Saturday, October 3rd 2026
Modder Solders Dual 8-Pin Board to RTX 5090's 16-Pin Header, Wires Stay Below 40°C
Melting 16-pin connectors keep making headlines, and some RTX 5090 owners have started taking the protection of their expensive cards into their own hands. Reddit user DallasGrave has modified an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 with two extra 8-pin PCIe power inputs that work alongside the card's original 16-pin connector. According to their post on r/pcmasterrace, a small pickup PCB is soldered to the contacts of the 16-pin header, and that board feeds a second PCB carrying the two 8-pin sockets. The card then runs on three cables in total. DallasGrave says each conductor now carries roughly 3 A, and that the wires never crossed 40°C during a 48-hour run at 550 W, even at the joint. More test data is apparently on the way, so for now these are the modder's own numbers.
The 12V-2x6 revision was supposed to fix the melting power connector issues. In early 2025, NVIDIA said the 16-pin melting issues were over, pointing to the updated connector on the RTX 50-series. However, the first melted RTX 5090 Founders Edition was reported shortly after, in that case with a third-party cable. Since then, several RTX 5090 power connectors have reportedly melted, including one with an undervolt and a -100 W power limit. Moreover, last month Hardware Unboxed watched its RTX 5090 power cable reach 175°C with a single wire pulling around 22 A.
Modders have had to jump in with fixes of their own, since off-the-shelf solutions have had a mixed record so far. ASUS introduced the ROG Equalizer cable to spread current more evenly, yet a photo of a burned one later surfaced online. ASRock's TempGuard also reportedly failed to stop a PSU-side meltdown on an RTX PRO 6000 rig. This new mod is clever, though soldering onto a card this expensive is probably best left to experienced hands. It's also a milder approach than what Brazilian channel TecLab did recently, first soldering power wires straight to the PCB and later running an RTX 5090 on three 8-pin connectors. Here, the 16-pin connector stays in use and simply carries less of the load.
Source:
Reddit
The 12V-2x6 revision was supposed to fix the melting power connector issues. In early 2025, NVIDIA said the 16-pin melting issues were over, pointing to the updated connector on the RTX 50-series. However, the first melted RTX 5090 Founders Edition was reported shortly after, in that case with a third-party cable. Since then, several RTX 5090 power connectors have reportedly melted, including one with an undervolt and a -100 W power limit. Moreover, last month Hardware Unboxed watched its RTX 5090 power cable reach 175°C with a single wire pulling around 22 A.
86 Comments on Modder Solders Dual 8-Pin Board to RTX 5090's 16-Pin Header, Wires Stay Below 40°C
More than 3x8pin already
ofc it is fine
Part of the issue is that Nvidia just connects all 12V pins together, and all ground together, so they have no idea what's going on at the pin level. The 12V pins are rated for 9.5A each, but one could be drawing 50A and the card would have no way of knowing. The old school PCIe connectors have thicker wire, so they heat up less even in those cases.
And I'm sure Nvidia engineers know this connector is an issue by now, the higher ups at Nvidia simply don't care.
It probably went something like-
Nvidia exces: How can we make this cheaper for higher profit margin?
Nvidia engineers: We can remove load balancing and shunt resistors but-
Nvidia execs: Great, we can make these new connectors cheap then
Nvidia engineers: But the conector will have a higher chance to melt at half of the rated load
Nvidia execs: We'll just blame it on the user and tell them they're plugging it in wrong, submit the 12v2x6 spec
it doesnt matter, if it really fixed the issue and if u have the money to buy an nvidia card why not paying an extra to a professional to fix it for good, we will see...
what is a 12 2x6 connector for ? for aesthetic/RGB ? personally i dont look at my PC when i use it and im sure if i did it would distract me
u know what cable management is ? just in case u wanna talk to me about air flow ? i could talk to u about zip ties too
The problem is only at the plugs.
Too bad they dont make em anymore
I'm still amazed that people would play around with these crazy expensive cards, since one small mistake, and it can go up in smoke
As for Nvidia, on their next release of 6090, I doubt they will do it this way, and I doubt there will be a spec change, since we would have heard about it by now, they are going to power gimp the cards