Gainward will reportedly replace RTX 4090 power cables

According to Redditor ‘varunbabu008’, Australian retailer TechFast is now delaying the shipment of GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards until mid-November.

The reason for the delay is reportedly Gainward decision to replace the 12VHPWR adapter for their RTX 4090 GPUs. This change has not been communicated by Gainward, nor NVIDIA. However, the retailer claims that this change will affect other board partners as well.

The retailer expects Gainward to provide replacement cables by mid-November, which is when the orders can be fulfilled. According to the retailer, the change is likely due to reported issues of overheating/melting.

Gainward to replace power adapter cable for RTX 4090 GPUs, Source:Reddit/TechFast

What is worth noting that reported cases of melting power cables are no longer limited just to the power adapters, but also for native 12VHPWR implementations , at least two cases have already been reported. It is, however, a very small number of cases, yet this topic has remained one of the most popular ones on NVIDIA forums such as Reddit.

NVIDIA has not yet issued an official statement, while RTX 4090 graphics cards continue to be sold. Many articles and videos were made on a subject, but the conclusions are not always the same. The issue may affect certain types of adapters/cables or be related to not properly seated connectors. What is clear is that no such issues should ever happen on a premium design like RTX 4090.

At the Radeon RX 7000 announcement, AMD has been vocal about their cards not requiring any adapters to work. The new RDNA3 GPUs retain the old 8-pin power connector available with all modern ATX 2.0 power supplies. The only requirement is the appropriate wattage as declared by the graphics card maker.

Source: Reddit u/varunbabu008

Many thanks to SH1988 for the tip!