Northridge Fix, a GPU repair specialist, gave up on trying to restore the flagship card due to its baffling layout and lack of available replacement parts. The card came in after its owner tried to mod it with a custom water block and ended up with a brick instead of a high-end GPU.

The root of the problem is Nvidia's bizarre design. The 5090 FE uses a compact PCB buried in the centre of a massive heatsink. This forced the layout into strange contortions, including a fragile PCIe connector on the back side of the PCB, which links to the motherboard.

When the user disconnected the PCIe interface and attempted to reassemble it, they broke one pin and bent another. “There are so many pins in that connector that he had to use a microscope to show us what exactly it looks like,” Northridge Fix said. That minor slip-up was enough to kill the card.

There was no other visible damage, making the faulty connector the sole point of failure. The real kicker, however, is that the connector can’t be replaced, there are no spares available, making the card impossible to repair once damaged.

Northridge Fix dubbed the RTX 5090 FE “one of the worst designs” they’ve ever seen. They strongly advised against buying it, especially if you’re the kind of user who likes to tinker. Open it once, and odds are you’ll wreck it.