User reports are cropping up claiming that NVIDIA's DLSS 5 technology is causing RTX GPUs to die. This latest report, spotted by VideoCardz, comes from Wax469 on the r/RTX5080 subreddit, whose RTX 5080 reportedly died from running DLSS 5 mods in games.
The user reported that after upgrading to an MSI GeForce RTX 5080 Ventus 3X, the computer all of a sudden began producing artifacting and flashing on the user's two displays after running DLSS 5 mods. Specifically, the crashing occurred five minutes after playing GTA 5 with DLSS 5 at around 80 FPS on the second day of using DLSS 5 mods. The crash happened a month after the RTX 5080 owner began using their card and playing games without DLSS 5 for that whole month.
Popular Now: New $308 Android gaming handheld has a 120Hz screen and 9300mAh replaceable batteryThe user describes the failure as happening without warning, where the entire screen froze and began flashing violently, and the computer was completely unresponsive. Since the incident, the user has replaced the RTX 5080 with a working one and stopped using DLSS 5 mods since, noting that they'll wait until more games feature DLSS 5 support officially before running it.
There still are not enough reported incidents to confirm whether or not DLSS 5 is actually killing GPUs, but this is not the first incident claiming DLSS 5 has killed a graphics card. We covered a user report that also claimed that DLSS 5 caused their RTX 5090 to melt using the official implementation of the technology in NBA 2K27.
One correlation that backs up these supposed DLSS 5-related GPU deaths is DLSS 5's surprisingly high demand on GPU power consumption. Tom's Hardware revealed that DLSS 5's higher computational requirements can generate up to 50% more power consumption compared to gaming with DLSS 4.5 or prior versions. It's worth mentioning that testing was achieved with a 1000W BIOS on an RTX 5090 Lightning Z.
It seems unlikely that DLSS 5 is actually causing these GPUs to die, due to the plethora of GPU protection features that exist on modern NVIDIA GPUs. But, given the track record of the 12VHPWR/12V-2x6 power connectors that were created in partnership with NVIDIA, there could be a chance NVIDIA might have overlooked a design flaw in its GPUs that DLSS 5 is only now exploiting.
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More concrete evidence still needs to be published before a concrete confirmation can be made that DLSS 5 is killing NVIDIA graphics cards, but if you are highly concerned about the longevity of your RTX GPU, it might be worth steering clear of the technology for now.
