A friend of mine who purchased a RTX 4090 for $3000 CAD, just had this happen after playing for 3 hours straight with visuals cranked up. Only a .1 percent chance?
It's definitely design failure. If Nvidia had to use new and unique connector for high power high current, they knew it will fail one day. They should introduce 24v or even 48v power instead, very common in other industry design.
Yeah, this looks like an attempt at blame deflection for a bad design. I guarantee you will see this connector change, regardless of how much they say the design wasn't the problem.
After extensively analyzing and testing the 12VHPWR connectors, Gamers Nexus has now published a detailed video expounding on the potential causes of the RTX 4090 cable meltdowns. The findings conclude that the 12VHPWR cables can melt due to foreign debris inside the cable, faulty insertion by the end users, or both.