Nvidia’s RTX 4090 Founders Edition has become the latest Lovelace flagship to fall victim to a melted adapter cable, at least according to a Reddit user.
Previously, we’ve only seen reports of this happening with third-party RTX 4090 graphics cards, i.e. those made by Nvidia’s partners, as opposed to the Founders Edition created by Nvidia itself, which previously had no documented cable meltdown.
Unfortunately, this is no longer true, according to a report on Reddit (opens in a new tab) which Tom’s gear (opens in a new tab) mottled. An RTX 4090 buyer used a cased graphics card with the side panel removed for more breathing space and ensured that the connection between the PSU and GPU was solid and properly seated, noting that: “I made sure it clicked into place and made sure the 3 cables weren’t pulling the adapter.”
The strain on the adapter is believed to be one of the potential causes of the RTX 4090’s melting cable issue, so it apparently didn’t matter in this case.
The Redditor noted, “I mostly played Warzone for the next 7 days, with it on/off maybe around 2-3 hours each time. 10/29/22, My screen went blank after about an hour of playing. I tried restarting my computer many times and still couldn’t get the image. I checked the GPU and adapter and that’s when I saw this.
“I contacted Nvidia immediately, sent them my card and adapter, and received a replacement 4090 within 3 days. I will not be using the new card until Nvidia makes a statement to that effect.”
Analysis: 26 and counting…
Of course, we’re still waiting for that statement and the results of Nvidia’s investigation into what’s going on here. Meanwhile, it is worrying that one of Nvidia’s own cards has apparently fallen victim to this controversy, while it was not before.
In total, there are now 26 reports of RTX 4090 cable melting incidents on Reddit, which is starting to be an uncomfortably high number. It certainly seems like it’s time for Nvidia to put on its skates and get to the bottom of what a gremlin is in the works once and for all.
You may have noticed that the above RTX 4090 user actually only connected 3 x 8 pin PCIe power cables, instead of the usual 4. He did this as a point of precaution, noting that this is enough to power the graphics card, but keep the power consumption theoretically lower maximum (450 W) than with four cables. Unfortunately, this apparently didn’t help avoid the cable melting issue (and there are several other records for 3 x 8-pin configurations melting issues).