Nvidia RTX 4090 16-Pin Power Connector Burns And Melts Cable And Plug Due To Extreme Heating

Looking at the thermal envelopes, it was pretty much known that the new top of the line Nvidia RTX 4090 is a hothead. However, the graphics card which recently went on sale for the first time is reportedly cannibalising itself due to extreme heating. 

Two Redditors posted photos of their GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs with melted 16-pin connectors. The cards, naturally, have stopped working, with the blame being put squarely on the 600W behemoth of a graphics card. 

One of the Redditors, u/reggie_gakil’s RTX 4090 caught fire with smoke billowing out of the cabinet. The second redditor, u/NoDuelsPolicy’s card, simply stopped working. Later, when both investigated, it was found that the power adapter had melted. Both were the RTX 4090 graphics cards, the first to feature the 16-pin power connector. 

“You aren’t the only one. This happened to me today as well, not as badly burned as your though. I was having a gaming session few hours ago, playing Black Desert with my dungeon party. All the sudden the screen went black and all the fans started spinning at 100%. Powered off the machine and after some inspection noticed that the power adapter was damaged. My card is an Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming – OC Edition,” wrote the second redditor. 

Concerns about the RTX 4090’s new 16-pin connector were raised before by the PCI-SIG which certifies PCI specs. The body had raised concerns about “thermal variance” of the new power connectors. It was found that severe bending and exceeding connection cycles beyond 40 may result in the cables melting. Failures were observed on both rows of the 16-pin connector with hotspots observed after 2.5 hours of usage, and melting after 10-30 hours of usage. 

NVIDIA said it has reached out to the first Redditor, with a statement likely incoming. Nevertheless, things does not look good for the RTX 4090.