Apparently, some of Nvidia’s RTX 4090 power adapters are melting

The morning has started off poorly for RTX 4090 owners. Some users have reported that the 16-pin power adapter for Nvidia’s top RTX 40 series GPU overheats and melts the circuitry, which is obviously a bad thing to have happen inside your computer case.

Even though the RTX 4090 has only been available for a short while (it was released on October 12 of this month), owners of the high-end GPU have been flocking to Reddit to discuss the issue of their power adapters getting too hot. HardwareLuxx, Igor’s Lab, and TecLab are just a few of the industry testing sites revealing similar difficulties, and more are starting to disclose their findings online.

One possible cause is that people are bending the adapter on their own at home to make it fit in the case. But the flexing is causing some cables to come unplugged, which is causing temperature issues. Since it turns out, *checks notes* yup, definitely too high, as WccfTech has reported temperatures of 100 degrees Celsius and above during testing.

Now the designs of the individual manufacturers are also increasingly coming into focus. Three community members with a 12VHPWR PSU adapter from be quiet! have already posted in the forum. Individual pins came loose from the connector. No fire started! pic.twitter.com/L0sEEqZVoX

— Andreas Schilling 🇺🇦 (@aschilling) October 25, 2022

The horror has a face – NVIDIA’s hot 12VHPWR adapter for the GeForce RTX 4090 with a built-in breaking point. Cut open, analyzed and disposed of in the trash. A feast for the fire fighters #nvidia #rtx4090 #meltinghttps://t.co/EDK1dMw0GM pic.twitter.com/YsWxyBykqv

— Igor Wallossek (@IgorWallossek) October 27, 2022

Thankfully, it appears that Nvidia is aware of the issue and has issued a call for damaged cards from third-party manufacturers to be sent in for testing.

Luckily, our hardware editor James hasn’t (yet) run into any of these issues in his testing, but he did find plenty of other issues in his RTX 4090 review that made him concerned, notably the exorbitant price: “In what range do we need to talk about costs? For a GPU that seems to have issues with older DLSS versions and becomes confused and unhappy when running at resolutions below 4K unless partnered with a similarly cutting-edge CPU? There may be a small group of aficionados willing to pay for the absolute best performance, but for the rest of us, the RTX 4090’s steep price tag and lack of accessibility eliminate it as a viable alternative.”