Gamer Claims His GeForce RTX 5090 Capped At 500W Still Burned Its 16-Pin Connector

The GeForce RTX 4090 was known to have a problem with melting its 12VHPWR power connectors. In response to this issue, PCI-SIG modified the connector to create the revised 12V-2x6 plug. While this is an improvement, it doesn't help the fact that most GeForce graphics cards eschew any kind of active load balancing, and neither does the fact that the GeForce RTX 5090 nearly maxes out the 600W peak power of the connector. We've seen GeForce RTX 5080 and Radeon RX 9070 cards melt the tiny microfit sleeves of their 12V-2x6 connectors, so it's no surprise that a Taiwanese user's GeForce RTX 5090 melted despite a supposed 500W power cap.

Posting over at the Mobile01 hardware forums, user sanetidaay posted these gruesome photos of his GPU's power adapter which clearly bears the burn marks characteristic of a 12V-2x6 connector failure. He says he noticed the failure when his PC kept crashing while he was trying to play Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Opening the machine to try cleaning out the dust and reseating everything, he immediately saw the scorched connector.


The unfortunate gamer notes that he had the GPU configured with a 0.9v voltage limit, a 500W power limit, and that his power supply is an expensive ASUS ROG Thor unit. He's had the GPU for approximately 7 months, and it has been fine until fairly recently. He also says that the card-side connector "seems fine for now", but based on his own photo, the card-side pins are considerably scorched. We wouldn't recommend running the card that way without a thorough cleaning of the power connector.

His post asks, "Is there any effective solution to prevent these connectors from burning up?? I'm seriously going to need fire insurance at this rate." Well, sanetidaay, the answer is... no. It's arguable whether or not the 12v-2x6 connector is a "bad" design, but it's definitely one designed for form over function. The small connector simplifies graphics card board design and looks better in a case, but it also melts itself and/or catches fire when one or more of the tiny micro-fit connectors fails to seat properly. The new connector simply doesn't have the wide safety margin of the older PCIe 8-pin plugs.


All you can really do to avoid this kind of fault is make absolutely certain that your connector is well-seated, and avoid wiggling, jiggling, or vibrating the connector as much as possible. Connectors like this work by simply touching metal surfaces together, and the current draw of a high-end graphics card far exceeds what any single or pair of 16 AWG wires can comfortably carry—at least, at +12V. Maybe if we moved to a 48V system like people have been trying to push in the automotive sector, things would be a bit safer. However, given the minimal headway proponents of 48V in cars have made in the last 30 years, we're not going to hold our breath.

_{Images in this post are property of sanetidaay at mobile01 forums. Shout-out Uniko's Hardware for the spot.}