Asus says its easy-peasy PCIe slot causes 'no damage that would affect functionality' following claims of excessive wear, but says it'll cover any damage

pcgamer.com:

Following last week's report of excessive wear on a graphics card's contact pins, suggested to be the result of using an Asus motherboard's quick-release PCIe slot, Asus has released a statement. In it, the company suggests no actual damage is likely to occur as a result.

The issue, as one PC builder explained on bilibili, was that the PCIe Q-Release Slim slot on one of Asus' latest motherboards had caused a large amount of wear to the gap in between contacts on a connected GPU.

Above: the mechanism in action.

The specially designed slot lets you remove a card by pulling on the IO side of the GPU first, releasing the card, which then pushes the card onto the retainer clip that holds the card in place.

Following its own testing and evaluation of an «extremely small number of cases reported», Asus says it does not expect any damage to occur when using motherboards with its PCIe Q-Release Slim slots.

Here's the important bit of the statement it sent to Wccftech:

«In our internal testing and evaluation of the extremely small number of cases reported, we found no damage to the motherboard or graphics card that would affect functionality and or performance. However, it is important to emphasize that any type of PCIe add in card will exhibit signs of usage and wear marking after 60 continuous insertions and removals. Additionally, if the installation and removal are not performed according to the manufacturer's recommendations, the likelihood of scratches and or wear may increase.

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»Despite this, we have found no impact on the functionality of either the graphics card or the motherboard."

The 60 insertions and removals is a good number to know. In our Andy's original report, he questioned the number of cycles a PCIe slot is rated to, and how many would be required to cause some sort of wear. It clearly took a lot of cycles to wear a PCB as shown in the bilibili post, but how