Northridge Fix teardown: fragile FPC makes RTX 5090 Founders Edition unrepairable

Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, billed as a showcase of performance and design, has landed at the center of a controversy. A well-known electronics repair specialist from the YouTube channel Northridge Fix criticized the card, describing it as among the worst GPU designs he has encountered. Hardly the kind of standard-setting debut Nvidia would want.

In a teardown video, the technician said the RTX 5090 FE is effectively unrepairable if its internal connector is damaged—this specific part cannot be sourced or replaced. The card arrived after a third-party water block installation, after which it stopped outputting a display signal. Of the client’s two cards, one was restored, but the Founders Edition proved irrecoverable.

Opening the device, he found that the RTX 5090 FE is built from two modular sections linked by an extremely fragile FPC connector. He compared the layout to a plumbing system, where every added joint raises the risk of a leak; the analogy feels apt here. In his view, damage to that connector alone was enough to kill the card, even though the rest of the electronics appeared intact.

The crux of the problem, he noted, is availability: the damaged connector cannot be found for sale. After checking the usual sources, he came up empty—the part simply isn’t available publicly. Which inevitably raises the question of why the card is split into two pieces if the critical link can’t be replaced.

He closed with a stark warning for owners, advising that if a card works, it’s best not to touch it, and that a failure leaves little recourse—urging people to avoid the Founders Edition 5090. Against the backdrop of the already documented issues with melting 16-pin connectors on the RTX 4090, this fresh round of criticism further clouds Nvidia’s engineering choices for its latest generation.