$2800 Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 Capacitor Caught Fire While Working

This week, Reddit user Impossible-Weight485 shared how his Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 graphics card, worth over $2,800, burned out. He reported that his computer first shut down on its own, and after turning it back on, the graphics card literally caught fire and began to smoke. Unfortunately, the incident was not recorded on video, but he did provide several photos of the now-extinguished graphics card.

«”I was playing computer games this afternoon and when I finished playing and was surfing the internet, my computer suddenly shut down. When I restarted the computer, the graphics accelerator caught fire and smoke came out of it. When I pulled out the video card, I saw traces of burning, both on the GPU itself and on the motherboard,” Impossible-Weight485 wrote in a post.

Image source: Reddit

The problem is probably not related to the power connector or cable, as one might think in light of the latest news. The component that caught fire was located on the PCIe interface side. There are also clearly visible signs of damage on the motherboard, which confirms the user’s words about the fire. Judging by the photos, one of the multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) was seriously burned – it may have been the cause of the fire.

Image source: Reddit

The good news is that there is no need to guess the reasons for the incident – they will be established in the near future. The fact is that the authors of the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus offered the user to buy the video card for an investigation. Note that this is the first known case of a ROG Astral video card catching fire. Previously, RTX 5090 series accelerators suffered from problems with melting connectors, but not from fire.