Sapphire NITRO+ user gets the same card back after melted adapter claim
User who reported a burned 12V-2×6 power connection on a Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 9070 XT says the warranty claim has been rejected.
According to the user, the card was tested for 48 hours and considered functional by the technician. The owner says only the adapter was likely damaged. The card is now being returned and will be connected with a native PSU cable.
The case was first posted on the PCTuning forum earlier this month. The user said Battlefield 6 started crashing, which led him to inspect the graphics card. The system was listed with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Sapphire NITRO+ RX 9070 XT, XPG CORE REACTOR II VE 750W power supply and the GPU reportedly running at 280W.
The owner later said the connector was fully inserted, the blue section of the plug was not visible and the latch had clicked into place. He also said the original Sapphire adapter bundled with the card was used, not a third-party cable from an unknown source.
Source: PC Tuning
Sapphire blue-tipped adapter
That detail is why this case is more interesting than another melted-connector report. Sapphire ships the NITRO+ RX 9070 XT OC with a 12V-2×6(H++) connector and a blue-tipped bundled 3×8-pin power adapter for users without native 12V-2×6 support . In other words, the damaged adapter was reportedly part of the official package.
Since someone in the thread mentioned our reports on Sapphire models, we actually stopped keeping a daily counter for Sapphire RX 9070 XT NITRO+ connector reports, and readers probably do not need a new post every time another case appears. Earlier this year, we tracked at least nine public reports involving this model and the blue-tipped adapter. There may be more by now, but Sapphire does not publish RMA data, so there is no official number.
Source: PC Tuning
Adapter blamed, card returned as working
The user later claimed that the technician, supposedly working for the retailer, did not even check the burned adapter that was included in the package. The user assumes the warranty claim was rejected because the inspection was handled improperly. In fact, the adapter may not have left the package at all, and it was not replaced.
It is unclear whether retailer technicians are qualified or authorized to test such cards after a heat-related power connector incident. Perhaps Sapphire should step in here and perform a more thorough check, especially if the bundled adapter was involved. Since the adapter has already burned, the GPU connector must have been affected as well, even at a microscopic scale, and in my opinion, the least they should do is replace the connector just in case.
So what do you think? If the bundled adapter burns but the graphics card still works, should retailer replace the card too, replace only the adapter and certify the connector, or simply return the card as functional?
Source: PC Tuning #1 , #2
