TECH NEWS – Gigabyte made a mistake with the latest generation of Nvidia cards, and Gigabyte has admitted it.

Gigabyte has issued a statement to clarify a recent coolant leak issue with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5000 graphics cards. The company claims that this is a problem with early production batches. A few days ago, it was reported that someone had experienced a coolant leak from a Gigabyte RTX 5080. Allegedly, after only a month of use, liquid started leaking towards the PCIe connector, which is likely Gigabyte’s thermal conductive gel designed to replace traditional heat pads. The company responded with an official statement confirming the leak problem. According to Gigabyte, a slightly higher amount of gel was used than usual.

“In some early production batches of the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 50 series, a slightly higher volume of gel was applied to ensure sufficient thermal coverage. The overapplication can cause the excess gel to appear more prominent, extended, and potentially separate from the intended area. While the appearance of the excess gel may be disturbing, this cosmetic variance does not affect the performance, reliability, or longevity of the card. We have already investigated the issue and adjusted the gel to the optimal amount in subsequent production runs,” Gigabyte wrote.

The excessive amount of gel likely contributed to the leak experienced by the user, and it appears that the problem can happen to anyone, as adjustments have been made to all Nvidia GeForce RTX 5000 and AMD Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs that use the conductive gel. Gigabyte has assured that it is not the gel itself that is at fault, as it can withstand temperatures of up to 150°C before the gel turns to liquid. Interestingly, Gigabyte claims that the leakage problem does not affect the GPU in any way, other than the unsightly appearance…

The company did not say whether this is a situation covered by warranty, as it is a manufacturing defect. Gigabyte claims that the problem will not occur on later manufactured cards because they have fixed the amount of gel applied to each SKU…

Source: WCCFTech, Gigabyte