GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition Reportedly Burning up PSU

The GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition reportedly burned up PSU and power connectors while a gamer played Battlefield 5 – an issue validated by a stress test performed by YouTuber der8auer.

The burning was pinpointed to the PSU side, where the user noticed visibly charred ports. They also noted visible evident burning to the cable itself, sparking overheating concerns. 

Before sharing the results of the stress test, Der8auer elaborates on the initial Reddit user’s background with hardware, attempting to eliminate user error from the equation. 

“We talked for almost three hours. He knows a lot, he knows the overclocking scene, knows core enthusiasts that I know personally as well. […] He was fully aware that you have to plug the cable in fully, and he made sure a simple user error would not happen to him,” he said in his YouTube video. 

The ruined cable in question came from Moddiy, which is a reputable shop within the PC building community. Der8auer stands by the cable, stating, “it doesn’t seem to be bad quality, it might even be better than the standard cable to be completely honest.” 

Der8auer conducted heat measurements at designated locations while playing Star Wars Outlaws.

After one minute of gameplay, he observed an uneven current distribution, with two wires becoming warm while the others remained unaffected. After four minutes, he recorded a temperature of 140 degrees Celsius on one of the cables on the PSU side.

“I’m measuring 22 amps across one of the wires, which should normally carry 6-8 amps – something is absolutely wrong,” he said, validating the Redditor’s initial highlighted issue with the RTX 5090 Founders Edition. 

“This is absolutely concerning. The imbalance between the different cables, between the different pins, is a huge problem from what I can see,” the YouTuber said, advising consumers from purchasing the 5090.