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More Owners of Premium GIGABYTE GeForce RTX Cards Report Thermal Gel Slippage

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Last week, GIGABYTE issued an official response to an initial case of "thermal conductive gel slippage," involving an ultra-expensive AORUS GeForce RTX 5080 MASTER ICE, a vertical-mounted graphics card setup, and very non-intensive MMO gaming sessions. The Taiwanese manufacturer believes that this problem is isolated within a first wave of products: "every graphics card is inspected and verified against our quality standards before leaving the factory. The thermal conductive gel is an insulating, deformable, putty-like compound. It is engineered to remain in place when applied properly, and can endure at least 150 °C before any melting or liquification could happen. In some early production batches for the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 50 Series, a slightly higher volume of gel was applied to ensure sufficient thermal coverage. The overapplication may cause the excessive gel to appear more prominent, extended, and could potentially be separated from the designated area. While the appearance of extra gel might be concerning, this cosmetic variance does not affect the card's performance, reliability, or lifespan. We had already inspected the issue, and adjusted the gel to the optimal amount in (subsequent) production runs."

Despite sending out a public assurance to a worried audience—"(we) take your concerns seriously and want to provide clear information"—GIGABYTE will not be recalling problematic products. VideoCardz reckons that the company is "downplaying" current conditions. Based on further evidence—shared by several members of the TechPowerUp forum (commenting on news coverage)—unfortunately, the first reported case (emerging from South Korea) was not an isolated incident. Given the contents of GIGABYTE's public bulletin, they seem to be aware that this special thermal material (reserved for fancier SKUs) is troubling owners of early batch "GeForce RTX 50 Series and Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics cards." TPU forumite, remekra, shared two images and the following bit of feedback (plus a warning): "I have mine mounted in Lian Li SUP01 case, so GPU is basically standing that's why it drips into the direction of ports. So far it does not overheat on memory modules. I will hold off sending it to GIGABYTE customer service, as I don't have good memories of them; so until it overheats or stops working I will use it. But if you have a vertical case or stand then be aware."




GIGABYTE's (claimed) laborious QA process points to solid footing: "the thermal conductivity gel solution on the GIGABYTE graphics cards has undergone rigorous testing to verify the performance and stability, including but not limited to: multi-axis drops and vibration testing (covering four corners and six sides). Long‐duration heavy‐load operational simulations, meanwhile, the exposure to extreme ambient temperatures. Verification in both vertical and horizontal installation orientations." In another reply, TaLL—a brand-new TPU community member—disclosed problems arising shortly after purchase: "I just bought a Gigabyte graphics card about two weeks ago. One week shipping process, and then this past week using the GeForce RTX 5080. I am just now learning of this leaking problem, so I checked under the heatsink, and BOOM; some blob is oozing out. I am very worried about this, for obvious reasons.... about 1500+ reasons. These things cost so much, and to use the card for about a week then get gel leaking out...I have a vertical mounted Lian Li case with a riser cable...First time using GIGABYTE as well, and this makes me never want to have any other product from them."

vermie22—another fresh sign-up—shared their personal observation: "same appears to be happening to mine, and it doesn't even appear to be melted at all, just completely slipping out of position. In my case, the thermal pad still seems to be holding its original shape, (but) it seems to have just completely slid down and has barely deformed at all." We hope that GIGABYTE's slight adjustment of applied measures of thermal conductive gel has resolved these issues, going forward. In the interim, affected end users will need to keep a careful eye on their early batch units.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
 
Not the first and not the last bad gigabyte product. The medium quality is well known for gigabyte.

I highly doubt.
It is engineered to remain in place when applied properly, and can endure at least 150 °C before any melting or liquification could happen.

I advise Gigabyte to buy external engineering knowledge from certain thermal paste, putty and liquid metal manufacturers. I'll not tell which company i think about who manufactures some product themselves.

That is a reason to try to get a refund for that graphic card, regardless of the brand. Especially with the warranty terms to not open or modify a graphic card in the first place. A graphic card needs to be perfect over the hole warranty period with such usual restricted warranty terms. That looks over 1 cm outside of the plastic shroud.

8LpVza6isROIBklF.jpg
 
Not the first and not the last bad gigabyte product. The poor quality is well known for gigabyte.

I highly doubt.


I advise Gigabyte to buy external engineering knowledge from certain thermal paste, putty and liquid metal manufacturers. I'll not tell which company i think about who manufactures some product themselves.

That is a reason to try to get a refund for that graphic card, regardless of the brand. Especially with the warranty terms to not open or modify a graphic card in the first place. A graphic card needs to be perfect over the hole warranty period with such usual restricted warranty terms. That looks over 1 cm outside of the plastic shroud.

8LpVza6isROIBklF.jpg
Fixed it for you.

They could hire proper qa which is the fix.
 
its why I give a FULL year for anything new released before buying. its just in beta phase till then. and we have seen this more and more by mfr whos qc is terrible but prioritize releasing the product then repairing as needed. scymbag move by gigabutt. good to know.
 
I guess they did not test them with a VGA riser case side mount. I bet allot of these are VGA side mounted and the heat sink stuff is getting hot and moving because of gravity. I got one of these 5090 Gigabyte Master loved the card design and the trick LCD screen. But had to send it back because the coil whine was really bad. It also had small amounts of heat sink material in places it should have not been on the outside heat sink fins. Almost like it was opened up at the factory and redone but the tech did not clean it up because it appeared factory seal like it never been used.
 
2025 quality control : "Its shitty, but not enough, so we'll keep selling it"
 
its why I give a FULL year for anything new released before buying.

I think its two years these days. Most stuff happens much later. Asus has shown me I should have bought something else or waited at least 2.5 years for my x670 mainboard.
I also think about bad SAMSUNG, WD SSDs. And some bad mainboards.

--

#6 was obvious. But very nice to finally see proof.
 
I think there should be one thread for Gigabyte video card TIM slippage - preferably in Videocards part of the forum.

I already have one thread, but it has different topic - It is concerned with too little gel being applied.

Perhaps a moderator could make one thread and join the two news threads in it? And then just point to this one thread in all the upcoming news articles coming about this topic???

It feels there will be a lot more articles about this problem.
 
My card is on it's way to the service as I have RMAed it as advised by Gigabyte.
Here is the better picture after I have taken it out of the case:

1746568907287.jpeg


You can clearly see that there is nothing on that one VRAM module. I'm surprised that the card worked at all.
It raises even better question. How Nvidia reports GDDR7 temps? I have Gskill Wigidash to monitor the temps and freq. It uses HWInfo API and the temp never exceeded 80C on GDDR7.

Also it doesn't seem like it's just because of excees amount of thermal gel. If it was only excees should flow out, while the rest should be kept in place by the heatsink.
So I'm not really sure how RMA will go. If they will only reapply it, then it will probably just flow out again after some time.
 
Just slapped it together with no love.
 
I think there should be one thread for Gigabyte video card TIM slippage - preferably in Videocards part of the forum.

Perhaps a moderator could make one thread and join the two news threads in it? And then just point to this one thread in all the upcoming news articles coming about this topic???

It feels there will be a lot more articles about this problem.
I already made the thread:


But have no powers to move anything in it.
 
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