Another GeForce RTX 5090 has caught fire, and this time it happened inside a prebuilt PC rather than a DIY build. Japanese researcher and media artist Yoichi Ochiai posted photos on X showing burn marks and soot inside his Dell Alienware Aurora desktop after an INNO3D RTX 5090 reportedly caught fire during normal use.
Ochiai said the system had been running fine right up until the card suddenly ignited, and he specifically noted that the 16-pin power connector looked intact. That detail is important, since basically every RTX 5090 fire story we have covered up to this point has traced back to a melting 12V-2x6 or 12VHPWR connector.
Popular Now: DLSS 5 has been modded into Skyrim, and it definitely transforms character facesHardware outlet UNIKO's Hardware looked at the photos and believes the damage is concentrated around the FBVDDQ power rail, which feeds the card's GDDR7 memory. If that's true, it would point to a VRAM power delivery problem rather than the usual connector story we're used to hearing about with this GPU.
Prebuilt systems rarely show up in these reports, which is part of what makes this one stand out. Most of the RTX 5090 failures we've tracked, including a capacitor that exploded on a PNY card last year, have come from custom builds where cable seating and PSU choice are easier to point to as culprits.
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NVIDIA has not commented publicly on this incident or the general pattern of RTX 5090 connector failures, and it is still not clear exactly what caused this one. We would treat the VRAM rail theory as an early read rather than a confirmed cause until more cards get torn down. Still, it is another data point in what has become a rough generation for RTX 5090 reliability, and probably not the last one we will be writing about.
