Testing shows that a recently reported 3rd party melted power cable used with an RTX 5090 FE may not be to blame for the meltdown. Meltgate 2.0 might be on the horizon but it is important to note that so far this is the only reported instance of a 12VHPWR cable melting while being used with an RTX 5090 graphics card. Famed overclocker and PC hardware tester de8auer happens to live close to the owner of the damaged hardware and managed to obtain the equipment. His testing shows that the 3rd party cable might not be the cause of the meltdown.
User Hardware involved:
- ASUS ROG Loki 1000W Gen 5.0 ATX 3.0 Power Supply
- 12VHPWR 3rd Party Cable – From Moddiy
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition
From mixing metal between connectors and pins to examining the 3rd party cable der8auer has expressed doubts to any user error being the cause. Der8auer adds that he often uses the same brand as the other user confirming that they are normally of high quality standards. Additional testing was done using his own RTX 5090 card that has been fitted with a water block. Testing involved thermal imaging, and Furmark to push the card to its limits, which showed two particular wires carrying unusually high loads, one peaking at 22 amps or over 260 Watts! A normal expected load should be at least a third of that at around 5 or 6 Watts.
Not a new problem?
Unless you happened to track images from previous RTX 4090 melted cables, most might not be aware that there are consistencies happening from then to now. The following images show the cable in question used with the RTX 5090, image (via VideoCardz) has been rotated to align with that of a previous image of a cable used with an RTX 4090 for like comparison. A third image shows the GPU connectors, including the same melted pin. There are likely more images to be found from past instances confirming similar melted pins.
