Beware Of Cooler Master's Janky Fix For 12V-2x6 GPU Power Connectors
This story comes to us from Igor's Lab, who is certainly no spreader of spurious stories. However, we do have to caution that he doesn't name the customer, nor does he provide any particular proof that the advice in question came from Cooler Master. Still, the story is perfectly plausible, and if true, rather damning for both Cooler Master's support as well as the design of its 12V-2x6 cables.
The image above details Cooler Master's apparent advice. Since the issue was that the angled design was preventing the customer from plugging in his GPU's power cable, Cooler Master advised him that he can actually remove the plastic cap constraining the 90-degree connector and straighten it out. That doesn't sound completely terrible on the face of it; this kind of tinkering is really what the DIY PC scene is all about.
Things do become a bit sketchy when we consider that it's the legendarily fragile 12V-2x6 connector that we're talking about, though. Moreover, should a customer really be dismantling a product this way? It's definitely true that it's "just" two plastic clips, but this is exactly the sort of thing manufacturers usually advise against. The cable was manufactured as a 90-degree-angle cable; the mechanical stress from straightening out could damage the microfit plug.
The real joke, though, is that the advised 'fix' doesn't even work. The customer (who replaced his cable with one from Cablemod, rather than attempting the modification himself) sent his cable to Igor, who tested the dubious advice. Unsurprisingly, it failed, but perhaps not for the reason you might expect. While popping the plastic cap off of the plug does indeed allow you to straighten it out, it still doesn't allow you to plug the power connector into the GPU in question, or indeed many high-end GPUs.
Igor noted that the micro-fit connectors were out of position inside the housing after straightening out the wire as Cooler Master suggested, and wanted to see if this would indeed cause the uneven current distribution that has resulted in many melted cables. He didn't even get that far, though, because the cable is actually designed so poorly that you can't plug it in anyway. There's a plastic extrusion on the 12V-2x6 connector that is placed too close to the business end of the plug, and it blocks a secure connection on any GPU that has a shroud extending up past the 12V-2x6 power connector.
That includes the ASUS GeForce RTX 5070 Ti OC that the original customer had, the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim that Igor has, and incredibly, even the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition, just to name a few. There's no shortage of GPUs with cooling shrouds specifically shaped to accommodate the 12v-2x6 connector, and a non-standard design like this simply isn't going to fit into most of them.
Igor concludes his article—which you should go read, because it's funny—with a savage takedown of Cooler Master: "Cooler Master can never have tested this cable in its present form under real conditions." He issues a "clear warning" against both this specific cable that Cooler Master apparently ships with many of its MWE Gold power supply units, but also against the "DIY workaround" that Cooler Master's support purportedly offered to an affected customer. We're all about DIY workarounds normally, but when talking about a cable that's prone to catch fire in the best case, maybe do what the customer did and opt to replace the cable altogether instead.
