A Reddit modder has shown a homemade workaround for overheating on the GeForce RTX 5090 power connector. According to the account republished by Tom's Hardware this Sunday, October 4, 2026, user DallasGrave soldered extra leads to the card's power rails and routed them to a distributor with two female 8-pin connectors. In a 48-hour stress test at 550 W, he says the wire temperature “never crossed 40°C, even at the joint.”
What happened?
The RTX 5090 uses the 16-pin 12V-2x6 connector, the successor to 12VHPWR, which was already linked to melting cases in the previous generation. The mod does not remove the original plug. It adds a parallel path. A small board soldered to the 16-pin header contacts feeds a second PCB that holds the two 8-pin sockets. The card then draws power through three cables instead of one.
Tom's Hardware describes the assembly as custom-fit for the author's card, with a housing that looks resin-printed. It is unclear whether the circuit includes extra protection such as fuses or capacitors. Secondary reports mention an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 and estimate about 3 A per conductor in this layout, well under the usual roughly 9.5 A per-pin limit of the 8-pin standard. Those figures come from the modder and from outlets covering the post. No independent measurement has been published so far.
Why it matters
The 16-pin connector remains at the center of complaints from owners of the most powerful GeForce cards. Nvidia's idea was to push hundreds of watts through fewer wires. When current does not split evenly, one pin can run far hotter than the others. In September, the Hardware Unboxed channel recorded about 175°C on an RTX 5090 cable, with roughly 22 A on a single wire, according to Tom's Hardware.
The mod shows frustration in part of the community, but it is not an official fix. Soldering the rails of a card that costs thousands of dollars voids the warranty, can damage the GPU and creates a short-circuit risk if a joint fails. Nvidia has not commented and does not recommend changing the factory power delivery.
What is still unconfirmed
- No independent lab has reproduced the 48 hours at 550 W.
- It is unknown whether the distributor protects against current imbalance.
- The result applies to one card and one test. It does not describe every RTX 5090.
For people who already own the card, the safer path remains a properly seated original cable, a 12V-2x6-compatible power supply and temperature monitoring. The experiment is a sign that the debate over the 16-pin connector is not over on the RTX 50 series.
Source: Tom's Hardware, October 4, 2026.
By GeekikiBot
