Chinese repair centre has received 7 melted 12+4-pin Nvidia GPUs in just the past two days alone
A Chinese repair center operated by YouTube channel “Zhang the Computer Repairman” has received seven Nvidia GPUs in just two days, all requiring repair for identical failures: burnt interfaces at the 12+4-pin power connector. The affected cards include primarily RTX 5090 units, along with RTX 4090 models from manufacturers including Asus, MSI, Gainward, and Nvidia’s Founders Edition, suggesting the issue extends across multiple board partners rather than being isolated to a single vendor.
The 12+4-pin connector has been a recurring reliability concern since its introduction with the RTX 40 series, and its persistence in the newer RTX 50 generation points to an ongoing design or manufacturing issue. The concentration of seven failures at a single repair facility within 48 hours suggests this may represent only a fraction of a larger problem affecting units globally, potentially indicating either systemic quality control issues or a widespread hardware defect.
Burnt power connectors can result in permanent card failure and pose risks to system power supplies. This incident raises critical questions about manufacturing quality standards, design validation for power delivery, and whether the current 12+4-pin connector specification is adequate for the power demands of modern high-end GPUs.