RTX 5080 owner burns out graphics card after launching GTA 5 with DLSS 5 – replacement issued anyway
NVIDIA's DLSS 5 remains in limited release, but experimental libraries have already spread online and are being actively injected into dozens of games through third-party tools. One RTX 5080 owner learned the hard way what happens when you experiment with untested software.
A gamer going by wax469 recently upgraded from an RTX 2080 Super to an MSI RTX 5080 VENTUS 3X and decided to test the new card out in GTA 5 running the LSPDFR police mod. According to the Redditor, he found a guide for injecting DLSS 5 into the game and got a stable 80 fps at the ultra preset, until things fell apart suddenly and without warning.
RTX 5080 owner wax469 wrote:
without warning, my entire screen seized up and began flashing violently.
Rebooting the system did nothing, and pulling the card out and reseating it in the slot didn't help either. The GPU simply stopped showing any signs of life, even though the modded GTA 5 setup had run without a hitch before – just not with DLSS 5 injected.
Once it became clear the RTX 5080 had died for good, the Redditor filed a warranty replacement request. Running unofficial software technically gives a manufacturer grounds to deny service, but a new card showed up within a few weeks anyway.
After the incident, wax469 noted that the RTX 5080 runs fine now, as long as DLSS 5 stays out of the picture, and he has no plans to repeat the experiment. He hasn't posted any photos of the damaged connector or board, so there's no way to confirm the exact cause of the failure independently.
Still, there's circumstantial evidence pointing to a link between DLSS 5 and power draw. It's been reported that the single 12V-2x6 connector on the RTX 5090 limits performance in games running Neural Rendering, while the MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z, with its dual connectors and up to 1000W ceiling, delivers noticeably better results.
In Cyberpunk 2077 with Neural Rendering active, the MSI RTX 5090 power draw spiked to 723W, while the reference RTX 5090 Founders Edition hit its 575W ceiling. The performance gap between the two cards reached as high as 16 percent in some tests, with both delivering identical results once DLSS 5 was switched off.
Against that backdrop, the power-spike theory seems plausible – the single 12V-2x6 connector on the RTX 5080 may not have been able to handle the load and suffered thermal damage as a result. Neural Rendering places heavier demands on tensor cores, which changes the power draw profile compared to a traditional rasterized rendering pipeline.
The takeaway for anyone who's already downloaded these experimental libraries is simple – unofficial DLSS 5 builds haven't gone through NVIDIA testing, lack power profiles tuned for specific models, and aren't supported by any graphics card manufacturer.
