HP Cries Defect on More Nvidia Cards

Just when we thought the problem was limited to notebooks only, it looks as though HP is having some woes with desktop GPUs from Nvidia as well. HP is claiming 38 different desktop models are plagued with faulty Nvidia graphics cards.

Quoting these claims in a statement from the company to PC Pro :

“HP is aware that certain Nvidia chips used in HP Pavilion Slimline Desktop PCs may experience issues. Some of these computer may not boot or may not display video. Computers experiencing either or both of these symptoms, attributable to the computer’s motherboard, are eligible for HP’s Limited Warranty Service Enhancement.”

Several of the systems on HP’s list of affected models are sold specifically in the UK, including the Pavilion s3015.uk, s3040.uk and the s3115.uk - Here is the complete list of affected systems :

Link directly to HP’s defect list

Nvidia claims the issue with the HP desktops isn’t entirely linked to the laptop GPU issues. “It is slimline, notebook-like design but there is no conclusive evidence that the failure mechanism is the same as the notebook issue we announced in July,” said the company’s director of product PR Luciano Alibrandi in a statement to PC Pro.

Earlier this year, Nvidia said it was being prevented from revealing the full scale of the problem with its GPUs by its partners (finger pointing wars). Nvidia is currently being sued by some of its shareholders for allegedly covering up the problems with the faulty GPUs as well.

Toms had caught up with a few inside sources employed by Dell and HPs technical support centers that have access to ‘labs’ that provide technical support representatives the ability to get ‘hands-on’ with the products that its customer base ‘call in about’. The sources wish to remain anonymous for obvious reasons however. Both sources expressed the same types of concerns, quoting one of them :

“I am not surprised that there are GPU failures. Regardless of the GPU manufacturer, be it ATI or Nvidia, most of the pre-fab systems these days are designed so poorly. It seems as though the engineers responsible for designing systems turn a blind eye to cooling issues. They worry too much about packing things into small places or neglect the fact that components need adequate cooling – we see a large number of over-heating issues among many systems that lead to part failure.”

And quoting something that the second source had mentioned that the first did not :

“The system designers need to remember that the consumers purchasing these systems are not in-the-know – they shove their computers into poorly ventilated areas and the systems already have poor cooling design as it is. It is a disaster waiting to happen. I personally deal with at least one heat related failure per week - and thats just me, there are thousands more people that help our customers.”

Although one source is from Dell – there have been no reports yet of Dell jumping on the Nvidia failure wagon.