Your RGB reminiscence may look vibrant and eye catching by way of your case window, however there’s an opportunity these dazzling lights might harm your graphics card backplate, in accordance with a number of stories from PC avid gamers on Reddit. Two current posts present MSI Gaming X Trio graphics playing cards, based mostly on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, the place the black backplate has been turned brown within the precise location the place the sunshine from the system RAM shines on the cardboard.
Steel backplates are discovered on many of the finest graphics playing cards today, serving to to shift warmth away from any reminiscence mounted on the again of the PCB. Numerous these backplates, reminiscent of these within the MSI playing cards pictured, even have a black paint end, and it seems to be as if the colour on this end may be bleached by sure RGB lighting.
You possibly can see clearly within the images under that the areas the place the backplate has been bleached immediately correspond with the dimensions and form of the ends of 4 reminiscence modules. It’s not clear how this burn-in impact was created, and whether or not it’s down to easily warmth or a particular wavelength of sunshine, but it surely’s doable for RGB LEDs to emit some mild within the UV band after they’re set to vibrant blue settings. We’ve reached out to MSI for remark to seek out out what may very well be taking place right here.
Each probably the most current posts reporting the harm come from customers of MSI Gaming Trio GeForce RTX 3080 playing cards, though different customers have chimed in with images of Asus and Zotac playing cards that characteristic the same bleaching impact on their backplates, the place the black has been turned brown, so it’s not an issue confronted by MSI alone.
One of many MSI customers additionally included a second picture of their system, which now accommodates a Gigabyte graphics card, to point out the reminiscence sample on the backplate. The reminiscence used on this explicit system is G.Ability TridentZ RGB, however different Reddit customers have commented to say they’ve the identical reminiscence and have skilled no backplate bleaching issues.
MSI additionally claimed that these playing cards had “graphene” backplates, however a teardown of the cardboard confirmed that they have been more likely to be made out of a combination of plastic and graphite, with a coating of acrylic paint. Both manner, it seems to be as if this acrylic paint is especially attentive to among the mild from RGB reminiscence modules.
Fortunately, this bleaching impact is beauty, and gained’t impression the thermal efficiency of your graphics card, although it’d make it more durable to promote if you wish to improve sooner or later. In the event you do need to construct a gaming PC with numerous lights, ensure you additionally learn our information on the way to set up RGB lighting, the place we present you which ones lights to purchase and the place to place them.