Widespread reports from users on Chinese forums and Reddit suggest that initial instabilities observed with Nvidia's RTX 50 GPUs could extend beyond simple PCIe 5.0 compatibility problems. The diverse nature of the reports makes it hard to identify a single root cause; with users experiencing initialization failures, GPU-bricking drivers, PCIe 5.0 instability, and the list goes on. A cursory "RTX 5090/5080 failure reddit" Google search yields multiple accounts of users facing issues with these GPUs. Nvidia has yet to comment on this matter and thus it is difficult to deduce whether these teething problems stem from incomplete software, broken hardware, or something else.
Yesterday, we covered an instance where two melted 16-pin cables were mistakenly attributed to the RTX 5090. With the number of precautionary measures Nvidia and AIBs are taking, it is unlikely we'll run into any meltdowns, at least that's what we hope. Several reviewers suggested a potential flaw in Nvidia's FE-model design that leads to PCIe signal integrity degradation. Thus, a number of those lucky enough to get their hands on an RTX 50-series card have reported their GPU failing to boot in PCIe 5.0 mode. However, these new reports expand beyond Founders Edition models and also affect custom variants from AIBs, including the China-exclusive RTX 5090D.
