Part of RTX 4090 Founders Edition heatsink fell off after moving PC – repair estimated at $400

An owner of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition ran into a rare hardware failure. After he moved his PC, a piece of the heatsink fell off the graphics card.

The RTX 40 series has made headlines many times over melting 12VHPWR power connectors, and the RTX 50 series has racked up plenty of damage reports of its own. A disintegrating cooler is a different story, and the user couldn't find a single similar case online.

The RTX 4090 is still the flagship of the Ada Lovelace generation. The reference Founders Edition uses a massive heatsink with heat pipes. A triangular piece near the gold fingers of the PCIe connector came loose, exposing the heat pipes and solder joints underneath.

The photos show that the Founders Edition heatsink is built from several separate parts joined with solder, a detail that was almost unknown to the general public until now. The solder most likely cracked over time from repeated thermal expansion and contraction of the metal as the card heated up and cooled down.

The card was bought in August 2023. NVIDIA offers a three-year warranty on Founders Edition cards, which expired in August 2026. The owner contacted support, but NVIDIA refused to help with a repair.

That leaves two options – fix the card himself or hand it over to a specialist repair shop. According to the owner, technicians are asking around $400 for the job. He is leaning toward a DIY fix and plans to glue the parts back together with thermal epoxy.

The PCB wasn't damaged, so the card should run almost like before once it's repaired. If the "repair" is done carefully, there shouldn't be any problems.