A recent investigation into the performance and longevity of power cables for high-end graphics cards, including the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 4090, has revealed a concerning issue. The investigation found that one of our power cables, used with an RTX 4090 GPU for over two years, had melted, showing signs of degradation.
We used the official power cable provided by NVIDIA for all tests, including those on the RTX 3080 and RTX 5080, and did not experience any stability issues. The power cable still works properly, with no crashes or throttling issues observed during benchmarking.
The investigation also found that when testing both the RTX 5090 and RTX 4090 with our specific power cable, we saw no significant performance degradation. However, as this was a relatively short-term test, its long-term reliability remains to be seen.
NVIDIA has been informed about these findings and is currently investigating the melted power cables reported in recent online stories. For now, users can rest assured that our testing confirms that the issue may not be widespread, but it’s essential for NVIDIA to take action to address the problem.
In related news, videos from Der8auer and another reputable source showcase the evolution of the NVIDIA 12VHPWR connector, highlighting a potential design flaw that could lead to such issues.
Source: https://www.dsogaming.com/articles/heres-what-happened-to-the-12vhpwr-power-cable-of-our-nvidia-rtx-4090-after-two-years-of-continuous-work