Asus’ new Q-Launch Slim system for rapidly eradicating graphics playing cards is damaging graphics playing cards and different PCIe playing cards, in accordance with new experiences. Q-Launch Slim is designed to be a better option to take away PCIe units, akin to graphics playing cards, from Asus motherboards by eradicating the necessity to press a lock launch button – you simply pull the cardboard straight out – nevertheless it seems to be harming the playing cards within the course of. Nonetheless, Asus has been fast to reply, releasing a press release enjoying down the severity of the scenario.
With Asus motherboards that includes the brand new fast card launch system now being out within the wild, experiences are coming in of the brand new motherboards scratching the printed circuit board (PCB) when being disconnected. That is understandably a significant concern for any graphics card consumer, however particularly these seeking to purchase one of many new greatest graphics card choices such because the $2,000 RTX 5090. That’s when you handle to work out the place to purchase an RTX 5090, after all.
A video, proven beneath, demonstrates the problem, with this consumer frequently slotting in then eradicating the cardboard and it clearly exhibiting indicators of scratches and harm after just some of those cycles. The within of the quick-release system has metallic grips to help the cardboard, which is suspected to be the rationale for the scratches.
In the meantime, one of many complaints comes from Andreas Schilling, the editor of HardwareLuxx. In a publish on X (previously Twitter), he mentioned that after eradicating the cardboard “a couple of dozen occasions”, it might “fairly often” get caught within the PCIe slot. He additionally hooked up a picture of a small chip close to the connector of the PCB.
Chinese language customers have additionally proven harm in an identical spot. The publish gained sufficient traction to summon Asus’ Chinese language basic supervisor, Tony Yu, saying that he’d attain out to unravel the problem.
Nonetheless, Asus has reacted rapidly to those preliminary experiences. In a press launch, the corporate states that “the brand new design performs equally to conventional PCIe slots, leaving solely utilization marks beneath regular utilization frequency.”
The corporate goes on to say that, “in our inside testing and analysis of the extraordinarily small variety of instances reported, we discovered no harm to the motherboard or graphics card that will have an effect on performance and/or efficiency.” It additionally factors out that “any kind of PCIe add-in card will exhibit indicators of utilization and put on marking after 60 steady insertions and removals.”
This isn’t probably the most complete denial of the issue, as whereas it’s true that almost all customers don’t repeatedly insert and take away graphics playing cards that usually, there definitely are situations the place a motherboard could be used for a whole bunch of graphics card swaps – akin to in our personal graphics card take a look at methods.
As to the right technique of insertion and elimination, Asus’ directions present the consumer inserting a GPU at a 2-degree angle, from again to entrance. In case you plan on selecting up one among Asus’ new quick-release gaming motherboards, you may need to think about following its directions rigorously.
Asus has additionally introduced the pricing for its liquid-cooled RTX 5090, which is available in at $1,000 costlier than Nvidia’s pricing for its flagship RTX 5000 graphics card.