Bad news, Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU owners: cable melting issues are back
Nvidia’s RTX 4090 quickly became the source of controversy not long after launch thanks to cases of cable melting – an issue you might think is a thing of the past, but turns out that isn’t the case.
In what will undoubtedly be a concern for anyone with an RTX 4090 purchased in the early days, Byogore says Reddit (as noted by Tom’s hardware) reports that their Asus model of the Lovelace flagship has had its cable melted (complete with the obligatory photo of the scorched connector).
Reports of issues with the melting 16-pin power connector haven’t been around for a while, but this Asus RTX 4090 is almost a year old, showing that the problem is still present and can affect graphics cards much further down the line. in the longer term, in theory.
As Tom points out, this unfortunately puts an end to the theory that if a meltdown crisis occurs, it will be in the first six months. Unsurprisingly, this left RTX 4090 owners feeling less than happy in the Reddit thread discussing the new meltdown.
Analysis: Be careful, owners of older RTX 4090s
This is of course just one report, but as mentioned it will still be quite concerning given the seriousness of the issue. If you have a meltdown incident and your top performing graphics card cost a fortune, it’s undoubtedly quite annoying to get bricked.
For those curious about further details, the Redditor tells us they used Nvidia’s own power connector (not a modified third-party cable, which came out not long after the melting problem became public knowledge) and a Corsair HX1000i power supply (1000W, 80+ platinum rated ).
Newer RTX 4090 models have addressed this issue, or at least tried to. We’ve seen steps like moving the 16-pin power connector (on the back of the graphics card) to ensure it’s easier to get a better connection (an improperly positioned connector is blamed by Nvidia for the melting of the cable).
In addition, a redesigned specification has arrived for a 12V-2×6 power connector, instead of the original 12VHPWR, and is designed to circumvent issues with shaky connections, and is now appearing in new RTX 4090 graphics cards. From what we’ve seen so far, it does indeed bypass all the fiery connector gremlins…
But what if you have an old RTX 4090 with the 12VHPWR connector? Besides hoping and praying, you can also use a custom cable (this incident happened with the included Nvidia connector), or you can also keep checking every now and then to make sure the connector is properly in place. The latter is hardly ideal, especially when you consider that there is a theoretical maximum number of times the connector can be disconnected and then reconnected (30) before that action can cause problems (yeah – eek).
It’s really disappointing to see the melting issue cropping up now, even though at least the affected owner, Byogore, still had a GPU under warranty. If you’re out of warranty coverage and this happens to your very expensive Lovelace flagship – when new cards have a redesigned power connector to avoid the potential problem – then it honestly doesn’t seem fair. It’s a lot of money going up in smoke…