The owner of a GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition is decrying Nvidia’s RMA practices, after the company allegedly rejected their graphics card repair on the grounds of a faded serial number. Since sharing their experience, reports of similar rejections from other users have come to the fore, potentially highlighting a problem with the firm’s card design.
Reddit user Willing-Avocado-4830 describes sending an RTX 5090 Founders Edition to Nvidia for repair after experiencing black screens under high GPU load (something we experienced ourselves at launch). The user claims to have purchased this graphics card directly from the Nvidia webstore on September 10, 2025, so this RMA request falls well within the three-year warranty period.
My RTX 5090 FE RMA was rejected because the physical serial number is no longer readable — has anyone experienced this?
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This RTX 5090 was then apparently with Nvidia for “more than 30 days”, before a customer support representative informed the owner that the firm was denying the RMA request, and that the graphics card was on its way back. After pressing for a reason for the rejection, Nvidia reportedly said it was because the card’s serial number was illegible.
Frustratingly, this is all despite Nvidia’s support chatbot apparently telling Willing-Avocado-4830 that the original packaging and proof of purchase would help verify the identify of the graphics card. It’s important to stress that we don’t have any pictures demonstrating proof of these interactions, but potential supporting evidence has come to light in the thread’s replies.
User Character-Tax-1897 provides a photo of their own RTX 5090 Founders Edition (embedded above), with a serial number that has drastically faded. This user claims the card hasn’t left their PC since purchase, until they took the image above.
Our original RTX 5090 Founders Edition review sample fell prey to a melting 16-pin cable earlier this year, so I unfortunately don’t have an aged example to I can compare these photos. However, our RTX 5080 Founders Edition shows possible signs of fading relative to our replacement flagship RTX 5090, as demonstrated in the photo below.
We’ve installed and removed this card from various systems across its lifespan, so friction may have played some part in this fading effect.
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Then there’s user HWDesignCo, who claims to have been through a similarly troubling RMA process with an RTX 5080 Founders Edition, lasting “a month and a half” because of a faded serial number. Once again, the only proof is this user’s word.
Regardless of their alleged RMA stories, though, the bigger issue here stems from the possibility that Founders Edition card serial numbers are fading through no fault of their owners. We’ve contacted Nvidia for comment and will update this story accordingly should the company respond.
For more GPU chatter, check out our picks of the best graphics cards on the market today.
