First report of an Nvidia RTX 5080 power connector melting emerges

What just happened? With several reports of RTX 5090 power connectors melting, it's starting to look as if the dreaded issue that was found by many RTX 4090 owners has made it to the Blackwell generation. In what could be even worse news for Nvidia, the first incident involving an RTX 5080 has surfaced.

Redditor Ambitious_Ladder1320 posted images of a 16-pin power connector that had melted on the PSU side. The power supply unit in question was an Asus ROG Loki, which was plugged into an RTX 5080.

According to the post, the user saw a red light flashing on the RTX 5080, indicating that a pin wasn't seated properly, despite both CPU and GPU cables being locked into place.

Ambitious_Ladder1320 then powered down the PC and reconnected the cable. Upon restarting, the warning disappeared, but the resolution and the refresh rate had dropped and the GPU reported being switched to PCIe 3.0 mode.

After shutting down for a second time and reinserting all the cables, it was discovered that the connector on the PSU end of the 16-pin 12VHPWR cable had melted. The GPU end and the GPU itself appear unaffected.

The user said he had seen three similar reports from ROG Loki PSU users on YouTube, though he never specified if they were also using RTX 5080 or RTX 5090 cards.

It appears that we'll soon know more details about what happened as Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus asked if the YouTube channel could buy the GPU, cable, and PSU for testing and RMA support evaluation.

There were reports earlier this week of an RTX 5090 FE cable's connector melting on both ends and damaging the card and PSU. It was a third-party cable from Moddiy, though the owner said he'd used it for years with his RTX 4090 and experienced no problems.

Der8auer replicated the user's setup using his own components – though he used a Corsair 12VHPWR cable – and ran the Furmark test. The cable's connectors reached 150°C on the PSU side and close to 90°C on the GPU side. The problem was an uneven distribution of power: two wires designed to carry 5 to 6 amps of current were carrying more than 20 amps each, while some cables carried as little as 2 amps.