Reports of melting power adapters, a problem Nvidia may have known about
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire: Nvidia’s use of a new 600 power watt adapter in its RTX graphics cards sounded like a good idea at the time but some users are reported similar overheating issues previously linked to the new 12VHPWR adapter.
One unlucky user posted photos of his burned-out RTX 4090 power adapter port and the adapter itself, which appears to have melted. “It smelled badly and I saw smoke,” the Redditor explained, adding that the adapter appeared to be the issue since the card still worked despite the fire damage.
A second Reddit post described a similar experience with an RTX 4090, which only went on sale earlier this month, shared photos of his own burned-out 4090, which showed less damage, but burning at similar pins.
The new 12VHPWR power connector used on Nvidia RTX 4090s was revealed earlier this year along with Intel’s new ATX power supply specs. Those PSUs were designed to support power-hungry PCIe gen-5 graphics cards that require more power – like the 600 watts that can be delivered by the 12VHPWR connector.
