Defective graphics cards cost Nvidia 1,003% more due to AI, DRAM crisis and 16-pin connector

According to the latest information from Warranty Week Nvidia had to spend a total of $894 million on warranty claims in 2025 instead of only $81 million in 2024. This corresponds to an increase of 1,003 percent. The fact that this increase is not only due to higher sales is shown by the data on the warranty claim rates, which are also rising rapidly.

According to this, Nvidia already had to spend 0.9% of GPU sales on warranty claims in the fourth quarter of 2025, which is nine times higher than in the fourth quarter of 2024. At AMD, the increase is more moderate - with a rate of 0.69 percent, this has risen by two thirds in the previous year. The increased defect rate for graphics cards is likely to have several causes. While some speculate that Nvidia's 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector on graphics cards such as the GeForce RTX 5080 ($1,499 on Amazon) is largely responsible, the same connectors have been used on some models in the GeForce RTX 4000 series, so melting power connectors have been a widespread problem for more than just a year.

Warranty Week believes that the increasing proportion of graphics cards being used for artificial intelligence rather than gaming is also a factor, as GPUs can be fully utilized around the clock in a similar way to crypto mining, rather than just a few hours a day with mixed workloads as is common in gaming. The DRAM crisis is also said to have significantly increased the cost of graphics cards that are replaced under warranty.