GIGABYTE 5080 User Reports Unsettling Thermal Gel Discovery
Here We go again anothor user recently shared a rather unsettling discovery with their GIGABYTE 5080 AERO that will have you taking a second look at your rig.
Thermal gel issues seem to be a bit of a hot topic as of late, and this story definitely fans that fire. The user decided to take a look at their graphics card and, well, let's just say they saw something they were not expecting.
The Dripping Mess
Imagine a strange, oily substance slowly dripping out of your expensive graphics card. That's what happened here. The thermal material, which was likely a paste or gel designed to aid in keeping the GPU at a safe temperature, appeared to be leaking or flowing out.
To add insult to injury, the leakage wasn't confined to the card itself. It had spread down onto the PCIe riser port. That's definitely not where you want any kind of liquid, even if it is just thermal compound.
A Possible Culprit for Display Woes
This user had purchased their card in early February of 2025, so it had only seen use for about two months. Two weeks before discovering the leak, they started to notice strange display issues, with the screen seemingly "tasting in half" (likely screen tearing or artifacting).
Upon seeing the thermal gel on the riser kit, this leak would seem to have been the likely cause of those pesky screen problems.
Temporary Solution and a Word of Warning
The user has temporarily cleaned up the mess and gone back to installing the graphics card horizontally directly into the motherboard, sans riser cable. Luckily, upon doing this, the screen problems seem to have been fixed.
Again, however, this is definitely something to monitor. If you are running a GIGABYTE 50-series card, especially with a riser cable with the card mounted sideways, it would not be a bad idea to take a look. You never know what you might see, and spotting a potential leak earlier instead of later might save you some frustration (and maybe even your hardware).
We'll have to wait and see if more reports of this kind surface, but it's a good reminder that even high-end components can sometimes have odd quirks.
