Gigabyte has strengthened the PCB structure of its GeForce RTX 4080 and 4090 video cards, as well as the new RTX 40 Super series models. Last year, some owners of GeForce RTX 30 series cards from Gigabyte encountered problems with cracking of printed circuit boards in the area of the latch that holds the accelerator in the PCIe slot.
Image Source: VideoCardz
Printed circuit boards of video cards consist of many layers, each of which contains contact tracks. Even a slight bend of the printed circuit board can lead to their failure. Although it is possible to repair damaged circuit boards, it requires the work of specialist repair centers. At the same time, repairing video cards in such cases is not cheap.
According to the VideoCardz portal, the problem of cracking of printed circuit boards was also observed in the first versions of GeForce RTX 40 series video cards. Microcracks appeared at the location of the latch that holds the accelerator in the PCIe slot. Damage can occur not only as a result of installation and removal of video cards by the user, but even simply under the video card’s own weight.
Cracks on printed circuit boards of video cards that were sent to repair centers under warranty. Image source: Louis Rossmann/eBay
It is important to note that the problem with cracking printed circuit boards was observed not only in Gigabyte video cards, but also in accelerators from other manufacturers. However, Gigabyte came into the spotlight simply because it was one of the first manufacturers to experience such problems. Moreover, there are cases where owners of such cards were denied warranty repairs, attributing this to improper use of the product by the user himself.
One of the Reddit users noticed that in the printed circuit boards of the RTX 4080 and 4090 series Gaming video cards of the new version 1.1, the space next to the latch that holds the accelerator in the PCIe slot is reinforced with an additional layer of PCB.
GeForce RTX 40 Series PCB v1.1 from Gigabyte: Image source: Reddit
The board update affected not only previously released Gaming models, but also the latest Super cards.
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming PCB version 1.0
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming Super PCB version 1.1
As you can see, the Super models (second image) generally use a different PCB compared to their predecessors. It has become longer. However, the new board has a significantly smaller cutout for the PCIe latch, which in turn should significantly reduce the risk of a crack appearing in this place.