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.
84 Comments on Reports of Bricked NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5090D Surge
joke.
Nvidia drivers used to take 2 to 4 years to brick their GPUs now it only takes 2 to 4 days! That's 36500% faster.
On a more serious note, now I believe der8auer, this kind of thing isn't strange if board partners only have 2 to 15 days to test the card.
And this might not be something new considering that at least the last 3 gens had major issues at release.
Never buy a GPU at release, specially a Nvidia one, seems as true as ever.
Once upon a time, the launch and release was meaning the same thing. Now, the "Launch" may happen month before an actual release, and yet the products often come with severe issues.
Yes, the tech has become enormously more complex. But this is still not excuse, for the misleading marketing and unlrealistic goals. If they need more time to fix the issues, the companies must keep it shut behind the doors, and not anounce anything, until the product is at least 95% ready. Otherwise, they all sell the unrealistic expectations, and increase the hype, to prepare the "hight" sales, and inflate the product and stock prices, beforehand.
Making the $2000 product, that has problems, is a slap on the face. And this isn't the first time. I mean, if someone releases such an expecive piece of tech, it should be tested before, and not upon arival, no?
I am joking
Should the need for a recall arise, it's up to stores, distributors and AIBs to refund and/or replace the defective products. But it's unlikely it will get that far.
im gaming 5K and its around 45% faster for those 3 games i was playing so dont know where u got this 10%?