Great work with this testing . A bad batch of capacitors that still passed QC might be fine under cooler temperatures while being more susceptible to thermal damage than they should be . Even if they are significantly derated you won ' t be able to consistently force a failure with a brief torture test , but once they have started to fail they don ' t need to be under load to go short . So this is an issue that could be entirely caused by caps that were damaged to begin with and would have blown sooner or later under any amount of load , or it could be that they would be totally fine if not for the poor cooling design . EVGA ' s cooler should have been better to begin with , and I ' m not inclined to take their PPM failure rate figures at face value . But their fixes work and the scope of the problem has absolutely been exaggerated . One thing I think we should all agree on is that if you still have a stock ACX 3 card you should get it fixed . Higher heat reduces lifespan and there ' s no reason to just let the thing cook itself .