CableMod is giving away an RTX 4090 to celebrate their popular 16-pin adapter

CableMod is giving away a GeForce RTX 4090, one of the best GPUs, to celebrate the great success of their 12VHPWR power adapter, which the company claims has sold over 50,000 units since its launch. For the giveaway, Cablemod is legitimately using a fully repaired Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC that was damaged by a melted 12VHPWR connector. For more details on how to participate, check out the Reddit post here.

The Cablemod 16-pin power adapter is very popular and is the company's best-selling item to date. The success of their adapter is largely due to the recent fiasco with Nvidia's 16-pin power connector, which involved dead RTX 4090s and melted 16-pin power connectors.

The Cablemod adapter is a right-angle connector that changes the direction of the 16-pin power connector to improve compatibility in smaller computer chassis. More importantly, the adapter reduces any stress that a 16-pin cable or Nvidia's 8-pin to 16-pin adapter may encounter to prevent damaging the quite small connection points of the connector.

The problem with the RTX 4090s started just after the GPU's launch in 2022. During this time, several user reports appeared on the internet showing dead RTX 4090s with melted 16-pin power connectors. It wasn't long before user reports began to increase to the point where the press, Nvidia, and Nvidia's AIB partners began to take notice and began working to solve the problem.

After a few months of investigation, Nvidia finally reached a consensus that user error was to blame. Nvidia reported that some RTX 4090 users did not fully seat the 16-pin power connector, which caused the internal temperature of the connector to increase and damage the graphics card.

However, other surveys conducted by third-party media showed a different result. One of those outlets included Igor's Lab, which concluded that Nvidia's 8-pin to 16-pin quad power adapter was to blame due to poor construction. Nvidia never confirmed Igor's story, so we don't really know how problematic Nvidia's adapter was. Fortunately, the issues were not widespread and only a small minority of cards were affected. For more details, be sure to check out our full coverage of the issue here.