Gigabyte's leaky GPU problem continues, here's the thermal putty creep in action

Concerned and bemused owners of Gigabyte graphics cards continue to document harrowing signs of thermal putty leaking out of their graphics cards despite the company's efforts to assuage fears that there's nothing to worry about.

Last month, Gigabyte addressed issues of thermal gel creep in its RTX 50-Series and AMD Radeon RX 9000 series GPUs, telling customers that in early production a slightly higher volume of gel was applied, which "may cause the excessive gel to appear more prominent, extended, and could potentially be separated from the designated area."

The company says there's nothing to worry about and the creep won't affect performance, reliability, or lifespan, but that hasn't stopped concerned users from continuing to document worrying signs of the dreaded thermal creep.

In particular, Reddit users u/supatx uploaded a series of images, which you can see in the Reddit embed below, documenting the problem unfolding over the course of a couple of weeks. The first two images show the first signs of the issue, small leakages on the main board. Images three and four "show where the thermal putty has dripped down onto the riser," they shared. Five and six "shows where the thermal putty has dripped down and no longer provides heat dissipation to most of what seems to be a VRAM chip." The final harrowing images show the gap in the system where the putty used to be from photo four.

The Gigabyte subreddit is awash with such reports. "I got my card about a week ago and seeing all those posts made me want to double check," another user shared. After a week of light use, their images show putty leaking from all the usual spots after just five hours of total use, with the card horizontal the whole time. "Is it ok?" another asked sheepishly.

While plenty of comments recommend just wiping up the excess and cracking on, Supatx's images appear to show that eventually, all of the putty in question will leak out, leaving nothing behind and presumably no thermal performance either. That could cast some doubt on Gigabyte's claim that the problem is caused merely by excess, with the images on display here apparently showing no thermal putty left behind on at least some parts of the board.

Gigabyte says that users with more questions or who require further assistance should contact their regional Gigabyte customer service center.

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