EVGA Counters Rumors of Its Demise, But Questions Remain

GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming
GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra Gaming (Image credit: EVGA)

A recent rumor originated from a Korean Coolenjoy forum that EVGA, which used to make some of the best graphics cards, had reportedly closed its headquarters in Taiwan. EVGA has since come out to dispel the rumor; however, many still think the company may be coming to the end of its road very soon.

According to the rumor, EVGA's personnel from the Taiwan office, including legendary overclocker Vince "K|NGP|N" Lucido, resigned, and closure was imminent. We reached out to Lucido, but unfortunately, he told us he couldn't comment at this time. We also contacted EVGA for a statement. Although the company didn't get back to us, it did confirm to TechPowerUp that the rumors were just that — rumors — and that Lucido is still part of the team.

"We saw those message and they are rumors. Our Taiwan office is still operating and Kingpin is still with EVGA. EVGA is still doing business and supporting its customers. Thanks for reaching out," an EVGA spokesperson told TechPowerUp.

EVGA had been an Nvidia partner for almost 25 years, so it was a big shock to the hardware world when EVGA withdrew from the graphics card market last year, mentioning differences with Nvidia. In addition to graphics cards and motherboards, EVGA has diversified its offerings over the previous years to include power supplies, peripherals, capture devices, and liquid coolers. 

Graphics cards have been EVGA's bread and butter since its inception and likely contributed a substantial portion of the company's revenue, so cutting back to only selling motherboards and rebranded power supplies will obviously impact the bottom line.

There are plenty of signs that EVGA could be gradually winding down its business and may be closing up shop very soon, so it isn't surprising that some embraced the recent rumor a bit too quickly. For instance, EVGA recently lost a key member of its staff with Jacob Freeman's departure to Nvidia. Freeman had been the public face of EVGA for 17 years.

Additionally, in a recent interview with Gamers Nexus, Lucido stated that there weren't any upcoming EVGA projects, which some took as implying that EVGA is likely dissolving the BIOS team. While Lucido is reportedly still with the company, EVGA's statement hasn't clarified the status of the rest of the BIOS engineering team. 

EVGA's online store once offered plentiful amounts of inventory. However, now everything is out of stock, and most of what's left are B-stock items. EVGA products are still available at major U.S. retailers, such as Amazon and Newegg, but EVGA may have offloaded leftover inventory.

EVGA's statement today proves that it's still doing business, but the company didn't provide any details on which direction it is heading. Many loyal EVGA customers still have warranties on their graphics cards, motherboards, or power supplies; therefore, it would be reassuring to know if EVGA will still be around in the near future.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • thestryker
    While they haven't given a time frame they've said on their forums that they're working on 14th gen support for Z690/Z790. This is sounding more and more like a last hurrah type of situation though.

    I totally understand the move away from video cards, but this is beginning to look like a slow death for the company. It's a shame the CEO hadn't been grooming anyone as a replacement as their products have always been pretty good in their own right and customer support was best in the industry (not that this isn't a low bar).

    I was really hoping when they first announced the break with nvidia that Intel would step in. As long as they were willing to let the company keep operating the same that would have been a huge marketing coup. EVGA already predominantly made Intel motherboards (I think the only non was the X570 DARK) so having them be the premiere video card maker would have been perfect.

    The sad reality though seems to be that the CEO doesn't want anyone else at the reigns and wants to step back from the constant work.
    Reply
  • jaquith
    Sad times. It was a great company. However, if you go to their website, nearly everything's out of stock. New power supplies only have three year warranties and even their peripherals are sold out. After they lost some of their key employees, it's game over.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    i have not seen anything from any source but i wonder what they are telling their stock holders. that would be the best info to know.

    they have to (well are supposed to) tell them the truth about what is going on. so just curious but not enough to google it myself. ; - )
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Math Geek said:
    i have not seen anything from any source but i wonder what they are telling their stock holders. that would be the best info to know.

    they have to (well are supposed to) tell them the truth about what is going on. so just curious but not enough to google it myself. ; - )
    EVGA is privately owned.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    And even if EVGA was publicly owned, I'm pretty sure publicly traded companies are not allowed to give information exclusively to shareholders.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    it's not exclusive info at all. the updates are public access, that's why we always get reports from them. it's not a leak or anything, but rather a reporter sitting there taking notes and reading the report handed out.

    you can google a company and read the reports if you wish. for instance here is google's reports in various forms

    https://abc.xyz/investor/
    but if nvidia is privately owned, then obviously that's why i had not heard anything from the reports :)

    it also explains why their customer service and such was always so great. no stockholders demanding ever increasing dividends forcing any kind of service to be as bare minimum as possible.

    my comment meant specifically that these reports are as close to the truth about the status of a company that we can get. everything else is PR bs for the most part and rarely gives any true insight. it is not uncommon for stockholders to sue when given bad/false/misleading information during one of these meetings.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    thestryker said:
    While they haven't given a time frame they've said on their forums that they're working on 14th gen support for Z690/Z790. This is sounding more and more like a last hurrah type of situation though.
    There's a video over on GN where Steve is talking to the EVGA BIOS team and KingPin and the last question Steve asks is, "What is the next project." Kingpin's response:

    "There is no next project. We won't be colleagues any more. It's so sad. So sad."

    That's pretty much confirmation that EVGA is out of the motherboard market if their BIOS engineering team has no more projects and they aren't going to be coworkers any more.
    Reply
  • Sluggotg
    One of my favorite companies. I own an insane number of their video cards and power supplies. Now that they are going under, I wonder what will happen with the driver support. I have at least a dozen keyboards and mice from EVGA and 4 of their capture cards. I worry that I am one Windows patch away from them having issues or not working properly.
    I hate the default lighting on the mice and keyboards. They are deliberately defaulted to the most annoying pattern available. That ensures you Will install their annoying software.. for every Mouse/Keyboard and every RGB Fan, Cooler, Memory Stick and motherboard so you tame it or turn it off.
    I will miss EVGA. As soon as they announced their breakup with Nvidia, most of us knew this will be the end result.
    Reply
  • Gillerer
    thestryker said:
    I was really hoping when they first announced the break with nvidia that Intel would step in. As long as they were willing to let the company keep operating the same that would have been a huge marketing coup.
    That would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

    Intel Arc is a dumpster fire on both the hardware and driver side, and will be for at least one more generation. Partaking in it would just tarnish EVGA's name. Celestial could plausibly be the first entry to high-end, but seeing as every Arc generation gets delayed, even that will probably arrive late to compete.

    Then again, EVGA have stated that they will not return to the GPU business, so it's a moot point.

    Graphics card manufacturers have very thin margins and are pitted to compete against each other by the vendor. It's not exactly sound business for a small company to constantly be one more squeeze away from having to get rid of your stock at a loss (whether the squeeze comes from the vendor, competition or global economy).
    Reply
  • UWguy
    I would love it if Razer bought EVGA and went into the PC business.
    Reply