The LED lights inside gaming computers are burning the graphics card plates

Many gamers like their computer to light up like an amusement park, but apparently this can be counterproductive. Some Reddit users have noticed that the LED lights on your RAM are burning up the graphics card boards.

As we are going to see in the photos, there is no doubt that the problem is caused by the RAM memory, because the burn has the silhouette of the RAM sockets. But experts debate whether it is because of the ultraviolet light from the RAM's LED lights, or excess heat.

It seems like only the external paint burns, so it is unlikely that the graphics card will be damaged. But it is a problem if you intend to sell the card second-hand, because the burns will make it unsaleable, or you have to lower the price a lot, even if the card is perfect.

Do LED lights cause burns on the board?

According to Explain the medium specialized in graphics cards videocardzseveral Reddit users with RTX 3080 graphics cards from MSI, and one with an RTX 4080 from Gigabyte, have confirmed this problem.

As you can see in this photo, it is clearly seen the yellowish reflection of the four RAM memory sockets (viewed from the side), engraved on the graphics card motherboard:

The black paint on the plate has burned offrevealing the original color of the metal of the plate, with the silhouette of the memory sockets.

This may be due to two causes. The first, excess heat. If so, then burns should appear in other areas of the board with high heat release, such as high-speed PCie 4.0 or 5.0 SSDs, which are located next to the graphics card. At the moment there is no evidence of this.

The other option is that The LED lights of the RAM memories for gaming computers emit ultraviolet light capable of burning low quality paint.

In many countries, LED lights with ultraviolet emissions are prohibited, but it is possible that low-quality memories manufactured in certain countries include it.

The underlying problem is that many internal computer LED lights cannot be disabled. Also, given what we have seen, it would be desirable for manufacturers to use higher quality paints for their plates… Which are not exactly cheap.

Luckily, it seems that the burns caused by the RAM LED lights on graphics cardsdoes not affect its operation.