In response to complaints that the power connector on its new GeForce RTX 4090 “Ada” graphics cards is faulty and may cause a fire, NVIDIA has released a statement. All retail graphics cards with burned power connectors are to be collected by the company’s add-in card (AIC) partners, businesses that sell custom-designed graphics cards, and sent straight to NVIDIA HQ for examination. Although there have been previous reports of 12VHPWR connectors overheating as a result of poor terminal contact, this is the first time a retail product using the connector is having dependability problems.

It was discovered after a Reddit user shared images of a melted 12VHPWR connector from an adaptor provided by NVIDIA that transforms four 8-pin PCIe connectors into a single 12VHPWR connector with a 600 W capacity. The card’s female connector has some charring as well, but the user insists that the card is still usable. A different Reddit user uploaded comparable images of a burned connector for his RTX 4090 card later in the week. In a comment to The Verge, NVIDIA’s director of global PR for GeForce, Bryan Del Rizzo, said that as part of their inquiry, the company is in contact with the first owner who reported this issue and is reaching out to the other.

The GeForce RTX 4090 is not only a tall graphics card, with common heights of around 150–160 mm for air-cooled custom-design cards, but it is also a thick graphics card, with typical air-cooled custom-design cards being 4 slots thick. When you factor in the 35 mm minimum clearance advised for the 12VHPWR to not bend in order to function safely, you end up with a total effective add-on card height requirement of 180–190 mm, which can be a very tight fit for most ATX mid-tower cases that offer a maximum CPU cooler height clearance of about 160–170 mm. It is nearly a given that the connector will flex.