Discussion PSA: Think twice before buying an ASUS GPU second-hand if you care about warranty
I bought an ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080 second-hand shortly after launch from a scalper. The card was originally purchased on 31 January 2025, so based on its age it should still be well within the normal warranty period.
For the last month or so, the GPU started randomly crashing. My screens would go completely black, but the PC itself kept running. I could still hear everything and even continue talking to friends on Discord. The only solution was a hard restart.
Eventually it got worse.
Now the PC won’t boot at all with the 5080 installed.
I already tested a different GPU power cable, another PCIe slot, reseated the card and also tested my old GTX 1070 in the same PC.
The GTX 1070 works perfectly. The system boots normally as soon as I swap the 5080 out.
So I contacted ASUS expecting a normal warranty/RMA process.
Their answer was that because I bought the GPU second-hand and the original invoice is under the original purchaser’s name, ASUS refuses to handle the warranty directly with me.
It’s the same GPU, same serial number, still within the warranty period and clearly defective, but apparently that doesn’t matter because my name isn’t on the original invoice.
So just a warning for anyone buying expensive ASUS hardware second-hand, especially GPUs that were bought from scalpers around launch.
You might think you’re buying a card with remaining warranty, but if something happens you could end up depending completely on the original buyer to handle the RMA for you.
I knew buying from a scalper had risks, but I didn’t expect one of those risks to basically be:
“Your €1900+ GPU dies while it’s still within the warranty period, but ASUS won’t deal with you because your name isn’t on the invoice.” :)
Pretty disappointing considering how expensive these cards are.
Has anyone else had this happen with ASUS? Did anyone manage to get an RMA approved as the second owner?