Nvidia made a statement to KitGuru regarding the 16-pin adapter meltdowns on the GeForce RTX 4090. Unfortunately, that’s not the explanation everyone was hoping for. The chipmaker reported that it is still investigating 16-pin power adapter failures and has no new information to share.It’s been a few weeks since the first GeForce RTX 4090 events were reported, and Nvidia still doesn’t have a solution. There have been numerous reports of GeForce RTX 4090 owners that the 16-pin power adapter has melted and, worse, taken the graphics card’s power connector with it. There are 27 confirmed burning and melting problems on Reddit alone.
Nvidia said in a statement, “We continue to investigate the reports, but we don’t have any more details to share yet. Nvidia and our partners are committed to supporting our customers and providing an expedited product changeover process for them.” said.
There are two cable manufacturers and one is problematic
The official Nvidia 16-pin 600W 12VHPWR cable that comes with all GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards is said to be manufactured by companies called Astron or NTK, both competing with each other from Taiwanese companies. According to Igor’sLAB, the NTK variant cable has a better locking system and quality. While it is stated that the connection of the NTK variant connector is more difficult but more reliable, it is stated that the cables have higher resistance in the Astron variant.There are multiple theories for the problem but no definitive solution
Numerous suggestions and theories have surfaced over the past weeks on how to fix 16-pin power connector melting on GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone.One theory suggests that the 16-pin power adapter is primarily faulty. It is reported that the power adapter is not well designed and can cause malfunctions if bent more than necessary.
Another theory is that some 16-pin power adapters use insufficient 150V wires instead of 300V wires. Therefore, cables designed for 600W power current cannot handle this load and cause melting/burning problems due to heating.
Another relatively recent theory comes from Corsair’s Jon Gerow. According to Gerow, users are not able to insert the connector correctly. He states that there should be no space between the 16-pin power cable and the connector on the card.
As a result, there is no definitive answer as to why 16-pin power adapters suffer from melting and burning issues and whether there is a definitive solution. Even more confusing is the fact that 16-pin cables natively found in compatible ATX 3.0 power supplies also suffer from melting issues.
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