GIGABYTE In Hot Water Over Cracking GPU PCBs

RTX 30 and 40 series GPUs from GIGABYTE have been reported to suffer from PCB cracking issues that are not being covered under warranty leaving users with damaged GPUs.

GIGABYTE PCB Cracking Issues

The issues surrounding GIGABYTE PCB’s cracking were first shared by Louis Rossmann (Via VideoCardz) who is a known advocate for self-repair laws and has a long history of standing up to companies surrounding repair issues. Rossman shares that many users have been having problems with GIGABYTE GPUs suffering from physical damage all of which feature a crack in the same area near the PCI interface which destroys the PCIe lanes effectively turning the GPU into a paperweight. I look through damaged GPUs on eBay and I have seen this issue a couple of times always with GIGABYTE cards. Below is a US listing for an RTX 3080 Eagle which features this issue which is just one of many I’ve seen after searching.

Not Covered By Warranty

In both of the pictures I’ve included there are red arrow stickers which point towards the crack in the PCB which have been applied by GIGABYTE after an RMA claim. Now the reason these cards are on eBay and not back into their systems is that GIGABYTE’s warranty doesn’t actually cover this damage which is forcing customers to resell the cards as faulty to get some money back. It’s a bit disgusting that this issue isn’t covered especially as it’s glaringly obvious with the consistency that it is a GIGABYTE issue.

Possible To Be Fixed

(UPDATE) Unfortunately, I’ve been informed after posting this that my claim of an “easy fix” is incorrect and the fixes shown are not “easy” and in fact have a 10-20% success rate and make the cards unsafe to use horizontally according to Jérémie who blew the whistle on this problem leaving a comment underneath Videocardz article. I apologise for my misunderstanding of the situation.

On the bright side, however, this is something that can be fixed by someone with the tools and expertise. In Rossman’s video, he shows the process that someone has gone through to repair the traces which is possible for someone who works with PCBs. A step-by-step guide has also been created on repair.wiki for the process.

Avoiding GIGABYTE

It seems as though I’ll personally be avoiding GIGABYTE for now considering this quality control issue, and I suspect some people may still be doing so after the explosive PSU drama.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.