Chinese gamer records RTX 5090 sparking and catching fire

A Chinese gamer captured the moment an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 sparked and caught fire when first powering on a newly plugged-in rig. The clip was uploaded to BiliBili earlier this week and has attracted almost 100,000 views. The user quickly powered off the machine and extinguished the flame before it spread.

The RTX 5090 is not officially sold in China because of US export restrictions, and MSI denied selling the cards there after images showed pallets of the restricted GPUs. The BiliBili user said they used a proxy to obtain the card and therefore bought it without a warranty, leaving them to seek recourse with the proxy seller after the Lunar New Year holiday.

This follows other hardware concerns around the RTX 5090. Der8auer claimed the Founders Edition may be prone to melting power connectors, though Falcon Northwest was unable to reproduce that issue. Repair technicians have also criticised the Founders Edition for the difficulty of sourcing a replacement internal connector and the 'stupid design' of its twin circuit boards.

China

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