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

remekra · May 12, 2025

Saying that it was a bad mix but now it's a good one is not enough IMO.
Mine was oldest possible from first week of 2025.

realfifty · May 13, 2025

I agree with you on that I have a 5090 masterice from April 1st and one from mid April i have poked the gel it seams good but I still wanna see how they are gonna handle it. When one of you get your card back you should loan it to gamersnexus so they can examine the fix

vermie22 · May 13, 2025

I contacted Gigabyte again this morning to get some actual information on what was done to my card yesterday, and this was their reply:

The photos they mention just depict a monitor showing the results of a 20 run 3DMark Steel Nomad benchmark and a Time Spy run. No photos of the actual card or repairs that were done. No proof that those results were for my card and not a different card. I guess I will have to just trust that those were actual benchmarks made using my GPU.

I am also very curious how they "reapplied" the termal gel, as photos have shown how messy that gel is when you remove the heatsink from the PCB. It would mean that they would have had to reapply all the gel , othwise they would introduce pockets of air and just make a big mess otherwise.

I will provide photos as best as possible when I get the card back.

I now have a delima as I am not confident that the manually reapplied gel will be anywhere neare as effective as the factory applied gel, and I am thinking that the same problem will just end up happenning again.

I am seriously considering buying a new case so I can mount the card horizontally, instead of vertically, but that is just extra cost and effort on my end to mitigate the problem going forward.

What a mess.

remekra · May 13, 2025

vermie22 said:
I contacted Gigabyte again this morning to get some actual information on what was done to my card yesterday, and this was their reply:

View attachment 399525

The photos they mention just depict a monitor showing the results of a 20 run 3DMark Steel Nomad benchmark and a Time Spy run. No photos of the actual card or repairs that were done. No proof that those results were for my card and not a different card. I guess I will have to just trust that those were actual benchmarks made using my GPU.

I am also very curious how they "reapplied" the termal gel, as photos have shown how messy that gel is when you remove the heatsink from the PCB. It would mean that they would have had to reapply all the gel , othwise they would introduce pockets of air and just make a big mess otherwise.

I will provide photos as best as possible when I get the card back.

I now have a delima as I am not confident that the manually reapplied gel will be anywhere neare as effective as the factory applied gel, and I am thinking that the same problem will just end up happenning again.

I am seriously considering buying a new case so I can mount the card horizontally, instead of vertically, but that is just extra cost and effort on my end to mitigate the problem going forward.

What a mess.

First they claimed its only cosmetic which was proven false. Now as I feared they will just reapply it.
I would not change the case. I would stress test it for long, long time to accelerate the eventual spill and then contact them again this time demanding refund.
That's what I will do if they will do the same in my case.

Or maybe it will work fine after the reapply but somehow I doubt that it will not happen again.

BoggledBeagle · May 13, 2025

vermie22 said:
I contacted Gigabyte again this morning to get some actual information on what was done to my card yesterday, and this was their reply:

View attachment 399525

The photos they mention just depict a monitor showing the results of a 20 run 3DMark Steel Nomad benchmark and a Time Spy run. No photos of the actual card or repairs that were done. No proof that those results were for my card and not a different card. I guess I will have to just trust that those were actual benchmarks made using my GPU.

I am also very curious how they "reapplied" the termal gel, as photos have shown how messy that gel is when you remove the heatsink from the PCB. It would mean that they would have had to reapply all the gel , othwise they would introduce pockets of air and just make a big mess otherwise.

I will provide photos as best as possible when I get the card back.

I now have a delima as I am not confident that the manually reapplied gel will be anywhere neare as effective as the factory applied gel, and I am thinking that the same problem will just end up happenning again.

I am seriously considering buying a new case so I can mount the card horizontally, instead of vertically, but that is just extra cost and effort on my end to mitigate the problem going forward.

What a mess.

I tried to tell you that you should wait.

If they already use the different (better) gel in factory, it may not yet reached all the repair facilities worldwide. They may have just instructed the repair facilities what gel to buy, not really strictly controlling if they really comply and use the right stuff.

The later, the better chance that you will avoid the introductory mess/errors.

I tried to concentrate the discussion about this problem in this thread, I wonder if you could post your finding about the repaired card there, once you receive it?

B

Thread 'Gigabyte graphic cards - TIM gel SLIPPAGE problem'

May 7, 2025

There have been numerous posts on this and other fora about thermal interface gel slipping out of the Gigabyte graphic cards.

See the articles on Techpowerup:

GIGABYTE AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER Starts Leaking Thermal Gel After Four Weeks of Light MMO Gaming

An unlucky owner of a GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 5080 MASTER ICE 16 GB graphics card has reported a baffling instance of thermal gel leakage. A forum post—titled: "5080 oh my god thermal problem"—on the Quasar Zone BBS alerted the wider world to this bizarre fault. The South Korean MMORPG...

www.techpowerup.com

GIGABYTE Acknowledges Issues With Thermal Conductive Gel on GeForce RTX 50 and Radeon RX 9000 Series

GIGABYTE acknowledges customer feedback regarding thermal conductive gel application on our GeForce RTX 50 Series and Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics cards. This gel is engineered to ensure optimal contact across uneven component surfaces, and is applied via a fully automated process to minimize...

www.techpowerup.com