Does anyone know if this is still an issue and if its easily fixable. I have the card and really wanted that board. 
4.0 out of 5 stars Check your GPU backplate clearance especially if you own an 30 series EVGA FTW3 card.
By Andrew Yeum on March 14, 2022
I've owned a few MSI products before and never had any issues with them in the past.
Aesthetically, the motherboard is sleek and very minimalistic, but it's packed with a lot of features for tweakers. It's also great for those who are building in an ITX case that doesn't have ample number of storage mounts, since this is the only Z690i board I'm aware of that has 3 m.2 slots.

There is one MAJOR issue to be aware of, especially if you're an EVGA FTW3 card owner. Cards with backplates that cover every bit of the PCB (including the area running along the PCIE slot railing, opposite from where you would screw into the case) will NOT fit this board if you slot it via traditional horizontal mount and you will not get any video signal. What I mean by that is on the bottom of the motherboard's I/O panel's heatsink is a very tiny nub (check an enlarged image of this board). That nub houses a screw from the back which allows the heatsink to mount. The problem is that small protrusion interferes with the GPU backplate and it won't allow the GPU to fully be flushed into the PCIE slot. Compare an MSI card (or any card) and an EVGA cards' back plate and slot railing, and you'll know what I mean. Your only solutions for getting the card inserted is to dremel the piece off the gpu backplate, remove the backplate entirely, or vertical mount it with riser cables.

Not really an oversight on MSI's part since all GPU manufacturers have their own backplate designs, but this is something to be aware of. Luckily, most of the cases on the market allows GPUs to be mounted vertically, so this shouldn't be a problem. But for those who have ITX cases that can only mount horizontally, please be aware. The board isn't broken, it's a clearance issue.
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