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RTX 5090 power connector melts again as cable reaches nearly 200 degrees Celsius
(www.tweaktown.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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There's a whole lot of reasons why I will never even consider buying a 5090, and the power connector is a major one of them.
Everyone talks about the power connector but I haven't been convinced the connector itself is the problem. This article even specifically says that the connector was plugged in all the way. If the hardware and/or firmware doesnt cut off when it detects power problems, that's the actual problem. The connector may expose the issue, but it's not the main problem.
There are many examples analyzed by gamers nexus and der8auer and the connector seems to be designed in a way that it simply is hard to properly connect, the bandaid solutions are software monitoring and visual helps
The connector certainly doesn't help, but if a single point of failure causes this, it's not JUST the connector. Allowing that much power to be able to run through a single pin is problematic. Houses have multiple forms of protection for outlets. This whole setup seems to have none.
Im no electrician but from what I remember it just needs to be slightly off and that causes a big imbalance in the lanes which leads to heat and something melting which only makes it worse, der8auer even sells parts to help with this and monitor the distribution and connection with logs and everything, so really does seem to be the connector and lack of anything checking the power
The connector is the problem only in the sense that they are trying to push too much power through conductors (and therefore pins) that are too narrow. The actual problem is inherent to the standard, which is why I'll never own a card that uses it.
As far as I can tell, the power is meant to be split among many pins, not a single one. I can't imagine the intent was to pump 22a through a single pin. Other than my dryer, I don't think I have any cable that's meant to handle that.
Yeah, but that's the point, they are trying to push too much current. If you want to push 600+ watts through one connector, you shouldn't be doing it at 12v
But it's supposed to be across like 6 pins or something. That's only 100w a pin. When working properly, there shouldn't be a problem. All these meltdowns seem to happen when something has gone wrong.
They split it across 6 pins without mandating any load balancing.
They should have upped the voltage or upped the conductor size. There's no universe where "something going wrong" should immediately result in melted connectors as the first option.
Issue is that the cards have no way of telling the state of each input pin. Nvidia mandated the manufacturers to terminate the power input in one giant plane.