NVIDIA has finally put out a statement regarding the 16-pin 12VHPWR cable issues and it looks like it isn't as bad as people thought so. The company reiterates what most experts have already stated that the issue is occurring due to user error but despite that, the company is committed to fulfilling any RMA of affected cards.
User-Error, Not Design Flaw, As The Most Common Issue For NVIDIA's Melting 16-Pin 12VHPWR Cable Issues
In an official statement provided to GamersNexus, NVIDIA states that they are currently aware of 50 cases globally and the most common issue among all has been that the 16-Pin 12VHPWR cable wasn't fully connected. The company is also investigating additional ways to ensure that the cable is secured properly before the card is powered on and one of the ways they have highlighted is to plug the cable into the card prior to installing it in your PC which is also something we recommend in our guide that you can read here.
"We are actively investigating the reports. We are aware of about 50 cases globally. Our findings to date suggest that a common issue is that connectors are not fully plugged into the graphics card. To help ensure the connector is secure we recommend plugging the power dongle into the graphics card first to ensure it's firmly and evenly plugged in, before plugging the graphics card into the motherboard,"
"We are investigating additional ways to ensure that the connector is secure before powering on the graphics card.
NVIDIA and our partners are committed to supporting our customers and ensuring an expedited RMA process, regardless of the cable or card used."
"NVIDIA has been able to test the cables that were RMA'ed by affected customers. In all of the cases a wear line is clearly visible that indicates the cable wasn't fully inserted into the 16-pin power connector."
"NVIDIA is committed to supporting our customers and ensuring an expedited RMA process, regardless of the cable or card used."
NVIDIA via GamersNexus
Despite all the issues, NVIDIA states that the company is committed to providing full support to its customers and will ensure an expedited RMA process regardless of the cable or card used. We've seen in all cases that the users got a replacement card pretty quickly. So whether users are running an NVIDIA Founders Edition, Custom AIB graphics card, or 3rd party cables from the likes of Cable Mod, Corsair, etc, you will get a replacement.
An interesting statistic has also been shared by GamersNexus based on sales data from various NVIDIA board partners. According to the data, the overall number of GeForce RTX 4090 units that have been sold so far is around 125,000 at the moment which is something that we reported just a few weeks back. Based on this figure alone, the failure rate or user-error rate amongst the RTX 40 series cards is just 0.04 or 0.05% which is very low and not a big cause of concern.
