Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ Melts Connector After “Almost a Year” in Use

It’s no secret that NVIDIA GPUs have had a habit of burning up 12vHPWR and 12V-2×6 connectors, but increasingly, reports are emerging of the same thing happening to AMD’s Radeon GPUs running the same connectors. The latest report of such burned connectors come from a user on r/Radeon on Reddit, where user u/divinethreshold posted an image of their burned Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU with a burned 12V-2×6 connector on the GPU cable side. According to the account, the GPU had been running in the same system for upwards of a year without issue before it started crashing mysteriously, prompting the redditor to disassemble the system and inspect for hardware issues.

[Editor’s note: You can read our in-depth review of the Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+ graphics card here]

In the comments, the affected user explains that the burned cable was part of an included adaptor that connects the 12V-2×6 connector on the GPU to three 8-pin connectors on the PSU side. As commenters in the thread have also pointed out, these sorts of failures seem to be more common when similar adaptors are used, which makes sense, since most official sources attribute failures to overheating caused by improper contact across one or more pins. Increasing the number of potential failures also increases the likelihood of said failure.

System running 100% for almost a year – and then suddenly random crashes to black screen. BIOS updated, reinstalled windows, drivers and Steam installed only, all BIOS settings stock, EXPO tried on and off. Disconnected every peripheral, every USB device and ran a wired e-waste Dell KB and Mouse. Still crashing.

Pulled the entire system apart, and lo and behold, burn marks on GPU cable.

Le sigh. So far appears that GPU connector is fine, but not convinced.

-u/divinethreshold on Reddit