Monster power consumption matches the new GPU’s monstrous performance.
Nvidia costs $1,599 Despite being an extraordinarily powerful graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090 consumes a lot of electricity. Similar to several of the RTX 3000-series cards, Nvidia employs a novel 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector to deliver all that power to the card. To save some board space, up to four 8-pin GPU power cables may be connected to the 12VHPWR adapter, which then connects to the socket on the GPU.
Nevertheless, at least two RT 4090 owners have recently complained that their 12VHPWR connections overheated and melted while in operation. Take these concerns with a grain of salt because they come from Reddit (via Tom’s Hardware) and we don’t know the precise setup of each user’s PC. The power supply, the particular brand of graphics card—a Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC for one user and an Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming OC Edition for the other—the graphics card manufacturer, and a variety of other elements might all have had a role in the connections overheating.
Nvidia, on the other hand, informed Tom’s that it was “investigating the reports,” that it was “in communication with the first owner,” and that it intended to get in touch with the other owner. We’ve followed up with Nvidia, and if the business has further information to give, we’ll update this piece.
According to Tom’s Hardware, the problem can be brought on by a bend in the cable that is too close to the power connection, which might lead to some of the pins become “misaligned” or unseated and, therefore, resulting in an unequal power load across the pins. Until it’s evident if these were isolated user errors or a symptom of a more widespread issue with the RTX 4090 series, we’ll continue to monitor the situation.
