The lawsuit, filed Nov. 11 by Lucas Genova in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, appears to accuse Nvidia of unjust enrichment, fraud, breach of implied warranty and violation of two New York sales statutes. of defective RTX 4090 cards. Nvidia has until December to respond to Genova’s allegations, according to a subpoena issued Wednesday. said a company representative The Registry that it does not comment on pending disputes. The lawsuit cites several reports of the RTX 4090’s 12VHPWR power connector or the card’s power socket melting after use. An ongoing Reddit post has found 26 confirmed reports of RTX 4090 cards with melting cables, and they’ve appeared on Nvidia’s Founders Edition board as well as third-party cards from Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. Nvidia released the RTX 4090 in October with a suggested retail price of $1,499. Due to the 450 watts required for normal power consumption and 600 watts for overclocking, the GPU behemoth introduced the new 12VHPWR power socket, short for 12-volt high power, to maintain adequate power levels. Twelve of the cable’s pins supply power to the card, while another four “sense” pins monitor the card’s power. The lawsuit states that Genova noticed that the 12VHPWR power connector had melted where it connects to the RTX 4090 shortly after it was installed. The user was not aware of any defects before this happened and would not have purchased the card — or paid much less for the card — if they had known this was an issue, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit calls this collapse a “serious electrical and fire hazard.” “As such, the cards are not safe for anyone to use in their current configuration,” it says. The lawsuit claims that the users who reported the melting cable problem installed the RTX 4090 correctly, and that the problem stems from a design flaw linked to the way power flows through the 12VHPWR’s 16 pins: Among the charges made, Nvidia “unjustly enriched itself” by taking money from consumers for graphics cards without disclosing they had defective power cables, the suit alleges. This also breached the warranty implied by the sale of RTX 4090 cards and constitutes fraud, the suit further claims. Lawyers representing Genova are seeking class action status for the lawsuit, which would allow anyone who bought an RTX 4090 card to seek compensation. This excludes those who purchased an RTX 4090 for resale purposes. The suit also seeks to form a subclass of New York residents who bought the card because it alleges two state laws related to deceptive business practices are violated. If class-action status is granted, the number of class members would number in the thousands, according to the lawsuit, although the exact number is currently unknown. The law firm representing the plaintiff, New York-based Bursor and Fisher, wants a jury trial and is seeking compensatory, statutory and punitive damages, plus prejudgment interest on all awards, as well as restitution. Nvidia’s main GPU rival AMD apparently couldn’t help themselves and grilled the GeForce designer over the melting cable issue. On Thursday, Sasa Marinkovic, senior director of gaming marketing at AMD, tweeted, “Stay safe this holiday season,” and attached an image of the dual 8-pin socket design of AMD’s new Radeon RX 7900 products that came standard on high-end cards. Stay safe this holiday season. @amdradeon pic.twitter.com/DOpg0f2qaP — Sasa Marinkovic (@SasaMarinkovic) November 17, 2022 AMD better be careful throwing stones at silicon houses, given that electric vehicle maker Tesla was forced to recall nearly 130,000 of its cars earlier this year due to overheating of the Ryzen processors used in the infotainment system. ®
