Undervolted and power-limited GeForce RTX 5090 melts 12V-2x6 cable and connector

Although not limited to the GeForce RTX 5090, it makes sense that the majority of reports relating to burning, melting, or damaged 12V-2x6 power cables and connectors are related to NVIDIA's latest flagship. One of the latest reports from a user (on the Mobile01 forum) posting images of their burned-out cable and connector involves GIGABYTE's AORUS GeForce RTX 5090 MASTER ICE.

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However, what makes this case a little different is that, even though it is a premium GeForce RTX 5090 with out-of-the-box overclocked settings, the user actually had it undervolted and the GPU power limit reduced to 500W from the default 600W. The voltage limit was reduced to 0.9v, about 0.2v lower than stock settings, so you'd think this would help mitigate some of the risk of the connector failing.

However, as we've seen cases of the Radeon RX 9070 XT and the GeForce RTX 5080 experiencing this issue, no high-powered GPU seems safe when using the new 16-pin standard and 12V-2x6 power cables. In this case, both the cable connecting to the GPU and the GPU's connection appear to be affected.

Interestingly, the user used the included adapter with the GPU, which connects four traditional 8-pin PCIe connectors to the new 16-pin output. According to investigations into this ongoing issue, in addition to the 12V-2x6 power not being seated correctly, the use of adapters can also increase the risk of unbalanced loading and higher temperatures across individual pins.

It's unfortunate that this continues to happen, but with new power supplies from companies like MSI and Adata/XPG, including hardware-level technology that can detect power discrepancies and shut down systems before any physical damage is caused, hopefully, this will become the standard for all 1000W+ power supplies at some point because it seems that there's no foolproof solution for the cable side of the equation.