Nvidia is Investigating Reports of RTX 4090 Graphics Card Power Cables Burning; RTX 3060 gets a 8GB Variant and More

Recently, news about Nvidia graphics card cables burning has been making the rounds of social media. One user on Reddit, that goes by the username u/reggie_gakil posted images of their RTX 4090 adapter burned to a crisp. Another user who goes by the username, u/NoDuelsPolicy, commented on this post and stated that the same issue had transpired for them too.

These issues have occurred right after the PCI-SIG warning that stated there are chances of potential overpower risk for the 12VHPWR connectors that were being used with Gen 5 adapter plugs and Non-ATX 3.0 PSU. According to a report by The Verge, these issues have been brought to the attention of Nvidia, and they are currently investigating them.

After the @NVIDIAGeForce melting drama, I have verified through multiple sources that @Radeon Navi 31 ref cards will NOT use the 12VHPWR power adapter, and I could not verify any AIBs using 12VHPWR on N31 either. Picture in case you don’t know what a smoked 12VHPWR looks like. pic.twitter.com/hLWhjqSm4v

— Kyle Bennett (@KyleBennett) October 25, 2022

Kyle Bennet, an experienced user of desktop computer hardware, tweeted saying that he has heard from multiple sources that Radeon Navi 31 ref cards will not be using the 12VHPWR adapters. To which the Senior Vice President and General Manager at AMD Radeon, Scott Herkelman, replied, The Radeon RX 6000 series and upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs will not be using this power adapter, confirming Kyle’s speculations.

The Radeon RX 6000 series and upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs will not use this power connector.

— Scott Herkelman (@sherkelman) October 25, 2022

According to the latest video posted by Hardware Busters, as spotted by PC Gamer, Aris Bitziopolous has stated that the 12VHPWR could be potentially overheating due to the wire being bent. Through his video, fans will be able to see that when the 12VHPWR cable is bent, the temperature at the connection point increases by 1 Celsius. Check out the entire video posted by Hardware Busters embedded below:

Lastly, it seems that GeForce RTX 3060 is receiving 8GB variants by different brands, according to a report by VideoCards. As the report goes, the two brands, Manli and ASUS are planning to release GPUs that are almost identical to the RTX 3060 LHR model with 12GB VRAM. The only difference between the two would be the 8GB memory which is attached to a 128-bit bus instead of the 192 bit, which in turn will provide a reduced bandwidth of 240 GB/s instead of the 360GB/s.