Summary
- Early Gigabyte Nvidia RTX 50 GPUs may ooze gel but it’s just extra thermal gel.
- Reports of leaking coolant were a result of applying more gel than necessary.
- Despite appearance, extra gel doesn’t impact GPU performance or reliability.
If you purchased one of the early models of the Gigabyte Nvidia RTX 50 GPUs, you may have noticed that it has been oozing gel lately. Reports are coming in around the world claiming that people’s GPUs are losing a little more thermal gel than they’d like, and naturally, people are concerned as to why it’s doing that.
Well, worry no more. Gigabyte made a statement saying that it perhaps used a little bit too much thermal gel in its early builds. So, if your GPU is dripping a little, it’s nothing to worry about.
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Gigabyte clears up its leaking Nvidia RTX 50 GPU issue
As spotted by WccfTech, people have noticed that, after a month of use, their Gigabyte GeForce RTX 50 began leaking a liquid towards the PCIe connection. People believed it was the coolant within the GPU, which then raised the question: if the coolant is leaking everywhere, is there any left to actually cool the GPU?
Fortunately, in a press release, Gigabyte clears up the issue:
In some early production batches for the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 50 Series, a slightly higher volume of gel was applied to ensure sufficient thermal coverage. The overapplication may cause the excessive gel to appear more prominent, extended, and could potentially be separated from the designated area.
While the appearance of extra gel might be concerning, this cosmetic variance does not affect the card’s performance, reliability, or lifespan. We had already inspected the issue, and adjusted the gel to the optimal amount in the following production runs.
So there you have it; if your Gigabyte GPU begins oozing gel, the company suggests not worrying too much about it. You can also give Gigabyte a prod on its support channels if you’re really worried about it. And if you pick up one of the later units, you shouldn’t have to worry about the gel leaking whatsoever.
This isn’t the only issue RTX 50 GPUs have had by any means. For instance, there was that moment where
some GPUs were being shipped with too few ROPs
, which dropped its performance by as much as 5%. Plus, the
drivers for the cards have been called some pretty bad things
after they cause black screen issues, performance problems, and game crashes. It hasn’t been the smoothest release of Nvidia’s newest GPU.
