MSI teases new power supplies with 'instant protection' against melting RTX 5090 cables — promises to solve 12V-2x6 connector woes by monitoring individual wires

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

It seems like every month we see a new incendiary GPU story with reports of a 12V-2x6 connector being the culprit. The issue is not limited to just Nvidia's RTX 5090 anymore either, as at least five AMD RX 9070 XT variants with this plug have faced the same fiery wrath. Companies have tried to come up with solutions to monitor the 16-pin power connector, and MSI is the latest to join this line of cautionary warriors.

New Year Alert! 🔔Invisible problems exist. We’re ending them.A world-first PSU proactive and instant protection is coming.See it first at CES 2026.#MSIxCES2026 pic.twitter.com/6XdiCNG3epJanuary 1, 2026

In a new teaser posted on its X account, the brand is showing off seemingly the world's first power supply with active protection features: the MSI MPG Ai1300TS & Ai1600TS. While no explicit details were shared, it's reasonable to imagine that the "proactive and instant protection" refers to actively monitoring the individual wires/pins in the 12V-2x6 connector to ensure all of them are sharing the load effectively.

If even one of the pins goes out or stops making proper contact, the power supply will instantly trip, shutting down the system and protecting your expensive hardware from getting scorched. We make this assumption because the best power supplies already regulate their voltage rails that control power going to your PC, with various protection features such as OCP, SCP, and more. MSI's addition, therefore, is a specific safeguard meant for power hungry graphics cards.

In the teaser, we can also see a USB-C port at the back of the power supply, which means you can connect it to your motherboard to potentially control it via software. It should still stop the "invisible problem" of melting GPUs without that, but it'd be interesting to see the expanded feature set. Perhaps, you'll be able to see real-time stats similar to third-party tools like WireView Pro, allowing you to set hard limits in Windows.

As the name suggests, the MSI MPG Ai1300TS & Ai1600TS are flagship 1300W and 1600W units, respectively, so they're very clearly targeting the RTX 5090. Just a few days ago, we saw another one of those catch on fire in possibly the worst incident so far. And the victim was even using a native 12V-2x6 cable that came with their 1000W ATX 3.1 power supply. Let's see if MSI's offerings can finally curtail this fiasco.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

2 Comments Comment from the forums

ezst036

This is exactly what Nvidia wanted all along.

Nvidia gets to reduce its own costs. Who cares if it increases costs on the other side at the power supply side right?
Reply
Notton

While this is a nice feature to have, it's also not very helpful if the PSU doesn't have a debug LED or something to tell you why it tripped.
And that's assuming you can even see the PSU, as the current trend is to cover and hide it.

A breaker switch is easy to figure out. You'll hear an audible "click" and the switch will be flipped if you overload a circuit.
Reply