The power cable for an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card has been shown reaching a scorching temperature of 150°C in thermal tests, prompting concern that the days of melting power plugs are very far from over with the new gaming GPU range. In the test, one wire was shown drawing a massive 20A current on its own, with the image on a thermal camera glowing white.
You can read all about the performance of this new Nvidia GPU in our RTX 5090 review, and we had no problems with hot-running cables when we were running our benchmarks. However, not everyone has been so lucky, with one Redditor already reporting a melted RTX 5090 power socket, and now this extreme temperature result.
The test was conducted by Roman ‘der8auer’ Hartung, a renowned PC tech expert and overclocker on YouTube, who described it as “extremely concerning.” Using the water-cooled RTX 5090 that he’d demonstrated in a previous video, hooked up to a Corsair AX1600i PSU with a Corsair 2 x 8-pin to 16-pin cable, der8auer showed how two of the pins can get surprisingly hot.
He then loads the GPU with FurMark for several minutes and focuses the thermal camera on the cable. Shockingly, after just four minutes of running FurMark, the temperature of one of the wires at the PSU end hits 153°C, while the end at the GPU hits 90°C. That’s seriously hot for a power cable, prompting der8auer to measure the current, which goes over 20A on one of the wires, which should be more like 6-8A.
In the same video, der8auer also shows the aforementioned melted RTX 5090, which he’d managed to obtain from the Redditor, along with the cable. As well as the damage to the card, der8auer details the damage to the cable, with multiple pins being damaged at the PSU side, and obvious damage to a single pin on the GPU side of the cable. Not only that, but the cable itself between the two damaged pins on either end has also been severely burned.
It’s well worth taking a look at the video, where der8auer puts the damaged cable pins under the microscope, showing that the damaged pin ‘made good contact with the plastic of the card’ before it was pulled out after the melting incident. This particular pin isn’t a ground pin either – it’s one of the ones carrying the full 12V to the GPU. Meanwhile, on the PSU side, which uses a 12VHPWR socket, rather than the newer 12V-2×6 socket, five of the six 12V pins are damaged.
“This is absolutely concerning,” says der8auer about the results, “the unbalance between different cables using different pins is a huge problem.” He also bats away criticism of the third-party cable after analyzing it, saying “‘I think it’s pretty much a standard cable, it doesn’t seem to be bad quality.” Given the high current and temperatures he’s seen on his own setup, der8auer speculates that ‘maybe that one wire was carrying 30A’ on the melted cable.
Nvidia has already ensured a storm with melted RTX 4090 power sockets, and der8auer states that “with the 5090, those things probably just became a lot worse.” Given that the RTX 5090 has only been out for a couple of weeks, this really isn’t good news for Nvidia.
If you’re looking to buy a new GPU now, check out our guide to the best graphics card, where we take you through all our recommendations to suit a range of budgets.
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