NVIDIA's own flagship graphics card, the RTX 5090 Founders Edition, has been singled out for criticism by a veteran repair technician, saying hidden flaws make it "one of the worst designs in GPU history" he's ever seen.
In a teardown video uploaded by Northridge Fix, the card was declared unrepairable because a key internal connector was damaged and could not be replaced.
This RTX 5090 public version card has no video output after the customer installed a third-party water block. Alex checked all the contacts and voltage rails during the disassembly and found that they were within the normal range, but there was always no image on the screen.
Ultimately, the failure was traced to a board-to-board connector located inside the discrete, two-part structure of the public version card.
Alex explains that the Founders Edition graphics card consists of two parts: the main card and the PCIe connector assembly, which are connected together by what he calls a "very fragile FPC connector."
He likens the design to plumbing, arguing that each additional joint adds a potential point of failure: "The more connections you have, the more likely you are to have a point of failure... The same goes for the 5090."
Alex carefully inspected every pin and found that only the connector was damaged, asserting:"He installed a water block and the card stopped working because of the damage we see here. No other damage was found on the board and that was the only physical damage I saw."
It added that replacements for this key connector, which is responsible for transmitting signals between the GPU and the PCIe interface, cannot be procured on the market.
"I looked online for this connector, but I couldn't get it," he said. "If it breaks for any reason, you can't even buy a replacement... So what's the point of making it two pieces?"
He concluded by strongly warning owners of the public version of the RTX 5090 not to try to take apart the graphics card, "If it's not broken, don't fix it. I would stay away from the Founders Edition 5090 as much as possible."