Multiple GeForce RTX 4090 cards DEAD, melted 16-pin power connectors!

It looks like NVIDIA is going to be in for a pretty bad week leading into its competitors' RDNA 3-powered GPU family being announced on November 3, with GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards CATCHING FIRE and MELTING the 16-pin PCIe power connector.

Reddit users "reggie_gakil" and "NoDuelsPolicyy" posted pictures of their -- ugh, it's awful even typing this -- GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards that had melted 16-pin PCIe power connectors. First off, we have the GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING OC graphics card, where both the 12VHPWR power cable and the 12VHPWR power connector on the card melted.

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GIGABYTE's custom GeForce RTX 4090 GAMING OC... melted PCIe power connector (source: "reggie_gakil")

The custom ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition graphics card ended up in a far worse situation. Yeah, the PCIe power connector is melted, but man the damage is so much worse than what Reggie is dealing with on his GIGABYTE RTX 4090 GAMING OC graphics card.

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ASUS custom TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition... also melted PCIe connector (source: "NoDuelsPolicyy")

You can see here that the entire 12VHPWR power connector has been melted, with the user reporting he was playing Red Dead Redemption 2 when his card burst into flames and the power connector was melted. The user adds that it could just be a faulty cable, but at this point who knows?

• Read more: PCI-SIG worried: possible thermal variance with PCIe 5.0 power cables
• Read more: NVIDIA's monster TITAN Ada cancelled: dual 16-pin power, melted PSUs

I've got 7 custom GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards here and I haven't had a single issue, and I'm sure the tech-reviewing community would be saying so if they did.

This isn't a good look for NVIDIA and its new GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, given that AMD is about to reveal their RDNA 3-based Radeon RX 7900 XT and maybe even a flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card. We're expecting 4.0GHz+ GPU clocks on custom Navi 31-based Radeon RX 7900 XT/X graphics cards, too... without using more than 400W or so of power.

Regular 8-pin PCIe power connectors are being used by AMD, versus the new 16-pin "12VHPWR" power connector on NVIDIA's new fleet of Ada Lovelace-based GeForce RTX 40 series GPUs.