A recent Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 buyer has been lamenting his purchase on Reddit. It isn’t another case of a delivery switcheroo though, as this time the PC DIYer is feeling ‘burnt’ due to the graphics card power connector melting. A lot of power travels though a confined space with an RTX 4090 using the 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector, and so far this is the first report of a melted "quadropus" adapter — the standard 4x 8-pin to 1x 16-pin Nvidia adapter cable that comes with all 4090 cards.
Still, we have to wonder if the user was just unlucky, made a slight error in installation, or if this is the first of many such melting power connector tales we're going to see in the coming months. The RTX 4090 might be the fastest of the best graphics cards right now, but it's also one of the most power hungry GPUs to grace PCs.
Update, 10/24/2022: There are now two reports of melted RTX 4090 16-pin adapter cables, the second from a user with an Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming OC card. We don't know how many people have purchased RTX 4090 cards, but we urge caution in how you install the cables. We've reached out to Nvidia, Asus, and Gigabyte for comment and received the following response from Nvidia:
"We are investigating the reports. We are in contact with the first owner and will be reaching out to the other for additional information." —Nvidia's Bryan Del Rizzo
Original text follows below.
Checking out Redditor reggie_gakil’s setup via the above-linked thread, it's a powerful looking RGB infused PC system that packs in a potent mix of air and liquid cooling solutions. A reference RTX 4090 sucks 450W down though the compact power connector, but factory overclocked models can push that up to around 500W, and manual overclocking could increase that to 600W or more.
The Redditor asserts he was simply playing Red Dead Redemption 2, with a relatively modest GPU load of 400W, when the cable melted, which appears to rule out extreme overclocking. Assuming that's true, we still have several potential points of failure.
All power connectors need to be seated properly and fully engaged to ensure trouble-free conductivity. This is a particularly crucial concern with higher power components where a poor connection might cause overheating or even electric arcing, with disastrous consequences. Reggie_gakil’s images show signs that there was a connection issue present, causing the connector and socket to melt.
The big question is whether the issue was precipitated by user error, a fault in the connector, or something else. “Bend was not that aggressive,” the Redditor states in a comment following the publication of the connector pictures and questions from other social media users. “Sure there was bend, still this should not happen on a 2K Euro GPU PSU Corsair RMX 1000.”
Looking closer at the images of the melted connectors, it might simply be the case that the bend in the cable was too near the connector, or that the sockets on the adapter were faulty / loose. There's clear damage that seems to originate on the top-right and top-left pins, while the center section doesn't show as much melting. And of course it's impossible to rule out a flaky power supply — what worked fine with a lesser GPU may have crossed some critical threshold with the RTX 4090.
Whatever the cause, we hope the manufacturer(s) contacted will help clear up reggie_gakil’s melted connector issues. Then he can get back to some high-resolution, fast frame rate, pistol packing fun in the wild west.
Beyond that, CableMod has a guide on the new 16-pin connector and cables. It recommends avoiding bend on the cables and notes, "...it appears that bending the wires too close to the connector could result in some of the terminals coming loose or misaligning within the connector itself. This may lead to an uneven load across the other wires, increasing the risk of overheating damage. The risk of this is substantially higher if the bend is done horizontally in relation to the connector orientation (left to right)." That almost feels... prescient given this Redditor's experience — look at the second image above and notice the horizonal bend on the cables.
For anyone else who manages to acquire an RTX 4090, we can only recommend verifying that all the 8-pin and 16-pin connectors are firmly seated and avoid bending the wires anywhere near the connector as much as possible. Leaving the case side off at first while you fire up some games and check the cable and connector temperatures might be wise.
