Someone must've been on Santa's naughty list, as a user on Reddit has posted an ugly picture of a melted RTX 5090 power connector that occurred on Christmas. The connector is fried past recognition, to the point where its owner thinks it's safer not to even try to take it out right away.
This melting fate befell user u/nmp14fayl, who described their misfortune on the r/pcmasterrace subreddit.
"[I]ndeed it did not just melt, when I started smelling something weird, next thing I knew, it was fully on fire 🔥," they wrote.
The plastic insulation of the 12V-2x6 cable has given way and exposed the bare copper wires underneath and the connector housing has melted into itself.
We see a blob of solder piled up on the GPU-side connector, which has likely solidified and is even making contact with the heatsink fins, along with some burnt cable debris. The fire also scorched part of the AIO tubes passing over the GPU, but everything else looks untouched. The point of connection is completely destroyed.
(Image credit: u/nmp14fayl on Reddit)
The Redditor has already said they'll take the entire apparatus, cable dangling and all, to Micro Center after the holidays. In the meantime, they've troubleshooted other components, including the ATX 3.1 power supply and they all seem to be fine. The motherboard is displaying an image over integrated graphics, and a secondary RTX 2070 Super is also working on the affected PCIe slot.
Whether the RTX 5090 itself is salvageable remains a question, but the power connector is a goner for sure and, sadly, it's just an addition to the long list of stories like this. While user error is often attributed to 12V-2x6 woes, the connector itself is notorious for being allegedly under-designed, often carrying close to 600W of power at very high amperage that it seems to mishandle.
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