- Zotac AMP Extreme 5090 catches fire allegedly due to design flaws with the GPU.
- The very short distance between PCB and DrMOS leaves little room for heat dissipation.
- This is a serious issue that the company should look into, considering it’s their top offering.
Nvidia’s top-tier cards, for the last few generations, have been notorious for high temperatures and burning. This issue has been relatively consistent since the company introduced the new 12V2X6 connector; however, this time the culprit was something else.
A user has reported that their Zotac AMP Extreme RTX 5090 caught fire during Battlefield 6 gameplay. In the middle of the session, the game froze, and the GPU caught fire, even damaging other components inside the case.
Why it matters: Stability and power delivery issues have been a massive issue for GPUs like the RTX 5090 and 4090, but this time, a major issue is also the design of Zotac’s top-tier offering.
While in most cases, RTX 5090 catches fire due to the connector problems, this time it is due to a design flaw in the power delivery circuit for the Zotac AMP Extreme card. It has very little PCB edge distance around the DrMOS components, causing thermal issues.
For context, the MSI RTX 5090 SUPRIM SOC has an edge distance of about 5.8mm, whereas the Zotac card only has about 3.8mm. This offers less room for heat flow, which causes the temperatures to rise above normal.
According to Igor’s Lab’s findings, the annealing color on the GPU’s metal indicates it hit a temperature of over 300°C. The initial trigger could be a short circuit in the DrMOS, and due to less room for heat escape, it eventually caught fire.
Additionally, the GPU was undervolted, which can cause instability in some instances. However, in this case, it mostly feels like a design error, and Zotac should look into solving it if it wants to avoid similar cases in the future.
What are your thoughts on the design flaw in Zotac RTX 5090, leading it to catch fire? Let us know your opinions in the comments or join the discussion at the Tech4Gamers forum.
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News Reporter
Abdullah is an avid gamer who primarily plays single-player titles. If you can’t find him anywhere, he’ll probably be at his desk playing The Witcher 3 for the millionth time. When he isn’t playing games, he’s either reading or writing about them.