An unusual and alarming amount of Gigabyte owners have experienced PCB cracking on their graphics cards. The preliminary cases appear to be limited to the GeForce RTX 30 series (Ampere); however, there are claims that the issue also extends to the latest GeForce RTX 40 series (Ada Lovelace), which encompasses some of the best graphics cards on the market. Twitter user 0xcats, who reportedly has experience with PCB design, shares a theory on the existing issue.
User feedback, photographs, and eBay listings have confirmed that the Gigabyte graphics cards primarily exhibited cracking near the PCIe locking tab. With how long and big modern graphics cards have become, there is a significant strain on that area of the PCB. It’s more than evident when you look at the graphics card, where a considerable portion of the heatsink extends beyond the PCIe connector. However, that’s only one part of what’s causing the problem. 0xcats has a hypothesis on the problem, and we agree with the person’s analysis.
