An RTX 5090 DLSS 5 test reportedly left a Chinese streamer with a melted 16-pin power connector after 48 hours of testing, according to RespawnFirst. The outlet says the streamer bought two RTX 5090 PCs for around $30,000 to demonstrate DLSS 5, and that the affected system used an ASUS ROG Thor 1,600W Titanium power supply.
RespawnFirst attributes the failure to the card’s connector melting and says DLSS 5 can add 100W to 150W or more to board power. A Pirat_Nation post on X also reports the incident. Tbreak has covered how DLSS 5 neural rendering works and its NBA 2K27 launch.
RTX 5090 DLSS 5 testing puts connector power in focus
A separate RTX 5090 DLSS 5 test by QuasarZone, reported by VideoCardz, measured higher connector temperatures and power input with the feature enabled. The RTX 5090 Founders Edition ran Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K for 20 minutes in a 27.5°C room.
| Measurement | DLSS 5 off | DLSS 5 on |
|---|---|---|
| Connector temperature, sense-pin side | 80.9°C | 91.7°C |
| 16-pin input peak | 571.7W | 646.7W |
RespawnFirst says temperatures exceeded 150°C under DLSS 5 stress, but does not describe a test method for that figure. QuasarZone’s 91.7°C measurement came from a separate test and is not a reading from the streamer’s card. The figures show DLSS 5 can raise power and connector temperatures; they do not establish what caused this connector to melt.
A different RTX 5090 connector failure was reported earlier
This is separate from an earlier case involving an MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC. Tom’s Hardware reported that a HardOCP forum user, Erek, said the card stopped working after DLSS 5 testing in NBA 2K27 and its connector had melted. GPU-Z recorded 613.5W of total board power, including power from the 16-pin connector and PCIe slot; that reading does not show how much went through the connector.
Does the 646.7W result mean the reported connector carried that much power?
No. That was the peak 16-pin input recorded in QuasarZone’s separate RTX 5090 Founders Edition test, not a reading from the streamer’s system.
Would a 1,600W power supply prevent this type of failure?
Not necessarily. The PSU’s wattage rating describes its system capacity; it does not establish whether a specific GPU connector is fully seated or sharing current evenly. The report does not identify an investigated failure mechanism.
