Gigabyte Revises PCB Design Of GeForce RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 GPUs To Tackle Cracking Issues

Gigabyte has made a design revision to itshigh-end GeForce RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 GPUs after incidents involving PCB cracking surfaced on the internet.

For those unaware, several Gigabyte GeForce RTX 40 & RTX 30 GPU users were victims of a "design malfunction" in their PCB, which led to cracks in a specific area. The cracks damaged the PCIe lanes inside the GPU, preventing data transfer & ultimately leading to a useless GPU. Several affected people tried to claim this issue with Gigabyte and, ironically, rejected their RMA request. While it led to a whole new debate amongst Redditors, it seems like Gigabyte has made some design changes with the new "batch" of GeForce RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 GPUs, labeled as "v1.1" with the original packaging.

The news comes from the Redditor u/MisinformationALWAYS, who managed to make a comparison between the older and newer versions of Gigabyte's GeForce RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 GPUs, and he noticed a significant change had been made, with the latest design coming with a "beefier 70a VRM setup". This has made the overall design much more "stable" since the weight distribution has improved by a great margin. It is expected that this change might cater to the problem of "PCB cracking" in the upcoming units, but it is unfortunate for consumers already affected by it since it is reported that Gigabyte didn't entertain any of the RMA requests. Gigabyte hasn't "officially" mentioned the problem anywhere, and it isn't exactly confirmed what SKUs have received the new design changes.

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 40 GPUs v1.0:

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 40 GPUs v1.1:

The design revision does entertain the fact that Gigabyte has acknowledged the flaw in their GPU units, and it could be a possibility that the firm might amend its warranty service to facilitate the cracked PCB units. Despite that, consumers must take precautionary measures before mounting any of their Ada Lovelace or older GPUs, with the inclusion of support brackets or an anti-sag mechanism.

News Source: Reddit