We can add another Radeon 9070 XT casualty to the list of graphics cards damaged by a burnt 12V-2×6 power connector. AMD’s partners began adopting the 2nd-gen 12VHPWR connector with the Radeon RX 7000 series, and while it took a bit of time, stories of melted connectors have been popping up with increased frequency. This time around, it’s barely been 3 weeks since the last, which was also a Sapphire Nitro+ 9070 XT, and in both instances, there seems to be another common denominator.
There’s a long and torrid history for owners of newer NVIDIA GPUs regarding the 12VHPWR/12V-2×6 connector, but there are also a myriad of reasons for burnt connectors. They range from user error to poor-quality after-market cables, a lack of load-balancing technology, and using improper cables or PSUs. Regarding the latest instances involving Sapphire’s GPUs, both (1, 2) users connected their GPUs via the included 3x 8-pin adapter to non-ATX 3.1 PSUs. As these GPUs draw significantly less power than the maximum 600W, and feature blue-colored connectors to assist in visual confirmation that they are fully inserted, it would seem that there could be a load-balancing issue when using the adapters with non-ATX 3.1 power supplies.
Technically, this makes the third 9070 XT to experience this issue since August, but the first, an ASRock Taichi OC 9070 XT, was connected unconventionally to an 850W PSU using the 3x 8-pin adapter, but with only two of the 8-pin connectors plugged directly into the PSU and the third via another adapter. Clearly not an ideal or recommended method, but as mentioned by that user, the PSU wattage did meet the manufacturer’s recommendation. Perhaps the biggest takeaway, for right now anyway, is that owners of any AMD Radeon 9070 XT partner cards that utilize the 12V-2×6 connector may want to consider not using the 3-pin adapter and upgrade to a newer ATX 3.1 PSU and use its supplied 12V-2×6 cable instead. However, as the many reports for NVIDIA GPUs have shown, this is not a cure-all either, but things are not looking good for the 3x 8-pin adapters right now for the Radeon RX 9070 XT series.