Industry analyst Warranty Week’s latest data shows that in 2025, NVIDIA, the graphics processing unit (GPU) behemoth, saw its product warranty expenses soar nearly 1000% year-over-year, climbing from $81 million in 2024 to a staggering $894 million. This sharp increase stems from both the ongoing surge in graphics card hardware prices and a notable uptick in warranty claim rates. Since the introduction of the RTX 40 series, reliability issues with the new-generation 12VHPWR power connectors under high power loads have attracted significant attention. Meanwhile, the even higher power consumption of the RTX 50 series has resulted in a rise in early failure rates. Data indicates that NVIDIA’s warranty claim rate rose to 0.9% in the fourth quarter of 2025, exhibiting a clear upward trend throughout the year. During the same period, rival AMD also experienced an increase in its warranty claim rate, from 0.43% in 2024 to 0.68% in 2025, with warranty expenses reaching $238 million, marking a surge of over 100%. To mitigate potential risks, both companies substantially boosted their warranty reserves. NVIDIA increased its reserves from $416 million in 2024 to $2.59 billion, while AMD raised its reserves from $310 million to $597 million. Industry experts suggest that the escalating power consumption of high-end GPUs and the rising cost of core components have led to higher per-claim warranty payouts compared to previous generations, further fueling the overall increase in warranty expenses. Nevertheless, in terms of absolute claim rates, the majority of products from both manufacturers remain within normal operational parameters, although hardware reliability and warranty risks have emerged as cost factors that cannot be ignored in the high-performance graphics card sector.