The first report of a melted NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 connector has surfaced from a user who reported melted connectors on both GPU & cable.
Redditor Uses Third-Party 12VHPWR Connector on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition Only to See Melted Connectors
This case is a classic example of why you shouldn't be using the older 12-pin connector, i.e., 12VHPWR, which has previously caused so much trouble for users. The 12VHPWR connector is known to have design flaws but was upgraded to mitigate the melting issues we saw on the RTX 4090 GPUs.
However, one user made the same mistake of using this connector with his newly bought GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition card. The user u/ivan6953 posted on Reddit that both of his 12-pin power connectors had melted while playing games. He said that he used the ASUS Loki SFX-L power supply and used one of the third-party 12VHPWR cables, bought from Moddiy. Now it's not clear whether the melting was caused by the incorrect insertion of the connector or due to the faulty design of the 12VHPWR connector, but this was expected.
The RTX 5090 is already a much more power-hungry card than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and, according to the user, his GPU was consuming 500-520W at the time of the incident. He was playing Battlefield V when he smelled burning and immediately turned off his PC. It was still too late and, as you can see, he got a burned connector on the power cable as well as on his RTX 5090 GPU.
The user claims that he was using this cable on his RTX 4090 previously, and he inserted it properly in the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 as well. However, we know from previous cases that, despite the 12VHPWR making the click sound after being plugged, it may not be seated exactly how it should be. This was why NVIDIA upgraded the connector to the latest 12V-2x6 standard, which was much more successful in mitigating this issue.
As far as this incident goes, it's now looking difficult for the user to claim the warranty due to using a third-party cable. Therefore, it's highly recommended to use the connector supplied by NVIDIA, and seeing what a 12VHPWR can do to your GPU, using a 12V-2x6 connector is a no-brainer. We hope that the melting problem doesn't carry over to the RTX 50 series as we are witnessing bricked RTX 50 GPU reports, which NVIDIA has started its investigation on.
