MSI's yellow power connector has once again melted due to a GeForce RTX 5090

According to TechSpot, a user with an RTX 5090 GPU on Reddit has reported that their 12V-2×6 connector has suffered melting damage. The affected cable is an MSI yellow-tipped 12V-2×6 power connector. After experiencing intermittent “DisplayPort not connected” errors, the user discovered that the power connector for their GPU had melted.

In the accompanying image, it is evident that all of the power pins on the GPU connector are scorched. However, the connector side on the GPU itself does not seem to have been damaged. This situation is similar to a report from March, which also involved MSI’s 12V-2×6 power connector.

The yellow-tipped cables from MSI are designed to ensure that users insert their 12V-2×6 connectors completely. Therefore, it seems unlikely that this melting issue resulted from user negligence. At this time, it remains uncertain whether the user's graphics card has sustained permanent damage.

These types of problems occur with some frequency among users of RTX 5090. New reports of cable melting emerge every few weeks. A similar pattern was observed with Nvidia's high-end RTX 40 series GPUs. So far, Nvidia has not taken sufficient action to resolve this concern.

For RTX 40 and RTX 50 series GPUs, the power pins on the 16-pin (12V-2×6/12VHPWR) connectors are grouped together on the graphics cards. This results in all six pins being treated as a single input (with ASUS’ ROG Astral RTX 5080/5090 GPUs being a notable exception). If the load across the cable is uneven, most of today's GPUs are unable to detect or respond to it. This can cause excessive power to flow through individual pins, resulting in heat accumulation and other complications.

With Nvidia’s RTX 30 series GPUs, the company divided the power cables on the 12-pin/16-pin power connectors into three distinct inputs. This configuration allowed for effective load balancing and helped prevent power distribution problems. Importantly, “cable melting” was not an issue with the Nvidia RTX 30 series GPUs. To prevent such issues, Nvidia simply needs to ensure proper load balancing on the 12V-2×6 power cables. This could be implemented at the GPU design stage. Unfortunately, Nvidia has not taken any steps to address this. Currently, third-party companies are seeking ways to mitigate this problem to protect consumers.

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