Owners of Asus' AMD X800 and Intel Z800 motherboards should exercise caution when removing their graphics cards.
Multiple reports show that the company’s recently introduced Q-Release Slim system can scratch the GPU’s connection pins.
Hardware Luxx’s Andreas Schilling later shared a photo of his GeForce RTX 5090 exhibiting similar damage.
I’m not happy with the solution either.
We use the Strix X870E-E Gaming for testing the graphics cards.
So I have had to remove graphics cards from the slot a few dozen times.
This didn’t always go smoothly and very often the card got stuck in the slot.
MSI demonstrated a similar system at Gamescom last year, suggesting that the trend is catching on.
However, Asus’s Q-Release Slim mechanism aims to simplify things further.
The design prevents the gold fingers from shifting in any other direction.
It remains unclear if the company might revert to an earlier system or try something new with future motherboards.
The PCIe slot isn’t the only port motherboard manufacturers are trying to improve.
MSI also introduced a Q-Release system for the M.2 slot for Z800 boards.
Installing and removing NVMe SSDs normally involves screws that can sometimes become frustrating due to their small size.
Asus uses a similar system with a release latch and a sliding gate that supports 2280 and 2230 drives.
Unlike Asus’s GPU slot method, SSD Q-Release mechanisms haven’t encountered widespread problems thus far.
