We’re not trying to be spiteful but given NVIDIA’s track record, it was only a matter of time before reports of melting 12VHPWR power connectors on the new GeForce RTX 5090 cards appeared. The first report, or victim, involves an RTX 5090 FE.
Redditor ivan6953 shared images of their RTX 5090 FE and where the damage was done. Both the power port on the GPU and the PSU had their connectors melted, and the cable was not spared.
Now, ivan6953 makes it clear from the get-go that they had, in fact, used a third party 12VHPWR cable from Moddiy, instead of the one that came packaged with the PSU, which in this case is an ASUS ROG Loki 1000W. They explain further that the heads on both ends were securely fastened and made sure that they clicked into place.
As for when the unfortunate melting occurred, ivan6953 says that they were playing Battlefield V when they started to smell something burning within the PC, prompting them to turn off the system immediately. Alas, the damage had already been done.
The Redditor says that the 12VHPWR, which is of a 12V-2X6 design, was one that they had used with the RTX 4090 FE, prior to replacing it with the RTX 5090 FE. Interestingly, the melting had affected both ends of the cable, rather than just one end, much like the original issue. Whatever the case, both the GPU and PSU in this instance were damned.
In all fairness, the issue seems isolated to the Moddiy 12VHPWR cable that the Redditor was using. That said, while it is recommended that one use the official adapters provided by NVIDIA, as well as the native cables that come packed with your PSU, there is still no guarantee that said cables wouldn’t suffer the same fate.
Moving on, another case of a melted 12VHPWR connector was posted by the Spanish-speaking Techtuber, Toro Tocho, although his experience seems isolated to the port of the PSU and sparing their RTX 5090. Tocho admits that the issue was likely due to a bad connection plus wear-and-tear on the connector.
(Source: Reddit, El Chapuzas Informatico, Toro Tocho)
