Less than two weeks after its release, the first report of a melting Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has surfaced online. While a third-party power cable was used, it’s unclear right now what caused the fault, with the graphics card, power supply, and GPU power cable all suffering from damage.
It’s unfortunate timing, however, coming just weeks after Nvidia made claims about the RTX 5090 power connection, saying that it “didn’t expect” a repeat of issues with melting RTX 4090 cards to reoccur with the RTX 50-series. That’s despite the new best graphics card on the market drawing even more power than the RTX 4090 it replaces, with a 125W power draw increase compared to the older card.
This unfortunate incident was shared in a Reddit post in the r/nvidia subreddit, where ivan6953 shared their story. The Redditor had just upgraded from an RTX 4090 Founders Edition to the RTX 5090 FE, and according to them, the cable was “securely fastened” into both the GPU and PSU at both ends.
After noticing a “burning smell” while playing Battlefield V, and claiming the power draw at the time of the incident was around 500-525W, ivan6953 powered down the PC to inspect the damage. The images shared on Reddit show damage to both the RTX 5090’s power connector and the socket on the Asus ROG Loki power supply, along with a third-party Moddiy cable with a melted connector and wiring. The Redditor claims that the same cable powered their RTX 4090 without issue for two years prior to this incident.
Unfortunately, this is far from the first Nvidia graphics card to have suffered from this issue. Issues with melting RTX 4090 cards forced the company to make changes to the 12VHPWR connector design on their top-spec GPUs, altering the shape and length of some of the socket pins to increase the reliability of the connection, leaving the cable design intact.
Ivan6953 isn’t blaming Nvidia for this one, at least not directly. With the damage seemingly heaviest on the power supply end, they’re chalking this up to a problem with the cable or power supply, rather than with the RTX 5090 itself, although it’s unclear at this time what really caused the fault and what component deserves the blame. Still, with these kinds of high power demands and with plenty of third-party cables on the market, it’s unlikely that this will be the last RTX 5090 to see a meltdown during the product’s lifetime.
The Redditor didn’t use an official cable here, so while they have filed a warranty claim with both Nvidia and Asus for their damaged hardware, they aren’t confident of success. While it’s too late for ivan6953, if you’re spending $1,999 (or more) on a top-spec GPU, we’d recommend using either a suitable 16-pin GPU power cable made by your PSU manufacturer for your PSU, or using the official Nvidia power cable adapter supplied with your card to connect your GPU to your PSU with four 8-pin PCIe power connectors instead. If nothing else, this will help ensure you’ve got the best chance of a claim under your existing warranty coverage.
Bad luck for ivan6953, and we hope he gets himself a new RTX 5090 soon, although it might be tricky if he has to buy a replacement himself. After a less-than-ideal launch, RTX 5090 stock has been almost impossible to find. If you’re keen to get your hands on one, make sure to check out our where to buy 5090 stock guide for daily retailer updates, although you’ll have to be quick, as we expect any stock that appears to run out quickly.
You can also check out our RTX 5090 review for our thoughts on this brand-new, top-spec Nvidia card. Don’t forget to also follow us on Google News for daily PC hardware news, reviews, and guides, and join our community Discord to stay in the know.