Disassembly and Teardown

Taking the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition apart is nothing for the faint-hearted. While NVIDIA did not try to make disassembly extra difficult, it's still a complex multistep process. Make sure you have the right tools, prefer plastic tools over metal tools where possible, to avoid scratching the PCB or components.

The first time it took me around an hour, because I didn't know the exact mechanics. Now I can do it in like 10 minutes.


First, remove the four screws holding the slot cover in place.


Now remove the screw marked in red. Just this one screw, the others can stay in (I had removed them while trying to figure out the process). Gently lift the frame, starting from the PCIe slot as shown in the photo above. Keep going, the frame is attached magnetically along the card.


Now you can remove the metal frame that also houses some white LED illumination.


Slide the triangle-shaped cover with the "RTX 5090" text sideways—it has a machined groove to move in. Once you've figured it out it will go very smoothly, no need to apply a lot of force.


This "top cover" provides access to the 16-pin power connector.



Remove two T6 screws near the PCIe connector.


The bottom metal cover comes off by sliding it—first diagonally, then curve it up. Note the red marked metal ridge, this will block your movements, but you can move the surrounding cover. The movement is very smooth and very easy once you figured out the correct direction. No need to apply force or try to bend the thick metal.


Lots of precision milling in that part.


Remove the PCIe slot connector by removing the four T6 screws, then you can pull up its PCB. Be careful to not damage the ribbon cable running along this area (3rd photo), it's used to connect the GPU PCB to the monitor output PCB.


This metal cover is like the backplate on a traditional graphics card, note the thermal pads to help pick up some heat from components that get warm.


We've seen these cables before on previous Founders Editions. The first two, lift the black latch with your finger (no metal tools to not scratch anything), then pull out the cable horizontally. There's very little space here, use pliers if you have to, prefer working with your fingers. Sticky tape can help, too. The third cable is removed by pushing the metal cover away from the cable horizontally, then you can lift the cable.


Finally, remove the display connector cable. It's plugged into this rectangular connector. I carefully used a prying tool on the metal mounting rim and my fingernails—don't damage surrounding components. This was plugged in fairly tightly, I had to apply more force than expected.


Once the display connector cable is out of the way, remove the four T6 screws holding the metal GPU bracket in place, and you can lift the main PCB from the cooler. On my card I was surprised that there was very little suction force, the PCB came off very easily.


Finally! We get to see the liquid metal that's used by NVIDIA to improve thermal transfer between the GPU and the heatsink. From here on, be careful with the Liquid Metal, so you don't spill it on the card. When I put the card back together I used a very thin layer of thermal paste and full-load temperatures now reach 79°C, just 2°C higher than the out-of-the-box condition, which is still reasonable and good enough to avoid thermal throttling.


This rubber gasket sits on the GPU substrate, around the die, to ensure that liquid metal cannot get near the capacitors on the GPU—to avoid short circuits.


The bottom side of the rubber is sticky, which ensures it stays in place. Use a plastic tool from the outside to go under it and lift a bit, then grab with your fingers and carefully peel it off. Take extra care to ensure that you're not "spilling" liquid metal on the chip during this process.