Melting 16-pin connectors keep making headlines, and some RTX 5090 owners have started taking the protection of their expensive cards into their own hands. Reddit user DallasGrave has modified an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 with two extra 8-pin PCIe power inputs that work alongside the card’s original 16-pin connector. According to their post on r/pcmasterrace, a small pickup PCB is soldered to the contacts of the 16-pin header, and that board feeds a second PCB carrying the two 8-pin sockets. The card then runs on three cables in total. DallasGrave says each conductor now carries roughly 3 A, and that the wires never crossed 40°C during a 48-hour run at 550 W, even at the joint. More test data is apparently on the way, so for now these are the modder’s own numbers.
The 12V-2×6 revision was supposed to fix the melting power connector issues. In early 2025, NVIDIA said the 16-pin melting issues were over, pointing to the updated connector on the RTX 50-series. However, the first melted RTX 5090 Founders Edition was reported shortly after, in that case with a third-party cable. Since then, several RTX 5090 power connectors have reportedly melted, including one with an undervolt and a -100 W power limit. Moreover, last month Hardware Unboxed watched its RTX 5090 power cable reach 175°C with a single wire pulling around 22 A.
Modders have had to jump in with fixes of their own, since off-the-shelf solutions have had a mixed record so far. ASUS introduced the ROG Equalizer cable to spread current more evenly, yet a photo of a burned one later surfaced online. ASRock’s TempGuard also reportedly failed to stop a PSU-side meltdown on an RTX PRO 6000 rig. This new mod is clever, though soldering onto a card this expensive is probably best left to experienced hands. It’s also a milder approach than what Brazilian channel TecLab did recently, first soldering power wires straight to the PCB and later running an RTX 5090 on three 8-pin connectors. Here, the 16-pin connector stays in use and simply carries less of the load.