‘Brand New’ RTX 4090 FE Found With Literal GPU Bug

A recent buyer of an RTX 4090 FE has fallen victim to an unfortunate and rare occurrence that is sure to have bugged them for nights on end after a repair technician made the unique discovery of the rare GPU bug.

Bugged RTX 4090 FE

A technology repair-focused channel named ‘northwestrepair‘ recently shared a video of them fault-finding an RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card. The owner of this card purchased it brand new at some resale place with no warranty but found the GPU wouldn’t display. Either this card isn’t brand new, or something’s a-buzz. NWR took the card apart and then ran through all of the standard testing involving checking voltages, and power stages and checking for any damage to the PCB itself to no avail. They then checked the oscillator to find no response pointing towards something wrong with the core.

Dead Core?

With the fault finding pointing towards the core, the repair tech removed it for inspection which led to an interesting discovery. In the area of the oscillator pads was a dead winged bug which appeared to be the culprit. Following the eviction of the winged problem, the core was reballed, the oscillator was tested and gave a response and finally a working RTX 4090 FE.

How Did A Fly Get In The GPU?

This is a very interesting situation and as @ghost_motley who shares the video (Via TomsHardware) pointed out, it is very out of the ordinary for a bug to get sandwiched in the GPU. The electronics assembly clean rooms that these are manufactured in are under strict rules to ensure minimal risk of contaminants such as bugs. It seems this one managed to slip through and of all the places it could’ve went, it decided sandwiching itself between the GPU and PCB was the best place to be and buggered up the card.

If you want to see the full details, NWR’s video is below.