EVGA's problem with its RTX 3090 graphics cards and Amazon's New World are maybe not limited to those GPUs. Or even just that game. After investigating the matter in detail, German tech site,
Igor's Lab, has discovered that the fans on affected cards are trying to hit ridiculously high speeds and that hardware monitoring is the most likely culprit.
If you run fan monitoring software on the affected cards, you'll spot some ludicrous fan speeds briefly being targeted. Igor managed to grab a shot of this happening with a GeForce RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra, where the fan speeds briefly jumped up from their more regular 2,400RPM to over 200,000RPM. Gulp.
The fans obviously can't spin that fast, but that doesn't stop them from trying. With quite the whine for anyone in earshot. Something fundamental is clearly wrong here, and in case you're wondering, setting your own fan speeds, either manually or by creating your own fan profiles, doesn't seem to have any effect either.
The only answer appears to be lowering the GPU's power limit to 50–60%. That way the card never pushes itself so hard that it becomes a problem. Like a serious,
GPU destroying problem.
At least EVGA has said it is
replacing any affected cards if they've been bricked by the New World beta issues.