I avoided 4090 and chose 4070 @ 200W for price, power bill, passive PSU, low noise and single 8-pin plug, which had been known to be reliable. Except for a repasting ca. 2 months ago dropping high temperatures by ~28K, my card runs fine for almost two years now.
Just happened to mine. Running fine for 2 years then smoke from the GPU connector - melted. The other end of the Corsair supplied power cable fused the the PSU also Corsair
Der8auer investigates another RTX 4090 melting connector incident, revealing uneven current distribution due to high contact resistance in 12VHPWR plugs. Despite correct assembly and quality components, the failure highlights Nvidia's flawed power design and lack of vendor accountability, leaving end users with costly repairs and inadequate warranty support.