The GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition is Nvidia’s own-brand flagship GPU for consumers, but one repair technician says it comes with a hidden flaw that makes it “one of the worst designs in the history of… GPUs,” he’s seen. In a teardown uploaded to the Northridge Fix YouTube channel, the card was declared unrepairable after damage to an internal connector — one that, the technician claims, cannot be replaced or sourced.
The card in question was sent in after it stopped outputting video following the installation of a third-party water block. While one of the customer’s two cards was successfully repaired, the Founders Edition model wasn’t so lucky. “I checked all contacts,” Alex explains in the teardown. “I inspected the voltage rails; everything is within range, but we do not have an image on the screen.” Eventually, the fault was traced to a board-to-board connector inside the FE’s modular two-part construction.
The GPU repair expert goes on to explain that the Founders Edition is built in two sections — the main card and the PCIe connector assembly — joined by what he calls “a very fragile FPC connector.” Comparing it to plumbing, he argues that every extra joint adds a new potential failure point: “The more connections you have, the more likely you’re going to have a failing point… the same goes with the 5090.”
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After inspecting “every single pin”, Alex points to what he calls a damaged connector. “He installed a water block, the card stopped working, and that’s because of the damage that we see here,” he says. “No other damage was found on the board, and that’s the only physical damage I see.”