I may just be unusually unlucky, but my RTX 5090 has already gone through three RMAs in eight months. Two failures involved VRAM problems causing artifacts, flickering, and crashes, while the third was a dead fan. This latest RMA has been waiting for a replacement for about two months. With availability seemingly getting worse, I'm wondering whether board partners might eventually stop producing RTX 5090 models and focus more on the 5080 and 5070 instead. How likely is that to happen anytime soon?
5 Answers
A board partner generally won’t stop making the card while Nvidia is still supplying the GPU chips. If your replacement estimate is two months, it probably means the manufacturer is waiting for its next allocation. AIBs also reuse a lot of parts across models, especially coolers, so a 5090 production line can often share components with the 5080 and other cards. They have little reason to turn down Nvidia’s supply because doing so could hurt their priority for future shipments.
Given how expensive these cards are, demand is probably still strong from professional and AI users even if ordinary gamers can’t easily buy them. That makes a complete production halt seem unlikely in the near term. Supply may remain very limited, though, especially if Nvidia is prioritizing higher-margin shipments.
For stability problems, it may be worth testing a known-stable driver rather than automatically installing every newest release. That probably won’t explain VRAM artifacts or a dead fan, but it can help distinguish a driver issue from a genuinely defective card.
After three failures, I’d escalate the issue beyond standard support and check whether your area has consumer-protection or lemon-law rules that apply to expensive electronics. A replacement or refund may be more reasonable than leaving you without a working card for months.
I’m dealing with a similar concern. Mine is a Gigabyte model, and it has occasionally black-screened before restarting. I’m hesitant to send it in because I don’t want to end up waiting months for a replacement.
Mine is also a Gigabyte card, so I understand why you’re hesitant. Unfortunately, repeated crashes and hardware symptoms may still be worth documenting carefully before pursuing an RMA.