A year has passed since Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 launch, but the graphics card continues to face problems with its controversial power connector, according to a repair service in California.
“We get about 20 to 25 4090s a week,” says LA-based NorthridgeFix, which published a YouTube video documenting the persistent issue with the graphics cards. The store continues to receive RTX 4090 GPUs with melted connectors, a year after reports about the problem first cropped up.
The RTX 4090s connector is designed to hook into a 12VHPWR cable, which can send the necessary juice to power the high-end graphics card. A year ago, Nvidia said it uncovered 50 cases globally of the connector melting. However, the company blamed the problem on customers failing to fully plug the 12VHPWR cable into the RTX 4090’s connector.
Nvidia and its partners have worked to improve the connector. But even so, faulty RTX 4090s continue to pile up at Northridge Fix. And the various models—including those form MSI, Asus, and Zotac—all suffer from the same problem: a melted connector that needs to be replaced.
“We get them in so much that I bought myself this Hiroshima (respirator) mask so I do not have smell the burnt on those connectors,” NorthridgeFix says, before adding: “Now it’s safe to say, the 4090 melted connector is not the user problem.”
In a past video, NorthridgeFix has also said that even fully plugging in 12VHPWR cable can still result in melting problems. Nvidia didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the industry group PCI-SIG has drafted a new 12V-2x6 PCIe 6.0 connector that appears poised to replace the 12VHPWR connector.
