Aorus RTX 5090 Owner Discovers Excess Thermal Paste Causing Overheating and Loud Fan Noise

An owner of GIGABYTE's Aorus RTX 5090 discovered a major flaw: after tearing down the card, they noticed that the liquid thermal pads had oozed out and gotten all over the PCB — there was way too much of the stuff, while the GPU die itself barely got any thermal compound at all. The reason they decided to open it up in the first place was the insane fan noise during gaming — the fans would regularly start "howling" under load, which is what finally pushed the user to check the cooling system.

Upon inspection, it turned out the liquid pads had smeared all across the cooling assembly, but the actual GPU die was left high and dry. Had the card been mounted vertically, the paste could have dripped down onto the motherboard, creating even more risks for the rest of the PC components.

Not only did the excessive amount of thermal paste fail to help with cooling, but it actually got in the way of proper heat dissipation and cooler performance — even though one enthusiast actually got some pretty decent results with their own paste test. It was this uneven spread of the thermal interface that caused localized hotspots and, as a result, the fan noise. Following this incident, users are advised to double-check their Aorus RTX 5090 units for similar issues.

Turns out, problems with flagship graphics cards aren't just limited to melting power connectors. The quality of factory thermal paste and liquid pad application is no less critical — it can completely negate the benefits of a beefy cooler and cause the kind of noise that most people just shrug off as normal load behavior.

Ever run into similar defects on high-end graphics cards, or do you think these are just isolated cases in the mass market? Drop your take in the comments!