Nvidia said that GeForce RTX 5000 video cards will not have connectors that melt

At the recent GeForce Editors Day press event in South Korea, Nvidia said that the company has fixed the melting power connector issue that plagued the GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards. The new GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards will not be affected by this issue, according to the company.

Image Source: QuasarZone

It took Nvidia more than a year to redesign the old 12+4-pin 12VHPWR connector on GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards and begin shipping accelerators with a new 12V-2×6 connector, designed to significantly reduce the risk of it melting if connected incorrectly. We talked about this in more detail here. However, given that the power consumption of the new flagship RTX 5090 graphics card has increased by 125 W compared to the previous flagship RTX 4090, to 575 W, the press has a logical question: how Nvidia has prepared for scenarios in which past problems may return.

«With the release of RTX 40 series video cards, the power connector was replaced with a new 12+4-pin standard. However, there were problems with this connector, in particular, melting due to overheating, especially on the RTX 4090 models. Has this problem been fixed for the RTX 5090?” asked one of the journalists at the Editors Day event.

According to Nvidia representatives, the problem was resolved after the company replaced the old power connector design with a new one (12V-2×6) for GeForce RTX 50 series cards.

«It is expected that similar problems will not arise with RTX 50 series graphics cards. In response to the problem, some changes were made to the connector at that time. “Approximately two years have passed since then, and we believe that these issues have been resolved,” Nvidia representatives responded.

Cases of melting power connectors on the GeForce RTX 4090 were largely associated with an incorrectly connected power cable (most often from third-party manufacturers) by video card owners, which caused overheating of the connector and melting of the connector. Moreover, such cases were not uncommon, as practice has shown.

It should be added that some manufacturers of GeForce RTX 50 series video cards have additionally played it safe and added various elements designed to eliminate problems with incorrect power connections. For example, MSI equipped its video cards with power cables with color indicators of correct connection, and Zotac added an LED indicator next to the power connector on the video cards that performs the same function.