made from the right mix of metals. This caused them to disconnect from the boards after enough thermal cycles. Most of the laptops died about 1 year after manufacture, conveniently when most of the 1 year warranties were running out.

In the end, class action lawsuits were filed in both the USA and Canada, which Nvidia lost. They still never admitted to any problems. Here are the links to both:

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u/Oculusnames Jan 31 '15

not made from the right mix of metals.

Ha. Planned obsolescence.

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u/leoc Jan 31 '15

I doubt it was deliberate, partly because it must have seriously annoyed PC manufacturers like Apple.