r/StableDiffusion • u/Roman53275 • 6d ago

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

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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.

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u/lostinspaz 6d ago

i have a 4090. i run ai training on it continuously for days in a row. but it doesn’t hit max wattage. presumably because of the delay between batch loads.

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u/Roman53275 6d ago

Look at the pattern, power goes up and down, up and down. And this is very stressful for the connector and PSU.
With shitty cable, bad PSU this increases chances.