On Chinese forums, including Chiphell, Baidu, and even the social media outlet Bilibili, there are a bunch of reports of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5090D ending up bricked.
🚩 What’s Happening?
The two variants that have caused these issues are from manufacturers Colorful and Manli. However, a few reports of Gigabyte’s RTX 5090D GPUs having the same problem have also popped up.
On Chinese forums, including Chiphell, Baidu, and even the social media outlet Bilibili, there are several reports of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5090D bricking. The two variants that have caused these issues are from manufacturers Colorful and Manli. However, a few reports of Gigabyte’s RTX 5090D GPUs having the same problem have also popped up.
⚠️ Affected Models and Vendors:
- Colorful RTX 5090D
- Manli RTX 5090D Gallardo
- Gigabyte RTX 5090D
- Select standard RTX 5090 models
🔍 Possible Causes: PCIe Gen5 Under Scrutiny
According to widespread user reports from Chinese tech forums and Reddit communities, several RTX 5090 and 5090D graphics cards fail permanently after standard driver installation. The issue affects the standard RTX 5090 and the export-modified 5090D variant released for the Chinese market on January 30th. Users report consistent failure patterns: upon initial driver installation, displays go dark, and systems permanently lose the ability to detect the GPU through both DisplayPort and HDMI interfaces. Hardware failures have been documented across multiple board partners, with Colorful, Manli, and Gigabyte cards showing identical symptoms. Third-party vendor reports sometimes indicate potential IC burn damage, suggesting hardware-level failure rather than recoverable software issues.
Some investigations point to PCIe Gen 5 implementation as a possible root cause. The RTX 5090 series represents NVIDIA’s first fully Gen 5-compliant GPU architecture, introducing new signal integrity challenges. Some users report temporary mitigation by forcing PCIe 4.0 mode in BIOS settings, though this workaround remains unverified. Additional complications arise from modern motherboard designs that share PCIe lanes between M.2 storage and graphics slots. The failure pattern appears consistent across both domestic and international markets. On r/ASUS, users report identical detection failures persisting through CMOS resets and system rebuilds.
Potential contributing factors include:
- Signal degradation with PCIe 5.0 lanes, especially on older motherboards.
- Lane-sharing issues between PCIe slots and M.2 SSDs on modern motherboards.
- Driver conflicts with new firmware updates.
Tech influencer Der8auer highlighted these PCIe compatibility concerns in a recent video, though he stops short of confirming it as the root cause.
💥 Real-World Cases:
- A user on Baidu Forums bricked their Colorful RTX 5090D immediately after installing the driver—black screen, no display output, and the GPU undetectable in BIOS.
- On Reddit’s r/ASUS, a user with a standard RTX 5090 experienced identical symptoms. Even after clearing CMOS and reinstalling Windows, the GPU remained dead.
- Sellers on third-party platforms like Goofish claim the problem is widespread and warn that installing the latest drivers could cause irreversible damage.
🛠️ What Can You Do If You’re Affected?
While there’s no official fix yet, here are some precautionary steps:
- Avoid updating to the latest drivers until NVIDIA releases a statement.
- Force PCIe 4.0 mode in BIOS if you’re already experiencing issues.
- Test the GPU in a different system with confirmed PCIe Gen4 compatibility.
- Check for motherboard BIOS updates that may address PCIe compatibility issues.
- Contact the manufacturer immediately if your card is bricked; this may qualify for warranty replacement.
🤔 Why This Matters
This isn’t an isolated incident. The consistency of the failure across brands and regions suggests a deeper issue, potentially tied to architecture, firmware, or driver compatibility. Given that the RTX 5090 and 5090D are NVIDIA’s flagship models, this could have significant implications for early adopters and the broader GPU market.
📢 NVIDIA’s Response (So Far):
Chinese forum documentation shows systematic failures across multiple board partner implementations, suggesting a fundamental architecture or driver compatibility issue rather than isolated manufacturing defects. NVIDIA has not issued official guidance on the failures.
🚨 Final Thoughts:
The RTX 5000 clearly is a paper launch, with nowhere near enough stock to meet the demand and exorbitant prices. If this wasn’t enough, these reports now complete the terrible picture. Whether this is a fixable driver issue, a PCIe Gen5 signaling flaw, or a hardware defect remains to be seen.
Until then, if you own an RTX 5090 or 5090D, exercise extreme caution with driver updates—or risk turning your $3,000 GPU into an expensive paperweight or door stopper.