An AMD Radeon GPU power connector reportedly just melted, Nvidia no longer alone

AMD has just joined Nvidia in the unenviable club of graphics cards with burned power connectors, with reports that an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics card's power socket has melted under load. While Nvidia GPUs have faced scrutiny on this issue up until now, this is the first time a card with a new AMD GPU has demonstrated the same issue.

The card in question is an ASRock Taichi OC 9070 XT, which we tested for our AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT review, and which we found to be extremely power hungry when its overclocked mode is enabled. Unlike many cards based on AMD GPUs, this one also uses a 16-pin 12VHPWR connector, which is the same socket found in all the melted RTX 5090 stories, with a 3x PCIe 8-pin adapter supplied in the box.

The story of this burned RX 9070 XT plug came via Reddit, where user Savings_Opportunity3 posted in the r/radeon subreddit about their failed connector. Posting a month ago that the 12VHPWR port on their ASRock RX 9070 XT seemed a bit blackened, they updated Reddit with news that the port had finally melted since.

Despite reader concerns about using a cheap 700W power supply, the Redditor doesn't believe this was the problem, given the RX 9070 XT's low power demands. However, in our own tests, our Ryzen 7 7800X3D rig drew 525W from the mains with this graphics card running at full load - only one graphics card has drawn more power, and that's the RTX 5090.

Even so, this Redditor's PC only used an AMD Ryzen 5 5700X3D CPU, with a TDP of 105W, so the power supply shouldn't have been pushed too hard here, but we'd recommend using at least an 850W PSU with this graphics card, just to make sure you have enough headroom. Either way, even if the PSU is underpowered, it's unlikely to be the cause of the cable melting, which is more likely to be down to an insecure connection between the plug and the socket.

Most AMD Radeon cards are designed to use standard 8-pin PCIe connectors for power, but some third-party card manufacturers have begun to use the single 16-pin 12VHPWR connector on cards with AMD GPUs, dropping from two or three power cables to just one as a result.

There haven't been any other reports of burned RX 9070 XT power connectors up until now, but we've seen plenty of failed 12VHPWR ports across Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 and 50-series cards. If you're planning to install a graphics card with one of these connectors, then make sure you triple-check that it's fully plugged in and secure before you hit the power switch.

Neither AMD nor ASRock has publicly commented on this situation so far, but we'll be hoping no further AMD cards fail this way. If you want to avoid the drama entirely, you'll be best served by a card that uses standard PCIe 8-pin connectors instead.

One fine example is the AMD Radeon RX 9070, which has a place on our best GPU buying guide, but you can also buy Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 cards that use these older power connectors.

Let us know what you think about this so-far troublesome connector design by starting a conversation in our Discord server with staff and other readers.