The first case of a 12VGPWR connector melting on an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT has appeared online, raising concerns among users of the company’s new generation of graphics cards.
12VGPWR Connector Issues Now Affect AMD
UPDATE: Yea it melted…. 12VHighFailiureRate Strikes again.
byu/Savings_Opportunity3 inradeon
For months, the controversial 12VHPWR connector has been the subject of complaints from owners of NVIDIA RTX 4000 and 5000 series cards, as many of them suffered from burnt connectors. Now, the problem seems to have reached AMD as well.
This time, a Reddit user shared images of his AsRock Taichi OC Radeon RX 9070 XT, showing a melted cable on the GPU side (thanks TechPowerUp). The graphics card was not destroyed, but one of the connector pins looked darker than usual, pointing to irregular contact and overheating. This has restarted the debate on whether the problem comes from the connector’s design, user installation, or the quality of the adapters being used.
The reported case was not connected to an ATX 3.1 power supply, but instead used a 3×8-pin adapter, a method already linked to similar incidents. Comments on the post suggest that the power supply might be the real cause. Still, this shows that AMD cards are also not completely free from risk.
Could This Become a Widespread Issue?
So far, there have been no widespread reports of melted connectors on RX 7000 series GPUs, mostly because they use less power than NVIDIA equivalents. However, with the RX 9070 series adopting the 12VHPWR standard, there could be more cases in the future if preventive steps are not taken.
For now, this looks like an isolated incident. Even so, the community will be watching closely to see what happens next — and whether we may eventually have to say goodbye to the 12VGPWR connector.
