Gigabyte RTX 5080 Master Ice’s server-grade thermal gel apparently leaking

We’ve heard of power connectors and PSU cables melting with the RTX 50 series GPUs, but a new ‘melting’ issue seems to have come up with one of Gigabyte’s RTX 5080 cards, particularly the Aorus RTX 5080 Master Ice 16G. A user over at the Quasar Zone community has shared that the thermal gel seems to be leaking out from their GPU, which may not be that harmful at first, but its heading towards the PCB.

As posted on the Korean publication and machine translated to English, a user named ‘Rolling around’ shared a couple of photos of their Gigabyte Aorus RTX 5080 Master Ice 16G showing the thermal compound leaking out. The post states that this happened after a month of playing mainly World of Warcraft and that too about two hours a day. The GPU was mounted vertically so the compound, while not electrically conductive, was heading towards the PCB where it could have caused serious issues.

The thermal compound in question is a “Server-grade Thermal conductive gel” that Gigabyte is using on this premium GPU. The company claims that this gel is used for cooling the VRAM and MOSFETs. It is highly deformable, but non-fluid, and that it resists deformation (somewhat contradictory) from long-term use or transport. Typically, these areas inside the GPU are covered with solid thermal pads. Furthermore, Gigabyte is using this thermal gel solution on several other RTX 50 series cards like the 5090 Xtreme Waterforce 32G, RTX 5090 Master Ice, RTX 5070 Ti Master, and others.

The user did mount the GPU vertically but Gigabyte does not have any warnings or restrictions against this orientation.

A distributor responded to the thread and stated that they are in talks with Gigabyte about the thermal gel issue and future customer service regulations. They will share the finalized customer service policy regarding the issue through a separate post.