- Nvidia has said it isn’t ‘expected’ that cable melting issues will happen with the RTX 5090
- The company reminded us about the changes made to the 16-pin power connector after the RTX 4090 ran into issues
- However, a California-based repair shop has flagged up separately that it still fixes melted RTX 4090s on a ‘daily’ basis
Nvidia has assured us that the RTX 5090 GPU is “not expected” to have any issues with melting power connectors, as seen with the RTX 4090 (and we’ll come back to dive into the history, and current situation with the Lovelace flagship, later in this article).
South Korean tech site Quasarzone published an article detailing Nvidia’s ‘RTX AI’ day which includes a Q&A session (noticed by VideoCardz), and one of the questions asked was on the subject of the 16-pin power connectors used by the RTX 4090, and also employed in the imminent RTX 5090.
An attendee at the event noted that there was an issue with the connector melting due to overheating with the RTX 4090, and asked: “Has this been resolved with the RTX 5090?”
An Nvidia representative replied: “It is expected that such issues will not occur with the RTX 50 series. In response to the issue at the time, some changes were made to the connectors, and after about two years, we believe these problems have been resolved.”
I should note that this is translated from Korean, and we should bear that firmly in mind in terms of the accuracy of what’s been said here, and the exact meaning, but the gist is clear enough.
Analysis: Power paranoia
Okay, time to hit the rewind button for a moment. You might remember the melting cable affair with the Lovelace flagship GPU when it first came out, but it’s worth indulging in a quick recap. (Or if you want the full background, head here first).
In a nutshell, this was a problem with the 16-pin connector (12VHPWR) from the PC’s power supply to the RTX 4090 graphics card not being seated properly in the card, and overheating as a result. If that overheating got to a critical enough level, the plastic would start to melt (and a poor connection was more likely if the adapter had to be bent round at a sharper than ideal angle, due to space issues inside the PC case).
Following the emergence of these reports of melting adapters, Nvidia brought in a new 16-pin power connector design (12V-2×6, a revision of 12VHPWR) to mitigate the possible fire risk of a loosely seated connector.
Essentially, Nvidia put the problem down to a user error (not ensuring the connector was plugged in fully), then moved to change the connector to minimize any chance of that happening. This connector revision involved making changes to the length of the pins, including making the ‘sense’ pins shorter, so that if the connector isn’t fully seated, or it loosens and starts to fall out, the graphics card will power down and not work (rather than continue to operate and cause the overheating issue).
This will be the same situation for the RTX 5090, so the safety aspect should be fine, or that’s the assertion Nvidia is making here. Except that there’s a notable nuance in the (translated) language here having been couched in terms of it being ‘not expected’ that any melting issues will happen with the RTX 5090.
That’s not a cast-iron ruling out of any problem, but of course we must be wary around the translation from Korean, as already noted. The additional worry with the RTX 5070 is that it seriously ups the power usage to 575W (at least, compared to 450W with the RTX 4090), but despite that, Nvidia is saying it doesn’t expect to see any problems with melting connectors.
The other concern here, as VideoCardz points out, is that while the Nvidia rep observes that after two years the melting cable problems with the RTX 4090 appear to have been resolved, there were still reports of this happening throughout 2024 – and even as recent as this month, January 2025. That’s according to NorthridgeFix (a tech repair shop in California, US), which claims to be getting RTX 4090 boards with melted connectors on a daily basis still.
So, there’s a level of paranoia here, and that’s not unexpected in itself, particularly given, as noted, how much further the RTX 5090 pushes with its power consumption compared to its predecessor.
Ultimately, the proof will be in the power cable pudding (there’s an unenticing sounding dessert), and how folks get on with the new flagship GPU when it’s released. Until then, we obviously can’t judge the RTX 5090 on the melting score, but you’d hope that one way or another, this is an issue that it would’ve been an absolute priority for Nvidia to design against and fully put to bed.
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