GeForce RTX 5090 power connector spotted at 150+ Celsius, prone to melting

A Reddit user took to the r/NVIDIA subreddit to share an image of a melted 12VHPWR power cable that was plugged into a GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

The Reddit user "ivan6953" posted photos of the melted 12VHPWR cable and explained that he recently upgraded from an RTX 4090 Founders Edition to an RTX 5090 Founders Edition. The Reddit user added that he is a PC enthusiast who's aware of the potential problems of not correctly seating the power cable.

As a result, he says he made sure the connector was secured tightly into the graphics card and the power supply. However, this didn't prevent the problems as the GPU's power socket had a single pin showing damage and evidence of melting, along with the corresponding pin on the PSU side showing evidence of melting.

For those wondering, the PSU used in the build was an ASUS Loki 1000W PSU. So, what happened here? The parts were shipped off to YouTuber der8auer for inspection. der8auer decided to use his own RTX 5090 Founders Edition and the recommended higher specification 12V-2x6 cable, along with a 1600 W Corsair PSU.

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It should be noted the cables for the 12V-2x6 and 12VHPWR GPU power sockets are almost identical, with the only difference being the pin length in each of the sockets themselves. The idea behind the 12V-2x6 socket was to implement shorter connection detection pins to ensure power was delivered only when the cable-side pins were fully seated in the socket.

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This change was to address the 12VHPWR connectors on RTX 4090 GPUs melting due to their incorrect seating. However, the 12V-2x6 cable appears to have its own problems, and while Moddiy states on its website the 12VHPWR cable isn't recommended for the RTX 5090, it appears the root cause might not be the cable itself, but the draw and power distribution from the RTX 5090.

der8auer found that of the 12 pins in his power cable (6 are live and the other 6 are ground), there were concerning levels of power variance across each of the live pins. For example, two of the live wires were carrying hardly any current, with one carrying approximately two amps, another with around five amps, one at 11 amps, and the last one hitting 22 amps. This means the last wire/pin was carrying more than 250W of power, which is approximately half of the total load the graphics card can pull. Notably, these tests were conducted on the higher-spec 12V-2x6 cable.

For reference, both the connectors and cables are meant to have six to eight amps each, with the total spread not meant to exceed 55 amps. Moreover, these connectors are certified for 660W, and NVIDIA states the RTX 5090 is rated for 575W. But when the majority of power is being pushed over a single wire/pin instead of being distributed across six pins evenly, that's when melting potentially occurs.