Graphic Cards Denial of RMA by NVIDIA/RPTECH and MSI for PCI Express Slot and PCI Express Pad burn

[rsaeon]

someone please clarify .. afaik, only 75 watts goes through motherboard PCIe slot and GPU can only pull 75w from motherboard PCIe slot ( otherwise every time someone forgets to plug PCIe 8pin/6pin cables to the GPU, there would be a burnt card and a burnt motherboard ) .. how can GPU try to pull more power from PCIe and get burnt?

for the usual weekend gaming ritual, I powered on my PC after 5 days

Failure occurred during a cold start 5 days after last power-on, it could be anything.

It was during summer, so no condensation due to rains unless if there was both a humidifier and AC in the room.

It's possible it's premature failure of some component that happened during cool down after the last power-on. Most systems with this kind of hardware aren't powered off for such long time periods so I haven't been able to find much information on social media.

Some animal or insect could've decided to make itself at home or leave gifts behind. A random relative could've knocked over the tower and put it back without saying anything. A pet could've jumped on or off of it causing it to rock and unseat the card slightly.

Without a timelapse recording of the entire 5 day period, it could be anything. I have TAPO cameras pointed at everything that's worth 5 digits or more. I set that up because we have more cats than humans here and all windows and doors are locked down but one or two still manage to find a way in to snoop around and leave paw prints behind.

If this card has international warranty, then sending it to the US looks like the best option since it might take months or years to resolve legally here.

 

[?dOuBtFiRe?]

Corsair's Support is legendary in a good manner and MSI Support is legendary in a bad manner. As expected.
Pray that this gets resolved in a humanely manner. The way this goes, trust is lost on all parties involved.
However the real question is what caused this to happen at first. I think its the bane of the 4000 series.
I am guessing it will get buried first.

 

[sstiwari]

@sstiwari Share the gpu and also the mobo pcie burnt pics to get an better insight.

Added some more snaps of the card and mobo.

Failure occurred during a cold start 5 days after last power-on, it could be anything.

It was during summer, so no condensation due to rains unless if there was both a humidifier and AC in the room.

It's possible it's premature failure of some component that happened during cool down after the last power-on. Most systems with this kind of hardware aren't powered off for such long time periods so I haven't been able to find much information on social media.

Some animal or insect could've decided to make itself at home or leave gifts behind. A random relative could've knocked over the tower and put it back without saying anything. A pet could've jumped on or off of it causing it to rock and unseat the card slightly.

Without a timelapse recording of the entire 5 day period, it could be anything. I have TAPO cameras pointed at everything that's worth 5 digits or more. I set that up because we have more cats than humans here and all windows and doors are locked down but one or two still manage to find a way in to snoop around and leave paw prints behind.

If this card has international warranty, then sending it to the US looks like the best option since it might take months or years to resolve legally here.

The PCIE Pad/Fingers of the graphics card sit flush into the PCIE Slot of the mother board, there are no exposed PCIE Pins outside the PCIE Slot, and moreover, if you see the pictures closely, you would notice that the PCIE Pins on the card have not melted, they are intact. Surge has come from inside of the card, melting/shorting Copper traces, and Epoxy resin on PCB, that has condensed on the PCIE Pins of the card. Check 1st two Pics in this post.

Even if an insect went on the exposed part of PCIE Pad that is essentially an extension of PCB, the black Epoxy Resin is supposed to provide thermal & electrical insulation to the PCB.

To me the sequence is, some manufacturing defect on the Copper traces supplying +12V power from PCIE side, have resulted in shorting, then overheating, melting the Copper and Epoxy insulation, which has then flown into the PCIE Slot. The PCIE Power Pins/Fingers on the Card are still intact, just a bit of epoxy/Carbon deposit.

And all this happened in like a couple of seconds. This happened in end Mar'24, and frankly I accepted this as my fate. But the energy here is coaxing me to give it another shot.

If someone can help me with email ids of Nvidia Head in India and RPTech Head, I can drop them an email regarding final call for help, and then file a compliant to consumer court.

 

[Emperor]

RP Tech guy said, if NVIDIA explicitly writes to us to accept card for RMA, we will accept it. When I mentioned this to Nvidia Level 2, he said, he has no solution.

so it is NVIDIA and not RP Tech who should blame for not replacing product in warranty and no fault of user.
I smell downfall of NVIDIA is near corner..
Intel did same with my Intel Original Motherboard in 2005-2006 year and what I wish at that time came true for Intel in 2024

 

[nRiTeCh]

Intel did same with my Intel Original Motherboard in 2005-2006 year and what I wish at that time came true for Intel in 2024

+1 the almighty socket 775 era but Intels original mobos were rocksolid not the chipset ones.

I smell downfall if NVIDIA is near corner..

Not gonna happen.

Added some more snaps of the card and mobo.

The PCIE Pad/Fingers of the graphics card sit flush into the PCIE Slot of the mother board, there are no exposed PCIE Pins outside the PCIE Slot, and moreover, if you see the pictures closely, you would notice that the PCIE Pins on the card have not melted, they are intact. Surge has come from inside of the card, melting/shorting Copper traces, and Epoxy resin on PCB, that has condensed on the PCIE Pins of the card. Check 1st two Pics in this post.

Even if an insect went on the exposed part of PCIE Pad that is essentially an extension of PCB, the black Epoxy Resin is supposed to provide thermal & electrical insulation to the PCB.

To me the sequence is, some manufacturing defect on the Copper traces supplying +12V power from PCIE side, have resulted in shorting, then overheating, melting the Copper and Epoxy insulation, which has then flown into the PCIE Slot. The PCIE Power Pins/Fingers on the Card are still intact, just a bit of epoxy/Carbon deposit.

And all this happened in like a couple of seconds. This happened in end Mar'24, and frankly I accepted this as my fate. But the energy here is coaxing me to give it another shot.

If someone can help me with email ids of Nvidia Head in India and RPTech Head, I can drop them an email regarding final call for help, and then file a compliant to consumer court.

You are not alone, to me it looks like a chipset design flaw!

You can google more form 4090 burning issues and slap these on nvidias face.

4090 pcie melt - Google Search

4090 pcie melt - Google Search

 

[rsaeon]

Most of those are about the PCIe cable, but the first one has the same burn marks — on the edge connector:

The repair disables power draw from the motherboard slot, so there's hope! The card will work, but draw power only from the PSU connector (unless if you do the mod in the second half of the video).

 

[ARAV]

Most of those are about the PCIe cable, but the first one has the same burn marks — on the edge connector:

The repair disables power draw from the motherboard slot, so there's hope! The card will work, but draw power only from the PSU connector (unless if you do the mod in the second half of the video).

This looks promising , will try it out with my card too. If i can find it first

 

[cranky]

someone please clarify .. afaik, only 75 watts goes through motherboard PCIe slot and GPU can only pull 75w from motherboard PCIe slot ( otherwise every time someone forgets to plug PCIe 8pin/6pin cables to the GPU, there would be a burnt card and a burnt motherboard ) .. how can GPU try to pull more power from PCIe and get burnt?

PCIe slot is rated to 75 watts maximum. In fact there is quite a bit of headroom, each pin is rated for 1.5A continuous and 2.5A peak with an acceptable temperature rise. Same rating is applicable for all slots from PCIe 1x to 16x, only some of the first 18 pins are used for power. We used this to build a 30-channel modular amplifier for a client and we used the PCIe connector (obviously with a different pinout) to supply the power, signal and get the speaker output from a single backplane. There are 5 +12V pins and 7 ground pins in a default x1 slot, at 1.5A each that's about 90 watts from the 12V rail alone. Then there are more 3.3V pins.

The 75W limit is set by PCI-SIG and is not the limit of the connector surface. Motherboard manufaturers only need respect the PCI-SIG spec to pass certification and market their boards. On the GPU side, thigns get complicated. While most cards are limited to run 50-65 watts from the slot, depending on how the rails are wired it is entriely possible that they draw too much current from the rail for an instant. For cards that conflate all their supply rails into a single large rail, this could cause the card to lean harder on the slot power than the incoming +12V power connector. Typically this is rare, as the slot rails are directed specifically to the board logic and some of the minor auxiliary circuitry. It may also be used to power the VRM chips (not the VRM itself, just the chips) and sometimes the front end video encoders.

To the burn, if you had it at power on it's most likely overvoltage - a brief surge that caused the regulation to fail before cutting out the output voltage. Not vetting the build thoroughly after getting a smoke signal, and then proceeding to power on again was the death warrant, if the first power on didn't kill it the second one surely did. This was a hardware failure, it sucks, but what's done is done.

There is an outside chance that the card is OK. It may be just a trace failure along with whatever else vaporised instantly. Motherboard is likely unrecoverable. The depth of repair needed may be just too high, because motherboards tend to bury power layers and if soemthing there opened p you won't be able to get to the layer. GPUs still run most of their power up top and bottom, so even vaprosed tracks can be (mostly, but not always) fixed. There are guys who advertise PCB evel repairs on GPUs. I would hesitate using their services.

 

[anpl]

MSI UNRELIABLE PRODUCT AND WORST CUSTOMER SUPPORT DONT BUY MSI

 

[sstiwari]

PCIe slot is rated to 75 watts maximum. In fact there is quite a bit of headroom, each pin is rated for 1.5A continuous and 2.5A peak with an acceptable temperature rise. Same rating is applicable for all slots from PCIe 1x to 16x, only some of the first 18 pins are used for power. We used this to build a 30-channel modular amplifier for a client and we used the PCIe connector (obviously with a different pinout) to supply the power, signal and get the speaker output from a single backplane. There are 5 +12V pins and 7 ground pins in a default x1 slot, at 1.5A each that's about 90 watts from the 12V rail alone. Then there are more 3.3V pins.

The 75W limit is set by PCI-SIG and is not the limit of the connector surface. Motherboard manufaturers only need respect the PCI-SIG spec to pass certification and market their boards. On the GPU side, thigns get complicated. While most cards are limited to run 50-65 watts from the slot, depending on how the rails are wired it is entriely possible that they draw too much current from the rail for an instant. For cards that conflate all their supply rails into a single large rail, this could cause the card to lean harder on the slot power than the incoming +12V power connector. Typically this is rare, as the slot rails are directed specifically to the board logic and some of the minor auxiliary circuitry. It may also be used to power the VRM chips (not the VRM itself, just the chips) and sometimes the front end video encoders.

To the burn, if you had it at power on it's most likely overvoltage - a brief surge that caused the regulation to fail before cutting out the output voltage. Not vetting the build thoroughly after getting a smoke signal, and then proceeding to power on again was the death warrant, if the first power on didn't kill it the second one surely did. This was a hardware failure, it sucks, but what's done is done.

There is an outside chance that the card is OK. It may be just a trace failure along with whatever else vaporised instantly. Motherboard is likely unrecoverable. The depth of repair needed may be just too high, because motherboards tend to bury power layers and if soemthing there opened p you won't be able to get to the layer. GPUs still run most of their power up top and bottom, so even vaprosed tracks can be (mostly, but not always) fixed. There are guys who advertise PCB evel repairs on GPUs. I would hesitate using their services.

View attachment 209052

Mobo was still booting, with another graphics card in 3rd PCIE slot. I think, just by replacing the PCIE Slot, mobo would have turned fully functional again.

 

[cranky]

It might be. Worth a try. Does the second x16 slot not work? Both of those are connected to the same bus, so if the second slot works you're good.

After looking at your pics in more detail the solutions suggested in #45 and #46 are probably the way to go. It's worth a shot. Given that I also use a MSI x570 board with a 4090 (and is powered on only weekly), this is a new fear unlocked for me as well.

 

[ninjenstein]

Wow, its time to lawyer up for sure.. these schmucks at RP tech need to be taught a lesson.

This is why i always buy brands whose RMA's are handled by kaizen.. for eg: zotac, corsair etc.

My RMA experiences with Kaizen have been nothing short of excellent.

My local dealers also warned me that the technicians at RPtech who intially investigate the product for RMA's are idiots.. and they try to find every reason to deny warranty.

I can attest to this.

Don't know if it was kaizen, but my customer experience with Corsair was great. I needed long screws to install new fans in my Corsair Carbide 100r case that I had bought over 3 years ago. I had lost the ones that came with it, I so I emailed them to ask where I can buy them. They actually replied, and not just that, they shipped me a set at their own cost! Since that experience, I'm a Corsiar man.

I also own a Zotac GPU. I bought it used, knowing that it was used for mining (remember when GPUs were scarce during the mining craze in 2017-18?). I never had an issue with it so cannot say anything about the RMA experience, but hey that's a good thing.

 

[KA_20]

Most of those are about the PCIe cable, but the first one has the same burn marks — on the edge connector:

The repair disables power draw from the motherboard slot, so there's hope! The card will work, but draw power only from the PSU connector (unless if you do the mod in the second half of the video).

See the latest community post from Tony(Northwestrepair), seems to be common problem with 4090's. I remembered this post.

 

[rsaeon]

northwestrepair

Contact me on DISCORD https://discord.gg/krzHbYpUMy Or email me at tony@northwestrepair.com (ignore automatic reply) Tools, schematics, boardview files etc are available here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12XQpmc9tLwlRQjlo3Mn_XwKlVcV8XYGI?usp=sharing Buy me a candy at...

youtube.com

They say MSI has the only 4090 with fuse protection on the PCIe pins, wow.

 

[crytt]

northwestrepair

Contact me on DISCORD https://discord.gg/krzHbYpUMy Or email me at tony@northwestrepair.com (ignore automatic reply) Tools, schematics, boardview files etc are available here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12XQpmc9tLwlRQjlo3Mn_XwKlVcV8XYGI?usp=sharing Buy me a candy at...

youtube.com

They say MSI has the only 4090 with fuse protection on the PCIe pins, wow.

This guy is mad talented.

 

[k660]

This was long overdue.

This is about MSI MEG ACE x570 Motherboard, NVIDIA RTX 4090 FE(bought on launch), and Corsair Axi 1200[Powering Gfx Card thru corsair 12VHPWR Cable], as these are the components that will matter to this post.

On 31st March 2024, for the usual weekend gaming ritual, I powered on my PC after 5 days, it briefly started to immediately shutdown(whole episode took around 5 seconds), there was burning smell coming from the cabinet, although there was no smoke.

I immediately opened the Cabinet door, but couldn't see any obvious damage. So, pressed the Power Button again, and it booted fine but without any display signal to the monitor.

I suspected the dreaded connector melt in RTX 4090 FE. On disassembly, I could not find any damage to connector on either side, but the PCI Express Pad Power Pins on RTX 4090 FE were melted and so was the PCI Express X16 Slot on the MSI x570 ACE.

So, I contacted NVIDIA, MSI, and Corsair.

Corsair: Immediately agreed to replace the PSU, and I received a brand new Corsair Hxi 1500.

NVIDIA: Level 1 support asked me to share images, which I shared. Then they advised me to visit RPTECH Noida, which I did. To my Horror, RPTECH refused to touch the card. They just took a few snaps and said this is not covered under warranty. They even refused to issue any card submission, RMA denial or warranty void document to me. I again contacted NVIDIA about the treatment at RPTECH, they shared the same images that RPTECH has taken that burn is not covered under warranty.

I quoted warranty void clause on NVIDIA website, which doesn't include burn.

"WHAT DOES THIS WARRANTY NOT COVER?
Any problems that do not relate specifically to a manufacturing defect or hardware product failure, including, but not limited to, problems caused by abuse, misuse, negligence, act of God (such as flood), misapplication of service by a party other than an authorized service representative, software, shipment damages, etc."

NVIDIA Level 1 support still said they can not help me. So, I asked to escalate. He escalated to Level 2 support, who said that even if they wanted to help me, they can not, as they do not ship directly to India and RPTECH is my only place to seek help. Dropped an email to Mr. Jensen Huang, which was never acknowledged or reverted.

MSI: Reponded in 2 parts that this type of damage is not covered under warranty and generally not repairable, meaning don't even bother for paid repair. I had owned several MSI products prior to this, all of them were good. But the blatant shake off by MSI has really pissed me off.

Final Notes: I religiously clean the PC using a blower every 2-3 weeks, no body else touches the PC, It happened before monsoons, and I have been building PCs for me since 2006, so dust ingress, humidity and shorting, inexperience etc. is really out of question. Finally, Motherboard was still booting fine with another graphics card in next PCIE Slot and same PSU. So, either PCIE Slot malfunctioned or the Graphics card had some malfunction.

Lessons Learnt:
1. In such cases you are totally screwed, there is no mechanism in India to help you.
2. I will never buy from NVIDIA as OEM again and if AMD rises to my needs, will never by any NVIDIA GPU even from AIB partners in future.
3. My experience with Samsung, Razer, Gigabyte and Corsair supprt has been superlative. They are really very helpful, ""everytime I contacted them. Though not experienced any burn issues.

'' Using a blower every 2-3 weeks, no body else touches the PC"
i bet my left nut it was mobo, for some reason mobo's weak to the blowers, something similar happened with me. i used blower and all the stuff you mentioned happened with me too. mobo died atleast certain parts of it, but since it was and out of production had to change to other mobo n cpu.

My point being to everyone plz dont use Blowers/even co2 cans, just a smooth cloth with iso propyl alcohol and cleaning pcbs/boards once in 3-6 months should be enough.
also RPTECH been trying to sell gpus on amazon, quite sus.

 

[aryabhattadey]

Have seen similar things with rptech. Would suggest you first try the social media route. If not try consumer court. Also do mail nvidia themselves. Maybe even ceo and see if anyone helps you.