NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPU won't work in your EVGA motherboard? Fix requires care and a bit of tape

This is an unofficial workaround aired on Reddit, but apparently using electrical tape to cover two pins on the graphics card's PCIe connector works fine.

NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPU won't work in your EVGA motherboard? Fix requires care and a bit of tape
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Tech Reporter
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TL;DR: NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs don't work with some EVGA Intel Z690 motherboards due to an issue with optional pins that the mobo maker set live (and other motherboard manufacturers didn't). The fudged fix is to carefully tape over these pins on the GPU's PCIe connector. An official solution from EVGA in the way of a BIOS update seems unlikely.

There's apparently a solution for NVIDIA RTX 5000 graphics cards failing to work with some EVGA motherboards, which, rather unbelievably, involves simply taping over a couple of pins on the GPU connector.

The reported problem, which means the PC with the RTX 5000 GPU fails to boot at all, has been encountered by a fair number of folks as evidenced in various posts on Reddit. One of those posts, penned by MurkyIncident and highlighted by Tom's Hardware, provides the workaround solution using the tape and you can read it above.

What's reportedly happening is that Blackwell GPUs are failing to work with some motherboards featuring the Intel Z690 chipset, and the reason is there are extra SMBUS pins live on these EVGA mobos.

The Redditor explains that those pins are completely optional, and most consumer motherboards don't even wire them up because they aren't needed, but EVGA did. Seemingly this means the RTX 5000 GPU is messing with the boot process of the PC, the end result being that it fails to boot.

Kapton capers

The solution, then, is to take some tape and carefully cover the two pins in question. MurkyIncident explains:

"Cut a 2mm-wide strip of electrically-insulating tape (Kapton strongly recommended). Then, apply over pins #5 and #6 on the front side of the GPU's PCIe connector. Thermal Grizzly sells the tape on plastic sheets, which are easy to cut to size. Make sure that only the two SMBUS pins are covered, nothing else. That's it."

Note that it's just the front pins you're supposed to be covering with tape, not the ones on the rear (though in theory if you wrapped the tape over, that shouldn't do any harm).

The Redditor also advises to clean the PCIe connector with isopropyl alcohol, and then ensure it fully dries, before placing on the tape. And, of course, MurkyIncident makes it clear that you proceed with this fudged solution at your own risk. It worked for their RTX 5080 Founders Edition, though, we're assured of that.

If you don't fancy taking the plunge, you'll have to wait for a solution from elsewhere (or change your motherboard). The expectations of EVGA providing a BIOS update with a cure - which is what would normally happen in this scenario - are low, shall we say.

EVGA has seriously scaled back its operations on the software and update side (and overall). So, it doesn't seem like there's a great likelihood of a BIOS patch being piped through for those who've bought a seriously expensive new NVIDIA GPU and found it doesn't work with their PC.

Before this solution came to light - apparently via hints dropped on web forums over in Asia - some frustrated Blackwell graphics card owners restored to upgrading their motherboard to get around this unpleasantness.

Note that the issue seemingly only affects Intel Z690 chipsets, and if you have an EVGA Z790 motherboard, you should be fine.