Yep that looks pretty tight. You'd think GPU vendors would catch on to these typical bending issues and try to find some better mounting positions for the connector.
Or even better, just not use that stupid connector to begin with. It's not a necessary thing and never was.
I don't think it's the bending, the 550-watt 30-min load worked out.
Nah, I don't think that it's the power use. The power use of the RTX 4090 isn't the highest that I've seen. The old Powercolor DEVIL13 had a TDP of 580W and used four PCI-Express supplementary power connectors without issue. It's still the most massive video card ever made.
Lemme find some info on it...
Photos and Dimensions from Guru3D:
Length: 30.5cm
Width: 6cm
It was the first card that I've ever seen or heard about that came with a supplementary support to prevent sagging called the "PowerJack":
With a mass that was estimated by Guru3D to be 3kg, it is ~50% heavier than the RTX 4090.
The good old TPU database even has an entry for it:
AMD Radeon R9 290X2 Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database
The four PCI-Express supplementary power connectors (pictured here) had no issue with power delivery whatsoever even though Guru3D measured a draw of ~589W. Since this card clearly draws more juice than the RTX 4090, the 550W isn't the issue, the connector is.