Where There’s Smoke … There’s Not Always Fire
Grab the salt, because you should take a grain of it before reading on. KitGuru got hold of a copy of an email sent by a retailer in the Netherlands called Your Game Specialist, which suggests that NVIDIA is recalling some, if not many RTX 5090 cards. The email states that “Nvidia has recalled a large number of video cards due to various safety issues“, and if you guessed the reason was the 12VHPWR cable and not the missing ROPs, then you’ve obviously been paying attention.
This rumour does have some possible basis in reality, Buildzoid found that NVIDIA reduced the number of shunt resistors in the cable shipping with the RTX 5090, and Der8auer’s teardown revealed that there was too much power was being sent through one wire in the cable, instead of being spread out equally. On the other hand, those that install the card and 12VHPWR cable carefully haven’t seen this issue. That might not be good enough for NVIDIA’s lawyers however, as improper treatment of the cable does indeed lead to the magic smoke being released from your GPU and could cause a fire in certain circumstances.
What we do know for sure is that neither NVIDIA nor any of the card partners have officially announced a recall on any RTX 5090 cards. That is what you should go on, as opposed to an email that may or may not actually exist. Until we hear official word from NVIDIA or one of it’s partners you should treat this as a rumour, and nothing more.
Whatever you do, be careful with your 12VHPWR as it is no rumour it needs to be coddled far more than any other cable in your PC.
