Nvidia’s $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090 is an incredibly powerful graphics card, but its performance comes at the cost of high power consumption. As with some RTX 3000 series cards, Nvidia is using a new type of 12VHPWR 16-pin power connector to supply all of this power to the card – you can connect up to four 8-pin GPU power cables to the 12VHPWR adapter, which then connects to the header on the graphics card. processor, saving space on the board.
But at least two RT 4090 users are now reporting that their 12VHPWR connectors overheated and melted during use. These complaints come from Reddit (via Tom’s Hardware), so take them with a pinch of salt – we don’t know the exact configuration of any user’s PC setup. The specific graphics card model (Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC for one user, Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming OC Edition for another), power supply, and a number of other factors may have contributed to overheating of the connectors.
For its part, Nvidia has told Tom’s that it is “investigating the reports”and that the company is “in contact with the original owner”and plans to contact another. We’ve reached out to Nvidia and will update this article if the company has more information to share.
Tom’s Hardware suggests that the problem may be caused by bending the cable too close to the power connector, causing some of its pins to “displace”or fail, which can result in uneven force loading on the pins. We’ll be monitoring this issue until it’s clear if this was a one-time user glitch or a sign of a more systemic issue with the RTX 4090 series.