RTX 5080 power cable allegedly melts at PSU — Redditor reports another 50-series failure

We’ve seen several reports of RTX 5090 FE GPUs melting their power cables even though Nvidia has previously said that it was confident that the issue that plagued RTX 4090 GPUs was unlikely to happen again. But as we’re grappling with these melted connectors with the RTX 5090s and their 575-watt TDP, X (formerly Twitter) user HXL spotted a Redditor posting images of their Asus RTX 5080 GPU which had suffered from a melted connector during normal use.

According to u/Ambitious_Ladder1320, their RTX 5080 GPU flashed a red light while they were using their PC, which meant that a pin wasn’t seated properly. The user claimed that both GPU and CPU cables were connected properly, but to troubleshoot the issue, they switched off their computer and reconnected the GPU cable.

This seemingly solved the problem, as the warning light disappeared. However, the display resolution and refresh rate dropped and the graphics card switched to PCIe x3 mode. So, they decided to shut down the PC again and reconnect all cables — this was when they discovered that the GPU’s power connector had melted on the PSU side, with the GPU side remaining unaffected.

One thing the user noticed was that they were using an Asus ROG Loki PSU — the same power supply reportedly being used by some other users who were affected by melting cables with their RTX 5090s.

Although what we see could be an issue with the PSU, the melting cable problem isn't exclusive to the ROG Loki. Some users say that the 12VHPWR and subsequent 12V-2x6 were to blame for the overheating problem. If this is true and the issue lies within the cable design, it needs to be redesigned completely, as the RTX 5080 has a much lower TDP versus the RTX 5090 and even the RTX 4090, and it's also starting to see melted connectors.

At the moment, we don’t have any confirmation yet whether this was a user error or if there’s something inherently wrong with the cable design. But it seems that Gamers Nexus’ EIC Stephen Burke has taken an interest in the Redditor’s problem and has offered to buy the GPU, PSU, and cable for “testing and for RMA support probing”, even offering to “pay full retail”.

If this was indeed a design problem that’s starting to affect GPUs as they get more power-hungry, then it shows that the hardware parties involved need to upgrade the cable/connector design to avoid issues like these, especially as consumer graphics cards become more powerful. Maybe a solution like Asus’ proprietary slot that does away with the external connector would be a good alternative — but support for such a drastic change wouldn't come quickly.