NBA 2K27 launched last week, officially bringing NVIDIA’s neural rendering technology to the masses in the form of DLSS 5, but the new feature could cost more than performance hits. DLSS 5 has already been criticized for how it can drastically change images. In some instances, these alterations can be considered improvements, while in others, not so much. In either case, DLSS 5 has already been documented to be a compute-workload-intensive process, which can also halve FPS in games, but lower frames may be the least of your worries as your GPU works overtime.
VideoCardz has reported yet another circumstance in which an RTX 5090 experienced a melted power adapter. This time around, it was said to involve an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC, which was being used to test NBA 2K27 with DLSS5. The user, who goes by erek, reported that the card stopped working during testing, and then they smelled something unusual. GPU-Z was monitoring the card and showed it reaching past 600W to 613.5W total board power. Now, this doesn’t mean that the full load was going through the 12V-2×6 cable, since up to 75W can be delivered via PCIe, but the total is still beyond the max limit for an RTX 5090, and far past the 575W MSI states for this card. The user also reported that this was not a one-off brief spike, as the card had sustained drawing over 600W for a time before it failed.
Tom’s Hardware did its own testing with DLSS 5 and confirmed that not only does the new feature cause increased power draw, but its performance gains are also constrained by power limits. Testing showed an RTX 5090 Founders Edition drew an extra 69W, going from 482W to 551W, when DLSS 5 was enabled. An MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z, which has 2 of the 12V-2×6 power connectors, along with a factory vBIOS 1000W power limit, was also used in testing. Power draw on it rose by 25% from 580W to 723W, a 143W increase. Tom’s also noted how the Lightning Z saw a slightly smaller performance hit at 39% vs 42%, as witnessed with the Founders Edition, but it is largely debatable if that 3% gain is worth the 170W difference between the two.
While at the moment it cannot be truly proven that DLSS 5 is the culprit for our latest melted power connector, early testing has shown concerning power draw, and given the many, many, many stories regarding the 12VHPWR connector, things are not looking good.
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