GPU repair shop NorthridgeFix reveals that the RTX 4090 melting catastrophe has not gone away as all have hoped. The repair shop reports that it continues receiving burned RTX 4090s from customers worldwide and repairs said GPUs “every single day.” NorthridgeFix showed some daming evidence of this fact when it revealed a box full of melted 16-pin power connectors.
NorthridgeFix also revealed that many RTX 4090s it receives also come as a result of melted CableMod power adapters. These are the original adapters that CableMod officially discontinued and recalled. However, there’s no guarantee that all its customers will stop using the adapter. NorthridgeFix admits that the initial design was “built on the wrong foundation.”
It’s unfortunate that RTX 4090s are still melting every single day. However, with the hundreds of thousands of RTX 4090s Nvidia has built over the past two years, at least some of these cards will inevitably melt as they get used. Specifically, we are talking about RTX 4090s that come with the original 12VHPWR power connector, not the new 12V-2×6 power connector.
As we have discovered, these melting issues can occur at any time. We’ve seen RTX 4090 reports of cards melting within a couple of months and one report where it took a whole year before damage occurred. This is simply the result of random chance and how much use each RTX 4090 gets. The less used RTX 4090s will take far longer to develop symptoms. Not everyone is using their RTX 4090 24/7 straight to play video games or render content.
Thankfully, Nvidia has switched to using the newer 12V-2×6 power connector on newer RTX 4090 production models, as well as the entire RTX 40 series family that uses the 16-pin power connector, as far as we are aware. Reports claim that the 12V-2×6 is far less susceptible to overheating, and we have not seen a single RTX 4090 that has died from a power connector failure sporting the 12V-2×6 connector.
Unfortunately, this does not change the fact that there are still a plethora of RTX 4090s in the wild sporting the original 12VHPWR power connector. As a result, we will probably never stop hearing about RTX 4090 deaths until the GPU gets discontinued.
