We thought we’d seen the last of the problems with Nvidia’s 12VHPWR connector used for the RTX 40-series. However, it seems that the issues are not over, and the latest incident is different in a major way.
It’s been a while since the first report about Nvidia’s RTX 4090 and its melting cables. Each case was pretty similar — the connector melted when the GPU was running for a longer period of time. Sometimes, the card itself got damaged in the process. In response to the problem, Nvidia collected the affected cards for investigation.
Ultimately, there haven’t been many cases of melting connectors, but each was loud enough that it still gave Nvidia a bit of a bad rep. The connector is present on other RTX 40-series cards too, such as the RTX 4080. A Reddit user shared pictures of their custom CableMod 12VHPWR connector. According to the unlucky user, they hadbeen using it for two months when, all of a sudden, their computer started shutting down. This only happened during moments of high power consumption. The Redditor then checked the cable and found it to be completely melted. Fortunately, the GPU was not damaged.