Since the launch of the GeForce RTX 4090 over a month ago, we have seen specific cases of users reporting that their 16-pin connector has burned. Reactions were mixed, with some happy and shouting from the rooftops that NVIDIA screwed up and that it was a serious design flaw, while others preferred to keep more cautious attitude and wait for more information about him.

The truth is that To begin with, this all smelled like burning to me. If this was really a serious design-level bug, we’d see a lot more cases, and on the other hand, we’d also have a lot more information from the users themselves who reported these bugs. The latter is important because I remember that in fact one of the first errors that came up barely contained an explanation of what happened and some photos that didn’t provide not a shred of context.

At the time we told you all indications were that it was problem caused by improper use of the connector, In other words, it was the user’s own fault for not using the 16-pin power connector correctly, although we first focused on the problem of excessive bending of the first part of said connector, as this caused heat to accumulate in this area. and the temperature reached alarming levels.

NVIDIA has confirmed that this is not a defect at the design level of the 16-pin connector, but that we are facing an issue derived from its abuse, although it does not originate from the bending of the cable, but from its incorrect insertion. This matches perfectly with the photos we’ve seen, which only show part of the 16-pin cable connectors.

In short, NVIDIA said it has identified several 50 cases worldwide, and that the problem is caused by the wrong connection of the 16-pin connector, that is, by users not fully inserting the connector, so that part of it, or even the entire connector, not fully inserted and the contact between the pins is not properly made.

This matches what Gamer Nexus recently discovered, and also with cable usage marks that have been processed under RMA. All of them show that the wear line points to the connector is not fully introduced. According to the data we have right now, NVIDIA sold about 125,000 GeForce RTX 4090s, so the failure rate due to incorrect use of the 16-pin connector is only 0.04%.

This bug made no sense., because in the end the GeForce RT 4090 has a consumption similar to the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and in addition it uses a 16-pin connector and it had no problems at any time. I also don’t understand why a user who buys a GeForce RTX 4090 doesn’t bother to make sure they plug in the power cable correctly, but hey, the mystery is finally solved.