An RTX 5090 that costs more than $4,000 died while sitting idle, and the company that sold it says the owner is on his own. That, in brief, is the account of a Reddit user who goes by Melodic_Initial_1767, and it has set PC builders arguing about what a warranty should cover.
His card, a PNY model bought the previous September, failed last month. The 12VHPWR cable had melted at the card end and at the power supply end, and the PC could no longer see the GPU. The cable, he says, was the 12V-2×6 one that shipped with his ASRock PG-1600G power supply. He used no adapter or splitter. The card ran a stock VBIOS, was never overclocked, and he had lowered its power limit under the factory setting.
A ticket closed the same day
He opened a support ticket, and PNY turned him down the same day. Its email said that any of its GPUs needing a 16-pin connection ship with a PNY-approved cable or adapter, and that without that cable the card is not covered. Where a cable from another maker, an adapter or a PSU’s own cable was used and the connector then melts, burns, overheats or deforms, PNY wrote, it cannot accept the card under warranty. Any such damage, the email added, is for the cable or power supply maker to answer for.
So the owner went looking for the rule. He found none. PNY’s latest GeForce warranty text, according to TweakTown and TechSpot, says nothing about cables, adapters, connectors, PSUs or 12V. It asks only that the card be installed “in accordance with the installation guide provided herewith.” The installation guide in the box shows connector diagrams for 6-pin and 8-pin plugs, not the 16-pin type, and says to find an unused power connector and plug it into the matching one on the card. He did exactly that.
He asked twice which clause justified the refusal. After the second request a senior technician replied that the decision was final, and the ticket was closed.
Mixed messages
PNY’s own answers have not been consistent. Another commenter on the Reddit thread turned up an exchange from a year earlier. A customer had asked PNY support whether the cable that comes with a PSU could stand in for PNY’s adapter, and PNY confirmed it could.
The case is not alone. Around then a second PNY RTX 5090 owner reported a burned connector in a Digital Storm prebuilt PC. The plastic housing had melted so severely that the cable fused to the card, after about 15 months in service. TweakTown adds these cases to a growing list of 12V-2×6 failures on the RTX 50 series; in one, Hardware Unboxed logged a connector at 175°C because a single wire took much more current than its neighbors.
For buyers, the money is the sharp edge. If the card cannot be repaired, TechSpot says, a replacement could run anywhere from $4,000 to $5,000. PNY has not said anything publicly about the dispute.
Sources
- RTX 5090 owner says PNY denied a warranty claim because they didn't use the included cable or adapter (TechSpot)
- PNY denied melted RTX 5090 claim over using PSU-supplied 12V-2×6 cable (TweakTown)
