In a post on its customer support forum on Friday, Nvidia says it is still investigating the reports, but that its findings “suggest” that an insecure link was a common problem. It also says it has received about 50 reports on the matter. Nvidia’s flagship card uses what’s known as a 12VHPWR power socket, a new standard that isn’t natively supported by most power supplies that users already have in their PCs. Because of that, it ships an adapter — or “power dongle,” as Friday’s post calls it — in the box. Initial user reports blamed the adapter, with some saying the melting cable had damaged the $1,599 GPU as well. It could be easy to read the company’s findings as putting the blame on users. Sure, Nvidia doesn’t come right out and say it’s user error, but it’s heavily implied in the post. It also seems like a very convenient explanation, as people have been speculating for almost a month now that the problem is caused by something more complex, such as poor soldering or wires that are too small to reliably handle the massive amounts of power being pumped through. That’s a significant amount of connection that would be out of the socket. Image: GamersNexus However, GamersNexus, a shop respected in the PC building community for its rigorous testing, came to the same conclusion earlier this week. A video posted Wednesday by the outlet, which inspected damaged adapters sent in by viewers and did extensive testing and reporting on the issue, showed the connectors had wear lines, suggesting they weren’t fully inserted into the socket. GamersNexus even says that some people seem to have lost a full connection by several millimeters. His video shows that a loose connection could cause the plug to heat up dramatically if it was poorly connected and tilted at an angle. Nvidia’s post includes a picture of what the connector looks like when it’s not fully plugged in, and it looks a lot easier to miss than something that’s 2mm out and held at an angle (possibly because the cables were pulled back too tightly during installation). It would be even easier to miss with a third-party RTX 4090 card instead of the Nvidia version seen in the images below. If you have one of these cards in your computer, you should probably double check that yours looks like the one below. Nvidia says you should make sure the cable is fully connected before starting your computer. Image: Nvidia It’s worth noting, however, that Nvidia may not be completely flawless here. Another thing that is missing about the image he posted is that the socket has a key lock. In theory, this is a feature that would prevent this from happening, as long as it gives good feedback when you plug it in. According to GamersNexus, however, the adapters don’t actually click into place, even when fully seated. Beyond that, tests done by Nvidia and GamersNexus don’t seem to point to manufacturing defects as the main culprit (the store’s video on Wednesday said that build-up debris may have been an aggravating factor). In any case, however, an unnamed company representative told GamersNexus on Friday that “any issues with the burnt cable or GPU, regardless of cable or GPU, will be processed” for a replacement.
