Serial numbers on RTX Founders Edition graphics cards, including PC G…

As GPUs continue to increase in price, it also, of course, becomes increasingly important to feel that those purchases are secure from leaving you with a very expensive paperweight. This is doubly so for the RTX 5090, which now costs upwards of $5,000. Given this, it's important that RMAs go smoothly, but judging by recent comments online, the design of the Nvidia GPUs themselves could throw a spanner in the works.

According to Redditor Willing-Avocado-4830, they recently struggled with Nvidia's RMA process for their RTX 5090 FE because of a faded serial number. They claim the RMA request was rejected. The Nvidia rep's quoted comments seem to have since been deleted or are just not visible for some reason, but the thing to highlight here is the fading itself.

If it were a lone issue, then it might not be as noteworthy, but others in the comments confirm that the serial number on their FE card has also faded—and not only RTX 5090 ones. And indeed, the serial number on our very own RTX 5080 FE, pictured above, appears to have faded somewhat. The number itself is located on the metal part of the I/O side that slots down between the case and the motherboard. chickenroad.qpon

It's probably worth noting that the amount of fading on our version here at PC Gamer might be different to the home user's. We tend to swap between GPUs quite a lot for testing, which could cause more fading for us. Or, if the fading is caused by consistent heat, then it could be that the normal home use would result in more fading. Your guess is as good as mine on that front.

Serial numbers are traditionally found on stickers on the GPU, but some newer RTX FE cards have them put directly on the bottom jut of the PCIe bracket, and they seem to be prone to fading. Presumably the reason this might cause a problem with the RMA process because Nvidia will need to verify authenticity and ensure it's within warranty. And unless there's another sticker elsewhere with it on (on the PCB, for instance, or on the packaging if you still have it), that serial number can be important.

Nvidia's warranty (in its US wording) explains: "This warranty applies only to the original purchases of the Warranted Products from a retailer, mail order operation, or on-line retail store; this warranty will not extend to any person that acquires a Warranted Product on a used basis."

As such, it will be important for Nvidia to verify that the product is, in fact, from an original purchaser.

Looking at what is publicly available from Nvidia about its RMA process, however, it is not clear whether a serial number is required. It's also worth noting that laws surrounding RMAs can vary from country to country.

Whatever the case, if you have a still-legible serial number on your RTX FE card, it might be worth snapping a pic of it, just in case. Though I suppose it's an open question whether that would satisfy Nvidia's requirements if it's faded off the card by the time they receive it for RMA. If not, then surely there must be a better way for Nvidia to plaster those serial numbers on there.

Let's skip the preamble: I am Mark Zuckerberg now. The original Mark Zuckerberg? Who cares? He's knocked out in a ditch somewhere. Whatever. He's the past; I am the future. Specifically, the future of Mark Zuckerberg, who I am.

The latest mod I have installed into my increasingly uncontrollable build of Grand Theft Auto 5 is LifeInvader Business Mod, which grants you the ability to buy Rockstar's thinly veiled (which is to say, not veiled at all) parody of Facebook for the cool sum of a million bucks. I did not actually have a million bucks, but one of the 46,000 other mods I have installed let me grant myself that amount at the office's front door. In real life, this is called quantitative easing.

The mod is actually quite robust. It's not just a matter of buying the website and letting passive income roll in. You get a whole new menu through which you can staff up—acquiring devs of varying levels of talent—expand your server capacity, and even hire security to keep the hoi polloi away. You can donate to charity to buff your business' reputation, and have to keep an eye on staff morale.

Staff morale, by the way, is largely unimpacted by the flying car which has careened through the second floor window and begun gyrating around the server racks, gathering a pursuing swarm of monitors and wastepaper baskets behind it like a Saab pied piper. Nor do they mind, particularly, when armed men burst in and try to shoot their CEO, and they are equally unfazed when that CEO uses his laser vision to turn those men to hot slag.

Actually, while all this was ongoing, the mod kept serving me notifications: staff morale was at a steady 100% because the boss had showed up in the office, which is both appreciated and also not my experience of what happens when the boss shows up in the office. But Facebo—sorry, LifeInvader's developers are made of a different, hardier stock. It's a privilege to own them.

The Witcher 3, being one of the best RPGs of its era, naturally has a lot of very good quests—quests with weighty, significant choices that give you pause to think. In speaking with PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens, story director Marcin Blacha says that pause is a sign that he and his team have done something right in a story choice.

"First of all, the choice has to make you think," Blacha says, "So it cannot be obvious. You cannot simply go after one of the choices by simply pressing A all the time, so that's the first thing. Second of all, in addition to having this balance, it needs to have its own gravitas. It must be serious. It must make you think about either life or humans or this particular problem or the difficulties that the characters may have right now.

"I always repeat that when you have a really big choice in The Witcher 3, it must be constructed in such a way that the player puts the controller away, stands up, and starts walking, thinking about the choice, and then goes back, and then the player picks one of the choices."

Which tracks—when I think back to the most impactful choices of the RPGs I've played, there's usually at least been a jarring, 'sit back and think' moment that's knocked me back into my chair, if not off it entirely:

"So it is about thinking," Blacha continues. "It is about making the player immersed into the game and the problems that characters have, but also saying something about either who we are or how the world works, or how difficult life can sometimes be."

In regards to the upcoming DLC, Songs of the Past, and whether it'll have any hard choices to make? "Obviously. I mean, we are not trying to avoid difficult choices, and we are not avoiding making players uncomfortable. So I can promise that you will have both in Songs of the Past, and sometimes you will regret [your choice] and you will need to load the game to repeat your choice."