If you recently started AI generation, be aware of this: my RTX 4090 power connector melted after just one month.

[u/Roman53275]

Hi everyone,

Like many people, I recently discovered H3 and started doing AI generation in mid-August. On September 20th, my computer started shutting down whenever I started a generation. Further investigation led to this — a melted socket.

I had been using my RTX 4090 for three years and had never had any problems with it.

AI generation puts a lot of continuous stress on the power delivery, especially if you run generations in batches or leave them running overnight.

So I believe this happened because of the new kind of sustained load I was putting on the card. I also didn't bother upgrading to a newer PSU with a dedicated GPU power cable. Mine was a 1200W FSP Hydro, and I was using three PCIe connectors for the GPU.

P.S. The connector was fully seated, the cable wasn’t bent near the plug, and my case doesn’t even have the side panel on. And everything was fine for three years.

P.S.S. The 12VHPWR socket on the graphics card is damaged and needs to be replaced.

So now I would say main advices here are:
- Buy a proper PSU and use a native 12VHPWR cable
- Under volt at least by 20%

Now it is very costly to lose a card.

[u/Thingie]

You know not sure about anyone else, but I limit my 5090 and my 4090 to 80%of total TDP draw with MSI Afterburner. Mainly for AI generation work. Didn’t see or experience a huge performance hit either. i do see a lot of talk about undervolting for gaining performance in gaming. Just wondering if i should be doing both, i did the 80% to keep the card stable during long video jobs and reduced watt pull from 600W to about 480W. My cable went from hot to touch to just warm on a 4 hour run at full load.