Connecting the dots: A warranty tracker recently reported that claims fulfilled by AMD and Nvidia increased substantially over the past few years, astronomically so in Team Green's case. While the report does not fully explain the sudden increase, the numbers coincide conspicuously with the AI boom and the release of flagship Nvidia graphics cards that became notorious for melting and burning power cables.
Charts from Warranty Week indicate that Nvidia paid $894 million in warranty claims in 2025, an 11-fold increase from $84 million the prior year. Although the newsletter does not mention specific products, 2025 saw the release of the company's RTX 5090, which has well-documented power cable issues.
The GPU manufacturer paid more in claims during each quarter of 2025 than in all of 2023: $147 million in Q1 (the RTX 5090 launched in January), $80 million in Q2, and $156 million in Q3. However, the majority of claims, $511 million, were paid in the fourth quarter.
Warranty claims rates provide another notable data point. Nvidia's remained close to zero before 2023 but spiked to slightly over 1% that year, then settled back down before spiking again in 2025. Furthermore, last year's explosion in claims was preceded by a much smaller, but still significant rise in claims that began in 2022, potentially following the release of the RTX 4090 in October of that year.
The two monstrous flagship GPUs, which remain at the top of PC gaming performance charts today, are infamous for their adoption of 12VHPWR and later 12V-2x6 power cables as well as their unusually high power ratings. Nvidia received numerous complaints from owners of the 450W RTX 4090 about melting power cables. Even after the company blamed user error, repair shop Northridge Fix said in 2024 that it was receiving hundreds of melted 4090s each month.
Reports persisted after GPU manufacturers switched to the supposedly safer 12V-2x6 cables and other companies introduced various safety features. Late last year, Northridge Fix, still receiving damaged flagship GPUs, criticized the RTX 5090's design.
Although Nvidia's warranty payout spikes coincide with the introduction of the RTX 4090 and 5090, other factors might also be involved. The report does not specify whether it includes only claims from home users of discrete graphics cards or also enterprise servers, the latter of which have exploded in number since Nvidia GPUs sparked the AI boom. On top of its astronomical increase in data center GPU sales, Nvidia likely also pays more for each claim due to tariffs.
Nvidia warranty payouts surged 1,000% last year, not that they can't afford it
