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News about 16-pin power connector melting 12VHPWR GeForce RTX 4090 have stopped in recent months, but unfortunately, it seems that problems with the GeForce RTX 4090, one of the best graphics cards, may still occur.
A new post from Reddit user Byogore on pcmasterrace has revealed yet another case of an RTX 4090 dying due to the infamous 12VHPWR power connector melting. However, this RTX 4090 lasted a year before breaking down.
When the RTX 4090 meltdown disaster reached its climax in early 2023, the RTX 4090 damage maelstrom ended up being less than 6 months, depending on the card and its application. Byogore’s card lifespan far exceeds this period and doubles the lifespan of other dead RTX 4090s.
The worst thing is that the user’s situation may be repeated on all remaining RTX 4090 equipped with the older 12VHPWR power connector. This doesn’t mean that all of Nvidia’s RTX 4090s will melt down, but it could lead to more unpredictable failures in the future.
In late 2022, multiple reports of Nvidia RTX 4090 melted and damaged due to the integration of the latest 12VHPWR power connector began circulating, delivering up to 600 W. These cases of RTX 4090 failures are directly related to the melting of the 16-pin power connectors on the GPU, power cable, power adapter, or both. To some extent, the 12VHPWR was to blame.
Nvidia responded to these issues in November 2022, when the issue first emerged, saying the issues were directly related to user error. It stated that users were not fully inserting the 16-pin power connector into the power connector on the RTX 4090 card. However, many users reporting RTX 4090 burn-in claimed to be experienced builders, so the possibility of user installation failure is potentially not the only cause.
Six months after the comments, Nvidia PCI-SIG introduced a completely new 16-pin connector, called the power connector 12V-2×6, which supposedly solves the problems faced by the 12VHPWR power connector. This new connector has undergone several modifications, including increasing the power from 600W to 660W, and appears to have corrected the connector melting issues with a slight design change. Recent tests have shown that the new connector lives up to its improvements and is still “unreceptive” to overheating/melting. Of course, only time will tell whether the problem has really been solved.
Nvidia has quietly implemented this new connector for the RTX 4090 and other cards like the RTX 4070. But there are still plenty of RTX 4090s out there that use the old original 12VHPWR power connector.
The good news is that most modern graphics cards come with a warranty of three or four years, depending on the manufacturer. If an issue arises in the next couple of years, RTX 4090 owners will still be covered by the warranty. However, other than this, other factors are not taken into account. It looks like this problem of the melting 12VHPWR connector may last for another year.
