Battlefield 6 beta results in RTX 5090 catching fire mid-game

The Battlefield 6 multiplayer entered its public beta on August 10, and more than 500,000 Steam users flocked to the title throughout the weekend. Unfortunately, one of those PC gamers discovered their RTX 5090 caught fire and started melting mid-game.

The user said they noticed something was up when the game started freezing mid-match, and then an odor began to fill the room. The smell was shortly followed by a fire that reportedly lasted around 10 seconds. Notably, the area that has sustained most of the damage is where the GPU undercarriage meets the motherboard, specifically right before the PCIe slot. The graphics card is a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5090, and judging from the images posted, the fire was significant enough to leave significant damage to the card, case, and some surrounding components.

Reports indicate the owner purchased the system as a prebuilt, which, thankfully for them, will make claiming warranty on the rig much easier (hopefully). The PC has been returned to the store and is currently undergoing an investigation by the manufacturer. As for what caused the fire, the specifics are currently unknown, as typically when a GPU is involved in a fire or melting scenario, it has to do with incorrect seating of the power connector cables, or in the case of an RTX 4090, a flawed power connector design.

However, that doesn't seem to be the case here, as the area that has sustained the most damage is on the opposite side of the card, meaning this is likely an isolated failure of some kind with this specific graphics card, and seemingly not indicative of a wider problem RTX 5090 owners should be concerned about. With that being said, nothing has been confirmed or ruled out at this stage, so I'd keep a cautious ear to the ground if I were an RTX 5090 owner.

What is relieving is that there has only been one known case of an RTX 5090 catching fire during Battlefield 6 beta testing, which is a good sign considering more than 500,000 gamers enjoyed the title over the course of the weekend. The lack of reports of melting GPUs speaks to the rarity of the event.