As seen in our review of DLSS 5's official launch in NBA 2K27 last week, when you enable the impressive DLSS 5 3D-Guided Neural Rendering tech in the game, GPU power usage increases substantially. For the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, power usage climbed from around 465W with DLSS 5 off to a maximum of 575W with DLSS 5 on.
It's similar with DLSS 5 on a GeForce RTX 5080; power draw also increases by around 100W to hit the GPU's 360W power limit. With GeForce RTX 50 Series cards from the RTX 5070 up, all using the newer 12V-2x6 power connector, we've seen a steady stream of cases where the cables have overheated and melted, damaging cables, connectors, and even GPUs.
With the consensus that the higher the power draw, the more likely a cable is to overheat and fail, technologies like DLSS 5 that push GPUs like the RTX 5090 to their power limit may add another layer of risk. VideoCardz reports that one of its readers experienced exactly that when testing DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27 on their MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC graphics card.
- Read more: Another melted GPU power cable spotted, but this time on a GeForce RTX 5070
- Read more: Club386 is the latest victim of melted 12V-2x6 cable connectors, RTX 5090 and PSU both damaged
- Read more: Enthusiast attempts to install second 12V-2x6 connector on RTX 5090, is rewarded with a hole punched through the PCB
According to the report, turning DLSS 5 on pushed the GPU's maximum power draw to 613.5W; however, this is total board power, so it includes PCIe power on top of what's being fed through the 16-pin cable. Apparently, while monitoring tools showed a sustained 610W-or-so power draw on the graphics card, the GPU stopped working. From here you can probably guess what happened next. After noticing a strange smell when they checked the power cable, they found the yellow MSI-branded 16-pin connector had melted, with parts fused into the GPU socket.
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Does the RTX 5090 Founders Edition use the same 16-pin power connector involved in this melting report?
Was the melted cable on the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC the newer 12V-2x6 connector?
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Of course, this doesn't confirm that DLSS 5 caused the RTX 5090's cable to melt, but with the technology pushing sustained high power levels, it may have contributed.
