While we still wait for confirmation on Nvidia’s alleged RTX 4080 SUPER, Team Green’s most powerful graphics card continues to have overheating problems. In fact, one repairman has experienced such an influx of broken GPUs they’ve had to take their health into consideration.
As spotted by Tom’s Hardware, repair shop Northridge Fix has said it’s been receiving between 20 and 25 Nvidia RTX 4090s a week. All of which need fixing due to melted power connectors.
In a recent YouTube analysis video, a repairman for the company has said that he’s had to purchase a face mask so he doesn’t have to keep “smelling the burn on those connectors,” referring to the ones on the broken graphics cards.
The smell is “unbearable”
Health risks aside, this influx of GPUs being sent to Northridge Fix is part of an ongoing problem with Nvidia’s piece of enthusiast hardware. The RTX 4090s have been known to have overheating issues since day one, but concerns have been largely dismissed as being down to “user error.”
The footage also shows the amount of 4090 cards that have been sent to the repair shop. More than 10 have been fixed recently, with the repairman concluding that the “melted connector is not a user problem.”
The fact that the RTX 4090 has a TDP of 450W could be part of what’s causing them to overheat. Compare that to the RTX 4080 with a TDP of 320W (according to TechPowerup), and it’s easy to point a finger at the culprit.
The Ada Lovelace range has been out for over a year now. At the time of writing, Nvidia doesn’t appear to have made significant steps towards addressing the issues with the 4090. It’s possible more cases will come to light.
