Enthusiast says DLSS 5 pushed RTX 5090 past 600W and melted the 16-pin connector — Nvidia's neural rendering tech adds up to 50% more power draw in testing
Another RTX 5090 has gone down but this time it has something else to blame other than its own 16-pin connector. The connector is still what melted but potentially because of DLSS 5 pulling way too much power at the back end.
HardOCP forum member Erek reported that their RTX 5090 melted due to the added power draw from DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27. The 16-pin connector, capable of carrying up to 600W, was overwhelmed, as GPU-Z showed the GPU consistently reaching over 610W. The 5090's TDP is 575W, and without DLSS 5, it usually consumed around 450W while gaming.
This increase of more than 150W caused the connector to overheat and melt, bonding with the cable and making it difficult to separate. The cause of the meltdown is unclear, but DLSS 5 is suspected, as tests showed a 50% power draw increase with DLSS 5 enabled. While the 16-pin connector is rated for 600W, the PCIe x16 slot only provides an additional 75W, so the connector wasn't drawing over 600W alone.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
