CableMod is giving away a GeForce RTX 4090 — one of the Best GPUs, to commemorate the huge success of its 12VHPWR power adapter, which the company says has sold over 50,000 units since its launch. For the giveaway, Cablemod is aptly using a fully repaired Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC that was damaged from a melted 12VHPWR connector. For details on how to enter check out the Reddit post here.
Cablemod's 16-pin power adapter is very popular and is the company's fastest-selling item to date. The success of its adapter is in no small part to Nvidia's recent 16-pin power connector fiasco, involving dead RTX 4090s and melted 16-pin power connectors.
The Cablemod adapter is a right-angle connector that changes the direction of the 16-pin power connector to improve compatibility in smaller computer chassis. Most importantly, the adapter reduces any stress a 16-pin cable or Nvidia's 8-pin to 16-pin adapter might encounter to prevent unwanted damage to the connector's rather small connection points.
The RTX 4090 issues began right after the GPU launched in 2022. During this time, several user reports appeared on the internet showing dead RTX 4090s with melted 16-pin power connectors. It wasn't long before the user reports began increasing to the point where the press, Nvidia, and Nvidia's AIB partners began to pay attention and started troubleshooting the problem.
After a few months of investigating, Nvidia finally came to a consensus that user error was the problem. Nvidia reported that some RTX 4090 users were not pushing in the 16-pin power connector all the way in, which causes internal temperatures to rise within the connector, damaging the graphics card.
However, there were other investigations led by third-party media outlets that showed a different outcome. One such outlet included Igor's Lab which came to the conclusion that Nvidia's quadruple 8-pin to 16-pin power adapter was at fault, due to poorly built construction. Nvidia never confirmed Igor's story, so we really don't know how problematic Nvidia's adapter was. Thankfully the problems weren't widespread and only a small minority of cards were affected. For more details, be sure to check out our full coverage of the problem here.
