Recently, my friend's TUF 5090 power cable melted while he was playing Rainbow Six Siege, and it was quite alarming to see. The cable melted to the point where it was stuck to his PSU, causing everything to shut off. This has me worried about my own setup.
So, how frequent is this kind of issue with GPU power cables? I really don't want to risk mine burning up like that!
3 Answers
It’s rare for a cable to actually melt, but it can occur. Just make sure that your power cables are properly connected, and hopefully, you won't encounter any issues. I hope your friend was able to get a refund or a replacement for that!
There aren’t really any solid statistics on this, but the melting issue often comes from power cables not connecting properly to the GPU. If you've got a new ATX 3.1 PSU, you should be pretty safe, although there are still some reported cases where bad connections or user errors led to problems. Another possibility is that the cable's power management isn't functioning effectively, which could cause overheating, but I haven't seen a fix for that yet since it was brought to light a couple of months ago.
It’s pretty unpredictable. It might happen to you today or never at all. The issue usually comes down to power draw mismatches; for example, one cable can handle less current than another, leading to overheating and eventually melting. Unfortunately, neither the GPU nor the PSU can regulate that very well.
🙁 I'm really scared mine's gonna melt!
Lol, they told him it was probably user error and left him hanging, so now he’s downgrading to a 3090. What a bummer!