The ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 is perhaps one of the largest and most expensive variant of NVIDIA’s Blackwell flagship, retailing at an eye-watering RM16,999 or US$2,800 brand new. For one unfortunate gamer that even managed to buy the card, it decided to crap out on them by literally self-immolation.
Reddit user Impossible-Weight485 recently shared on the NVIDIA subreddit images of their burnt-out Astral RTX 5090. “I was playing PC games this afternoon, and when I was done with the games, my PC suddenly shut down while I was browsing websites. When I restarted the PC, the GPU caught on fire, and smoke started coming out. When I took out the GPU, I saw burn marks on both the GPU and the motherboard.”
Based on the images, the burnout didn’t occur on the 12VHPWR connector or power cables. Instead, the damage seemed isolated on the edge of the Astral RTX 5090’s PCB. As per the observations of Buildzoid, the component that failed was probably a power stage, and not even the capactitor.
Whatever the case, the good news for the Redditor is that Steve Burke of Gamers Nexus has already reached out to them and offered to buy both the damaged Astral RTX 5090 and motherboard lock, stock, and barrel, and skipping the RMA process.
To be fair, this also marks the first reported incident of an ASUS ROG Astral GPU suffering from this kind of failure. The fact that the card happens to be an RTX 5090 is also unfortunate but given NVIDIA’s track record, it wouldn’t surprise us if more reports begin cropping up.
(Source: Reddit)
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