Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 owner saved by their cat, after GPU power connector melts

In a moment that would make even Lassie and Skippy proud, one Nvidia GPU owner has potentially been saved from a totally destroyed PC, or perhaps worse, by the intervention of their pet cat. Disturbed from some quality time on the loo by the meows of their unnamed feline, the owner was alerted to the smell of their Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 doing what it does all too often: melt power connectors.

While it isn't clear if the GPU cable was truly imminently going to burst into flames, and there are no full-on house fires yet attributed to RTX 4090 and other high-power graphics melting their cables, there are multiple documented accounts of the cards melting, smoldering, and catching fire, so there's every potential that this cat's intervention could have saved a house or human life. The RTX 4090, and its successor, the RTX 5090, might well be the best graphics cards of their time, but this is yet another case of these extremely powerful Nvidia GPUs potentially being the cause of a disaster.

The incident occurred in Taiwan, with the owner posting about it on the Taiwanese forum, PTT. They reported that, "While using the toilet, I suddenly heard my cat meowing. When I opened the door, I immediately saw smoke and smelled of burning plastic. My computer was still running, but I couldn't shut it down, so I quickly unplugged the power."

They go on to say that the power supply they used was an FSP HPT2-1000M, and that the cable was "directly connected without an adapter" and that they "regularly clean the dust and make sure the cables are plugged in properly and not bent." Despite these precautions, though, the card still succumbed, and the user wasn't able to remove the cable from the graphics card afterwards, as shown below.

The problem that beset this graphics card, and which affects other very high-end, powerful graphics cards, is that the power cables that connect them to the PC power supply often draw huge amounts of current, which can heat up the wires and cause melting, smoking, sparks, and even flames. The problem isn't unique to Nvidia's top cards, with some AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT cards also reported as having had issues.

However, the issue is most common with the RTX 4090 and RTX 5090, for two reasons. Firstly, these cards are the two most powerful ever made and draw especially high amounts of power. For instance, in our RTX 4090 review, our test PC drew 524W when under full load, which compares to just 422W for the RTX 4080. Meanwhile, the RTX 5090 takes this even further, with us measuring a total system power draw of 682W in our RTX 5900 review.

The other reason is that the problem is most common when using the 12VHPWR connection, rather than older six-pin or eight-pin power cables, and these are most common on Nvidia cards. Seemingly, the smaller pins and single connection of this cable are more prone to heating up, compared to the much chunkier pins and multiple cables used with the older style of cables.

If you do own one of these cards, there are several ways you can reduce the risk of such an incident, though no one method has yet proved to be entirely reliable. However, ensuring that the card and its cables are securely seated is the first thing to check. Secondly, you can try to ensure there is good ventilation over the cable connections (at both ends), which should help to reduce the speed of heat build-up in the cable. Thirdly, you can try to underclock the card, using software such as MSI Afterburner - incidentally, this happened to an MSI card - which should reduce peaks of power consumption and current draw.