Gamer rid RTX 5090 of melting connectors and cables did not heat above 40 °C over 48 hours under load

Modder DallasGrave claims to have found a fix for one of the best-known problems with the GeForce RTX 5090, Nvidia's flagship graphics card: the melting 12VHPWR power connector. According to the modder, the solution will be "relatively affordable" and will come with a warranty.

DallasGrave shared the details on Reddit. A pickup PCB is soldered to the contacts of the stock 12VHPWR header, and it feeds power to an auxiliary board with two classic eight-pin connectors.

As a result, current is spread across three sets of cables instead of one. The load on each wire and its temperature drop noticeably.

The 16-pin connector problem didn't come out of nowhere. The 12VHPWR standard and its 12V-2x6 revision allow up to 600 W through a single cable, and the RTX 5090, with a rated power draw of 575 W, runs close to that limit. Uneven current distribution across the pins causes individual wires to overheat, and since the card launched, owners have regularly reported melted connectors.

DallasGrave tested the modified card in a long stress test. The results:

• the card ran under a full 550 W load continuously for 48 hours

• cable temperatures never climbed above 40 °C

• the solder joints stayed cool as well

As Tom's Hardware notes, DallasGrave appears to be affiliated with Grave PC, a company that specializes in CPU and GPU cooling as well as compact system design.

In the Reddit thread, the modder said they are working on a "relatively affordable" service to convert existing cards, with a warranty. In another reply, DallasGrave added that they are a PNY partner, and that eventually customers will be able to buy PNY cards with a similar mod directly from them, with a full warranty.

Asked why the header wasn't simply swapped for a model with a higher current rating, DallasGrave explained that this wouldn't fix the cable itself:

"12VHPWR is simply rated too high."

In the modder's view, the standard should never have been approved for anything beyond roughly 350 W.

DallasGrave is far from the first to try to tackle melting connectors. Earlier, YouTube channel TecLab showed a fix that involved soldering power wires directly to the graphics card PCB. It worked, but it wasn't very tidy-looking.

DallasGrave noted that this solution is meant to be more universal, and the mod should work with GPUs from different brands.