User Claims GeForce RTX 5090 Capped At 500W Still Burned Its 16-Pin Connector

The GeForce RTX 4090 was known to have a problem with melting its 12VHPWR power connectors. In response to this issue, PCI-SIG modified the connector to create the revised 12V-2x6 plug. While this is an improvement, it doesn't help the fact that most GeForce graphics cards eschew any kind of active load balancing, and neither does the fact that the GeForce RTX 5090 nearly maxes out the 600W peak power of the connector. We've seen GeForce RTX 5080 and Radeon RX 9070 cards melt the tiny microfit sleeves of their 12V-2x6 connectors, so it's no surprise that a Taiwanese user's GeForce RTX 5090 melted despite a supposed 500W power cap.

Posting over at the Mobile01 hardware forums, user sanetidaay posted these gruesome photos of his GPU's power adapter which clearly bears the burn marks characteristic of a 12V-2x6 connector failure. He says he noticed the ...