What simply occurred? It appears a supposedly foolproof answer to the issue of melting graphics card cable connectors is not infallible. A consumer of MSI’s yellow-tipped 12V-2×6 energy cable has reported that regardless of being designed particularly to keep away from the melting points affecting high-end Nvidia graphics playing cards, the cable connector has burned black.
MSI was the primary firm to ship PSU/graphics card 12V-2×6 energy leads with plastic housing molded in a shiny colour. The idea behind them is that customers push the connectors far sufficient into the playing cards in order that no colour stays seen. This ensures the connectors are totally seated and never in peril of overheating.
Do you know?🧐 MSI graphics playing cards include a particular dual-color 16-pin PCIe cable!
In case you see yellow, your connection is not safe😮 Be certain that to attach it correctly, and sport on with confidence!*This dual-color design applies solely to the 1-to-3 and 1-to-4 dongles. pic.twitter.com/KuKWbej3df
– MSI Gaming (@msigaming) April 1, 2025
It is also price remembering that the 12V-2×6 cables characteristic shortened sense pins, so the pins do not contact till the connector is totally seated.
However it appears even with all these preventative measures, there are nonetheless some cases of melting connectors. As posted on the QuasarZone BBS thread (through Harukaze), an proprietor of the costly MSI GeForce RTX 5090 SUPRIM SOC was utilizing the bundled yellow-tipped cable and located that the card-end connector had burned and seems to have barely melted.
The put up notes that the cardboard was powered by a Tremendous Flower 1300W ATX 3.1-compliant PSU on the time, so a scarcity of energy wasn’t a problem.
In accordance with the consumer, a blue display of dying saved showing and the PC repeatedly turned itself off. It was found upon inspection that the GPU-end of the cable’s connector had been broken.
The poster added that they’d performed Black Desert, utilizing about 400W, for round two hours.
Simply because the information of the cables are coloured yellow does not mechanically imply that they are not going to soften – it is nonetheless right down to customers to make sure they’re correctly seated with no colour left exhibiting. There’s at all times the prospect that the particular person on this case made an error. The excellent news is that the $3,150 RTX 5090 seems to have come away unscathed.
There have been a worrying variety of cases by which RTX 4090 and RTX 5000-series energy cable connectors have melted – generally the cables themselves and the playing cards or PSUs have been broken.
