RTX 4090 Founders Edition PCB Revision Revealed After Three Years – NVIDIA Quietly Removed a Chip
The hardware repair channel Northwestrepair released a repair video for the RTX 4090 FE, revealing a previously unreported fact: NVIDIA revised the PCB of the RTX 4090 at least once during its lifecycle, removing a chip present in early batches.
It has been over three years since the RTX 4090 launched, and this is the first time a repair agency has publicly disclosed this hardware version difference.
The RTX 4090 FE sent in for repair was unable to power on. The repair technician routinely checked for short circuits, power connector issues, voltage levels, PCIe detection logic, and cooling status, and even performed a complete reballing of the GPU, but the problem remained unsolved.
Finally, a thermal camera was used to pinpoint the source of the fault, revealing a small, abnormally hot chip near the memory power supply circuit.
A key discovery followed: the technician compared it with several RTX 4090 FE Founders Edition cards in hand, and this chip was not present on all newer batches.
The technician confirmed that NVIDIA revised the PCB of the RTX 4090 FE at some point, removing this component. Since the video did not further explain the reason for the revision, it is currently unconfirmed whether the chip is related to reliability issues.
Northwestrepair eventually removed a similar-looking replacement chip from a Gigabyte graphics card and successfully repaired the RTX 4090 FE after installing it, and the graphics card lit up successfully.