Another GeForce RTX 5090 has fallen victim to the now-notorious 16-pin power connector-and this time, everything was done by the book.
Editor-in-Chief of DSO Gaming, John Papadopoulos, shared a detailed account of his RTX 5090 melting its connector while gaming, despite using the official 12V-2×6 cable and ensuring full insertion into the GPU.
In a rare move, John documented the process from start to finish, including photos before pushing the GPU to full load. He emphasized that he never swaps power cables between GPUs and that his RTX 5090 had been running under normal thermals, peaking under 78°C. Yet, after 20 minutes of operation, he noticed smoke and discovered the bottom row of connector pins had melted.
Critics pointed to a visible ‘gap’ in the connector, but John clarified that it was at the top, not where the melting occurred. Ironically, this supports a theory circulating in the tech community: the melting usually happens when only some of the pins make contact, forcing the entire current load through fewer pins-leading to localized overheating.
Despite the melted pins, John reinserted the GPU without reconnecting anything-and it worked perfectly. No more smoke, no overheating, and still no crashes. This further proves it wasn’t a user error but a deeper issue with the connector design. There’s currently no mechanism in place to alert users about partial connections, and power still gets drawn through however many pins happen to be making contact.
The root cause? It seems to be a widespread flaw in NVIDIA’s new connector design. Dozens of users have experienced similar failures, and there’s growing frustration that such a premium GPU still ships with a connector that can catastrophically fail-even when installed properly. The lack of pin-level monitoring or current balancing has made the situation worse, leaving even cautious users vulnerable to this fiery surprise.
Until NVIDIA redesigns this connector or integrates smarter safety mechanisms, users are left to hope their 5090 doesn’t turn into a very expensive smoke machine.