Free RTX 5090 upgrade: Lucky redditor sends Zotac RTX 4090 for RMA, gets upgraded to RTX 5090 instead

It’s not often that we hear about companies acting in the interest of the consumer, especially when it comes to warranty claims. That said, a lucky Redditor would disagree since they received a beefy upgrade for their GPU at no additional cost, but it was a struggle to get there.

Reddit user Prudent_Echidna1254 shared on the Zotac subreddit that after four RMA’s for their Zotac GAMING GeForce RTX 4090 AMP Extreme AIRO GPU, the company sent them an RTX 5090 rather than a fifth RMA. From the serial number, it seems to be the Zotac GeForce RTX 5090 SOLID card currently selling for $4,300 to $4,500.

The Redditor described in the post that over the last year, they had been facing BSOD, freezing, artifacts, and PCIe errors with their RTX 4090. They had sent the GPU for RMA four times, with the latest issue occurring with one month of warranty left. After about a month, the user reached out to Zotac for an update and was informed that management had approved offering an alternate model, the RTX 5090.

Notably, the post also states that the RTX 5090 sent to the user came with only a 30-day warranty rather than a 3-year standard warranty. As explained by the user in a comment, the RTX 5090 could be either an open box, refurbished, or a new unit. They add that Zotac says any replacements sent out have passed their standard benchmarks.

It would be interesting to see how Zotac responds if there’s an issue with the replacement GPU after the 30-day period.