Tuesday, April 29th 2025
Owner Highlights Singed Connector on MSI's Yellow-tipped "Safety-oriented" 12V-2x6 Connector
Earlier in the year, MSI started to showcase a simple yet innovative safety measure—involving the heavily debated 12V-2x6 connection standard. In a completely serious April 1 social media post, the brand's gaming division refreshed its audience's collective mind: "did you know? MSI graphics cards come with a special dual-color 16-pin PCIe cable! If you see yellow, your connection isn't secure. Make sure to connect it properly, and game on with confidence! Note: this dual-color design applies only to the 1-to-3 and 1-to-4 dongles." TechPowerUp's news section has covered multiple instances of 12V-2x6 cables—and an especially fault-prone predecessor: 12WHPWR—being subject to unfortunate high temperature accidents. Yesterday, an unlucky owner shared details and images of their personal experience—involving their eye-wateringly expensive MSI GeForce RTX 5090 SUPRIM SOC model, the card's bundled cable, and a Super Flower 1300 W ATX 3.1-complaint power supply unit.
This incident was documented via a Quasar Zone BBS thread—circumstances were described as follows: "it's bitter. (My computer) kept turning off with a blue screen, so I checked and found out that the connector was burned. It's a shame... I played a game (Black Desert) that uses about 400 W for about two hours, and it happened yesterday...I need to file an AS complaint." Despite being firmly inserted—i.e. no yellow sections being visible—MSI's "foolproof" design did not prevent the melting and burning of this particular cable's graphics card-bound end connector. Fortunately, the SUPRIM SOC card's power input appears to be unaffected—the owner and several commenters surmised that a defective cable was shipped with this ultra-premium product. As pointed out by Tom's Hardware, the yellow-tipped safety measure is merely a "visual aid"—so underlying faults could still occur. ZOTAC's engineering team explored a more in-depth solution; their "12WHPWR Safety Light" feature debuted during CES 2025.
Sources:
Quasar Zone BBS, Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz, MSI Gaming Tweet
This incident was documented via a Quasar Zone BBS thread—circumstances were described as follows: "it's bitter. (My computer) kept turning off with a blue screen, so I checked and found out that the connector was burned. It's a shame... I played a game (Black Desert) that uses about 400 W for about two hours, and it happened yesterday...I need to file an AS complaint." Despite being firmly inserted—i.e. no yellow sections being visible—MSI's "foolproof" design did not prevent the melting and burning of this particular cable's graphics card-bound end connector. Fortunately, the SUPRIM SOC card's power input appears to be unaffected—the owner and several commenters surmised that a defective cable was shipped with this ultra-premium product. As pointed out by Tom's Hardware, the yellow-tipped safety measure is merely a "visual aid"—so underlying faults could still occur. ZOTAC's engineering team explored a more in-depth solution; their "12WHPWR Safety Light" feature debuted during CES 2025.
26 Comments on Owner Highlights Singed Connector on MSI's Yellow-tipped "Safety-oriented" 12V-2x6 Connector
nvidia/comments/1jytztq
According to comments in that thread using the octopus adapter fixes the issue so it's once again a problem with balancing.
The better solution is to just not buy the card.
Superflower patented 9 pins just is not suitable for 5090.
So I used the squid adapter that came with the card and hooked it up to the PSU with 4 separate 8-pin power cables. No more crashing.
It got me thinking though - there's no way all three BeQuiet 12VHPWR cables could be bad right? They all worked fine with my old 4090. Fortunately there are 2 PC's in my house.
My rig specs:-
MSI RTX 5090 Ventus 3x OC
Intel Core i9-14900KF CPU (no overclocks all on Intel base settings)
64GB DDR5 RAM (6400MT/s)
Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero mobo
4TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD for OS
BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 13 (1600w) PSU
Windows 11 Pro 24H2
42" LG C2 OLED as main display
My partner's rig specs:-
Asus RTX 5090 Astral
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
64GB DDR5 RAM (6000MT/s)
Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero mobo
4TB Samsung 9100 Pro SSD for OS
BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 13 (1300w) PSU
Windows 11 Pro 24H2
Asus 32" OLED (PG32UCDP) as main display
I tried putting my card in my partner's rig and the same thing happened in her's when playing Crysis 2 and 3 Remastered. So that rules out any Intel CPU issues that might have been occurring. Then I tried my partner's RTX 5090 Astral in my rig and tested all the BeQuiet 12VHPWR cables that had been used with my MSI RTX 5090.
Not one single crash when using her 5090 Astral. All three 12VHPWR cables worked fine. I even used the per-pin monitoring software from Asus to check if any of the pins had bad connections. All of them were in the green and working fine.
There's something fishy going on with MSI's power delivery and their connectors in their 5090's. I think I'm gonna have to RMA my 5090 Ventus 3x. It's still only 3 days old. Why it only works without crashing when using the squid adapter, I cannot fathom :confused:
Looking at the photos on the gpu database it looks like the MSI is like the FE, the power pins are all joined in the gpu with no current balancing whatsoever. Not a great plan :shadedshu:
Presumably the GND pins are just as bad but they are saved by GND path through the PCIe slot.
Good to see AMD still using the 8-pin connectors on most cards,.. I have seen a few AMD 9070 cards with the 12-pin connector.
Maybe the solution to this problem using two connectors on the pcb instead of only one.
Some advice; When I finished installing my GPU, I made very sure to take high-resolution pictures of both the cable-bend and the connector, for if something goes wrong, it will show that it's not user error, but their crap design.
I expect more of those topics with the same content in the future. I also expect some people saying my graphic card works. whataboutsim: same with those people who write below every windows issue topic that their windows work flawless. Or the user does it wrong.
I read that news article ages ago. A computer is not a battery circuit. Igors Lab explained it quite well where the real ground is. and that is definitely not the GND cables on the nvidia graphic card connector with an easy name to remember. such opinions show clearly the people do not really read news pieces. That topic is many years old. Igor made measurements and showed the GND from some other points is used quite more often as the "expected" gnd from the nvidia gpu connector. As the graphic card companies are lazy and do not use opto couplers for every pin on the PEG connector that does not need any further explanation or analysis. That post above also shows a lack of understanding or knowledge. A computer is not a battery. A graphic card is not a battery with just two connectors for power, like a battery. What did Kirchhoff wrote about .... ?
I'm also not sure if I want to see 50 degrees centigrade with a thermal imaging camera on the cables itself. There was a thermal imaging picture recently in the news. Anyway there are only nvidia graphic cards on the purchase market so the topic does not really matter for the consumers