Tuesday, February 4th 2025
Reports of Bricked NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5090D Surge
According to widespread user reports from Chinese tech forums and Reddit communities, multiple RTX 5090 and 5090D graphics cards are failing permanently after standard driver installation. The issue affects both the standard RTX 5090 and the export-modified 5090D variant released for the Chinese market on January 30th. Users report consistent failure patterns: upon initial driver installation, displays go dark, and systems permanently lose the ability to detect the GPU through both DisplayPort and HDMI interfaces. Hardware failures have been documented across multiple board partners, with Colorful, Manli, and Gigabyte cards showing identical symptoms. Third-party vendor reports sometimes indicate potential IC burn damage, suggesting hardware-level failure rather than recoverable software issues.
Some investigations point to PCIe Gen 5 implementation as a possible root cause. The RTX 5090 series represents NVIDIA's first fully Gen 5-compliant GPU architecture, introducing new signal integrity challenges. Some users report temporary mitigation by forcing PCIe 4.0 mode in BIOS settings, though this workaround remains unverified. Additional complications arise from modern motherboard designs that share PCIe lanes between M.2 storage and graphics slots. The failure pattern appears consistent across both domestic and international markets. On r/ASUS, users report identical detection failures persisting through CMOS resets and system rebuilds. Chinese forum documentation shows systematic failures across multiple board partner implementations, suggesting a fundamental architecture or driver compatibility issue rather than isolated manufacturing defects. NVIDIA has not issued official guidance on the failures.
Below are screenshots of the reported user problems:
Sources:
Chiphell, Baidu, Goofish, r/ASUS, via Wccftech
Some investigations point to PCIe Gen 5 implementation as a possible root cause. The RTX 5090 series represents NVIDIA's first fully Gen 5-compliant GPU architecture, introducing new signal integrity challenges. Some users report temporary mitigation by forcing PCIe 4.0 mode in BIOS settings, though this workaround remains unverified. Additional complications arise from modern motherboard designs that share PCIe lanes between M.2 storage and graphics slots. The failure pattern appears consistent across both domestic and international markets. On r/ASUS, users report identical detection failures persisting through CMOS resets and system rebuilds. Chinese forum documentation shows systematic failures across multiple board partner implementations, suggesting a fundamental architecture or driver compatibility issue rather than isolated manufacturing defects. NVIDIA has not issued official guidance on the failures.
81 Comments on Reports of Bricked NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5090D Surge
These pcie lanes can be used for m2 nvme slots but could be used for something else or just be wasted. Recently we had another mainboard topic where some lanes were just wasted when installing a single m2 device.
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Anyway baby burn - baby burn - with 575Watts or even more.
I would be not surprised when some of the buyers used certain software to use the card with 700 or 800 Watts to get these issues.
In fact anything with worms :slap:
In short, overblown, nothing to see here, move along
Looks like PCI-E 5.0 related (possibly hardware) problem. What I don't understand is this:After driver installation, DP and HDMI are like really permanently gone?
If you really need to just install drivers to kill a card, that's another level. I mean people here on TPU keep saying that AMD drivers are shit ...
(And I thought the RX 9070's release is/was a shitshow.)
At least 9800X3Ds are stocked now, they also dropped price from 600+€ to 580.
To be perfectly clear, the only reason it's related to installing drivers is because Windows doesn't run the slot at full speed until drivers are installed.
This is a completely expected teething-pain issue with a new PCIe generation and will undoubtedly be resolved in a new BIOS.
We have this issue literally every PCIe generation, and it's exactly the same symptom you'll get if you buy a case with a gen 3 riser cable and install a gen 4 GPU, with the same solution (downgrade slot in BIOS).
If nVidia hadn't rushed this launch (der8auer reports 2-10 days from chip delivery to manufacturing) the partners may have had time to test motherboard compatibility. But the other problem is they launched at CNY so there are no engineers at work to release fixed motherboard BIOS.
So after the 4090 connectors melting we're given them another pass here?
EDIT: Corrected X670 to X670E. Thanks for letting me know.
It needs later a repair with maybe changed mainboard or changed firmware.
I consider firmware part of the hardware.
Those firmware fixes are there to make green bananas to yellow bananas much later at the consumer when he already owned the hardware for a long time.
Firmware = software for programming microcontroller and other programmable, usually flash, integrated circuits. E.g. the uefi = "bios" of a mainboardthe windows amd graphic card drivers are bad.
I can not remember any issue with ryzen master or the amd chipset driver.
gnu linux has issues with high memory clock always with certain amd graphic cards
Come on how many times does the "gaming industry" needs to get down on their knees for you know who?
My question is then, if it is an issue with PCIe 5.0 on specific motherboards.
Other than PCIe 5.0 NVMEs, to the best of my knowledge, there have been no consumer PCIe 5.0 devices released, with which the motherboards could be tested.
I find it conceivable, that some motherboard designs tried to cut costs too hard, and have compromised PCIe 5.0 connectivity.
Since these are the first 5.0 GPUs using the 16x slot, perhaps a preexisting issue is just now coming to light?
4000 Series - Teaches people cables, connectors, electrical resistance and contact surfaces knowledge
5000 Series - Teaches people IC burn and signal integrity ?????
And Der8auer pointed out in following video that many AIB partner practically had no time to test their designs due to short timelines - which means that basically buyers are the testers. Even expensive models might be shipped with serial flaws - and reviewers usually aren't the ones that point them out, due to obvious reasons.
Do the problems occur mostly on motherboards with an out-of-date BIOS, several years old or is it a hardware problem?
I bought my mobo in November 2022 and I'm wondering if I should pass on a PCIe Gen 5 GPU upgrade, even if I update the BIOS.