Since the RTX 5090 launched, cases of the 16-pin power connector overheating and melting have never fully disappeared. Now NVIDIA has introduced the new DLSS 5, which handles character skin, hair, textures, light, and shadow effects better, but it also places a fairly heavy load on the GPU.
Unexpectedly, players recently encountered a tragic RTX 5090 connector melting incident while playing NBA 2K27, the first game to support DLSS 5. The user mentioned that his MSI RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC originally drew around 450W during gaming, but after enabling DLSS 5, power draw exceeded 600W for extended periods, with GPU-Z recording a peak full-card power draw of 613.5W.
While this cannot be said to prove that DLSS 5 is the cause of the melting issue (after all, new cases appear from time to time), it is certain that DLSS 5 does significantly increase graphics card power consumption, meaning the power delivery system has to withstand a higher load.
Image source: HardOCP via Tom’s Hardware
After a gamer enabled DLSS 5, the RTX 5090 connector melted! The whole card’s power draw reached up to 613.5W, but the cause remains unconfirmed.
According to foreign media Tom’s Hardware Report, a player named erek is HardOCP He shared on the forum that the graphics card he is using is the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC, and the test game is NBA 2K27, currently the first title to officially support DLSS 5.
erek said that this graphics card previously drew around 450W under gaming load, but after enabling DLSS 5, it exceeded 600W. GPU-Z showed power draw sustained at over 610W, not just a brief spike that shot up and dropped back down. The GPU-Z screenshot shared afterward shows the maximum Board Power Draw reaching 613.5W.
Image source: HardOCP via Tom’s Hardware
While playing NBA 2K27 halfway through, the RTX 5090 graphics card began showing instability and eventually shut down completely. He then noticed an abnormal burning smell. Upon checking the power connector, he found that the plastic between the cable plug and the graphics card socket had melted and fused together, making separation quite difficult. In the photo, at least five terminals show clear burn marks, and the plastic housing around one terminal is almost entirely melted. He was using an MSI 16-pin cable with a yellow indicator area, a color meant to make it easier for users to see whether the plug is fully inserted:
Image source: HardOCP via Tom’s Hardware
It is worth noting that the 613.5W shown by GPU-Z is the entire card’s power draw, not that the 16-pin connector alone is receiving 613.5W. Meanwhile, MSI’s official specifications state that the RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC has a power consumption of 575W, comes with a single 16-pin power connector, and is recommended to be paired with a 1000W power supply.
So it’s clear that this power draw already exceeds the official 575W rating, and it’s been under very heavy load for a long time. Comparing before and after enabling DLSS 5, power consumption increases by about 36%, which is a lot more.
Image source: HardOCP via Tom’s Hardware
To confirm how much additional power DLSS 5 would draw, Tom’s Hardware ran its own tests on the MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z, an extreme overclocking model equipped with two 16-pin power connectors and an Extreme vBIOS with a power limit of up to 1000W, thereby bypassing the single-connector and 575W power constraints of a standard RTX 5090, and observed how much more power DLSS 5 consumes when ample power headroom is available.
Test settings: 4K output, DLSS Performance mode, multi-frame generation off, and game quality, ray tracing, or path tracing all set to maximum.
| Testing graphics cards and games | Disable DLSS 5 | Enable DLSS 5 | Increased power consumption |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lightning Z／Cyberpunk 2077 | 580W | 723W | approximately 25% |
| Lightning Z / Hogwarts Legacy | 480W | 720W | 50％ |
| RTX 5090 Founders Edition / Hogwarts Legacy | 417W | 547W | Approximately 31% |
| Lightning Z／Control | 691W | 802W | Approximately 16% |
The results are also astonishing: when running Hogwarts Legacy, it jumped from 480W to 720W in one go. Switching to the RTX 5090 Founders Edition, which has only a single connector and a lower power limit, the same game also went from 417W to 547W, an increase of about 31%. In Control, the Lightning Z went from an already high 691W to 802W, while the Founders Edition directly hit its 575W power limit. In Cyberpunk 2077, the Lightning Z saw an increase of about 25% in power consumption.
However, none of these three games officially supports DLSS 5 yet; instead, the model is injected via the OptiScaler community tool, resulting in a performance loss. Tom’s Hardware measured the performance loss at roughly 39% to 49%.
Image source: Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware subsequently switched to the official integrated version of NBA 2K27 to test the entire RTX 50 series graphics cards, measuring power consumption directly via NVIDIA PCAT hardware. The tests used native resolution, maximum quality settings, and ray tracing, without enabling multi-frame generation, with driver version 616.64.
At 4K resolution, both the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 will hit their respective power limits. The RTX 5090 Lightning Z’s average power draw is closer to 850W, using about 48% more power than the RTX 5090 Founders Edition, yet performance only improves by 22%.
As mentioned at the start of the article, even if we can confirm that the power draw increase is significant, we still can’t say that DLSS 5 is the reason behind this erek-branded RTX 5090’s connector melting. In the past, RTX 5090 cards have also been reported to have connector melting incidents in workloads without DLSS 5. So for RTX 5090 users, enabling DLSS 5 in the future may require extra caution.
Source: KOCPC Chinese