RTX 4090 Founders Edition Card Falls Victim To 16-pin Meltdown

GeForce RTX 4090
GeForce RTX 4090 (Image credit: Party_Quail_1048/Reddit)

It would appear that even Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card is susceptible to the ongoing 16-pin power adapter meltdowns. The first reported case of Founders Edition surfaced on Reddit over the weekend.

The affected GeForce RTX 4090 owner stated in a Reddit thread that they bought the GeForce RTX 4090 from Best Buy on October 19, so the Ada flagship wasn't even a month old when it fell victim to the meltdown. The user housed the graphics card inside his Asus ROG Helios case without the side panel on so as to avoid bending the 16-pin adapter (the alleged cause of other RTX 4090 meltdowns). The Redditor confirmed that they had connected the three 8-pin PCIe power cables from his Asus ROG Thor 1200W power supply.

The user spent the next seven days playing Call of Duty: Warzone, around two to three hours a day, but then his screen went pitch black on October 29th. But, unfortunately, it was already too late when they took apart the system. The damage was already done, and the 16-pin power adapter and the 16-pin power connector on the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition had melted. The Redditor has returned the damaged graphics card and adapter to Nvidia for analysis. Unfortunately, although the chipmaker sent the Redditor a replacement three days later, they are reluctant to install the graphics card.

According to the thread on Reddit, we're just four incidents short of reaching the magic 30 number. Until this weekend, there was only user feedback on custom GeForce RTX 4090 models, but it seems like even the Founders Edition may not be safe. Nvidia's investigation continues as new reports continue to pile up. In a short statement, the chipmaker said it was still investigating the reports and didn't have any new details.

The only new development so far is that Nvidia has confirmed to the German publication Igor's Lab that the company purchased its 16-pin power adapters from two manufacturers: Astron and NTK. Both adapters conform to PCI-SIG's specifications. However, Zotac and Gigabyte allegedly told Igor's Lab that the NTK adapters are less vulnerable to failures after several mating contacts. The important word here is "less," so there is still an inherent probability that a failure can occur.

There have been numerous theories around the 16-pin power adapter's failures, spanning from the adapter's design to user error. Sadly, there's not much GeForce RTX 4090 owners can do other than wait until Nvidia concludes its investigation. Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, so let's hope Nvidia can end the GeForce RTX 4090 casualties sooner rather than later.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • Phaaze88
    Oh noez...

    Anyway, so I started blastin'...
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    26 incidents so far, 4x more to reach 30 incidents.

    Anybody wants to take bets on when we'll hit 30?
    Reply
  • Sleepy_Hollowed
    Well... I guess I know what company's card I'll be telling friends and family to not get until this gets fixed or rolled back to the old adapter.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    Kamen Rider Blade said:
    Anybody wants to take bets on when we'll hit 30?
    Might've already hit 30+; the melting can go completely unnoticed after all.
    Reply
  • Co BIY
    Maybe some of the "Micro-peaks" in power draw in excess to TDP are a little longer than previously thought.
    Reply
  • drivinfast247
    Sleepy_Hollowed said:
    Well... I guess I know what company's card I'll be telling friends and family to not get until this gets fixed or rolled back to the old adapter.
    As if they're actually available for purchase.
    Reply
  • A Stoner
    This is just straight up engineering malpractice. Even if the failing connectors are somewhat out of specifications, the general specifications should be robust enough to function with reasonable flaws that happen in manufacturing in general as well as built up damage from standard use. For which, multiple plug/unplug events should be accounted for. So far, there have not been any specific arguments that the manufacturers are in fact out of the tolerance of the specifications that I have seen.

    I am hoping that AMD has a rock solid GPU launch in December, I would like to build a new rig.
    Reply
  • drtweak
    Dont mine me. Just rocking my EVGA GTX 960 4GB. No issues here lol yea after all this I have no desire to upgrade. Rather buy a second hand 3000 series now.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Phaaze88 said:
    Might've already hit 30+; the melting can go completely unnoticed after all.
    Now, cue 1000+ people with melted connectors because they unplugged + re-plugged their RTX4090 daily to check for melting until it actually happens :)
    Reply
  • GenericUser
    Phaaze88 said:
    Might've already hit 30+; the melting can go completely unnoticed after all.

    Not to mention, these are just the ones that we know about and are getting attention. There could be more people affected that haven't reported anything.
    Reply