Gigabyte's thermal gel 'is crawling out' of place on some RTX 50-series cards

The Gigabyte Aorus Master Ice RTX 5080 GPU floats in a pink-teal gradient void. An artistic rendering implies the fans are in motion even though this graphics card is not plugged into anything. — (Image credit: Gigabyte)

Writing about hardware is an often humbling experience. More recently than I'd like to admit, I popped open a PC case only to ask '...what is that?' Embarrassingly, that was my first encounter with a particularly stylish GPU riser bracket—a bit of kit that allows for vertical installation of your graphics card. Unfortunately for some folks with vertically mounted Gigabyte RTX 50-series cards, they've peeked inside their PC case only to see something far more worrying.

The saga began last month, when a translated post from a Quasar Zone user alleged that the thermal gel on their Gigabyte Aorus Master Ice RTX 5080 appeared to be "crawling out". They claimed to have only had the card for a month, having used it to play World of Warcraft for about two hours every day—hardly the heaviest of performance loads. Now, a number of other users have taken to the TechPowerUp forum to share that the thermal gel on their Gigabyte cards also appears to be either melting or otherwise making a break for it (via Videocardz).

Rather than issue a recall of the affected cards, Gigabyte acknowledged the situation in a press release published last month. The company previously admitted, "In some early production batches for the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 50 Series, a slightly higher volume of [the thermal] gel was applied to ensure sufficient thermal coverage." The company claims the amount of thermal gel applied has since been adjusted, adding, "While the appearance of extra gel might be concerning, this cosmetic variance does not affect the card's performance, reliability, or lifespan."

A Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice on a desk and installed in a gaming PC. — A perfectly fine Gigabyte RTX 5070 Ti Eagle OC Ice graphics card that isn't suffering from crawling thermal gel (Image credit: Future)

The company also attempted to reassure, "The thermal conductive gel is an insulating, deformable, putty-like compound. It is engineered to remain in place when applied properly, and can endure at least 150 °C before any melting or liquification could happen."

Gigabyte also maintains its quality assurance testing is rigorous, accounting for not only performance under heavy loads, but "multi-axis drops and vibration testing," as well as "vertical and horizontal installation orientations."

While I have yet to find any reports of this thermal gel slippage negatively impacting the function or performance of Gigabyte's RTX 50-series, it's far from an ideal situation. For one, components that should've been covered by the thermal gel now potentially aren't, which may impact the long-term performance of the card itself. For another, this gel could possibly continue to slip into crevices within your PC case that would be a mission to clean at best. That said, we don't yet know just how widespread this thermal gel slippage actually is.

So, let's stick to what we do know: Gigabyte's 50-series cards have been available for not even three months, with the Gigabyte Aorus Master Ice RTX 5080 mentioned up top costing as much as $1,900 from Amazon right now. That's a lot of money to spend on a card with such a concerning issue—cosmetic or otherwise.

Right now, it doesn't seem like a major disaster of melting cable proportions—we've no data about the GPUs performing notably worse over time, or whether the compound has, in fact, leaked entirely from the necessary contact points—but it's still not a great look for the company especially when we are talking about some very expensive graphics cards.

Jess has been writing about games for over ten years, spending the last seven working on print publications PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When she’s not writing about all things hardware here, she’s getting cosy with a horror classic, ranting about a cult hit to a captive audience, or tinkering with some tabletop nonsense.

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