Nvidia sued over burnt RTX 4090s and melted adapters
The situation is escalating
The very serious issue that has arisen with burnt RTX 4090s and melting 16-pin power adapters continues to grow as more and more incidents come to light. Now, the company’s legal department is also preparing its papers, after at least one owner of the graphics card decided to file a lawsuit, sending Nvidia to court .
The legal proceedings were initiated by Lucas Genova who filed a class action lawsuit in a California federal court on November 11th. Genova alleges that Nvidia “made available and sold the RTX 4090 while having a defective and dangerous power cable and plug, which rendered consumer cards inoperable and poses a serious electric shock and fire hazard to any purchaser.”
The class-action lawsuit is on behalf of himself and all purchasers of the GeForce RTX 4090, accusing Nvidia of unjust enrichment, breach of warranty, fraud and violation of New York’s ‘General Business Law’.
In the legal documents there are references and photos of the various incidents that have been making the rounds on the internet and which are gathered in a special thread on Reddit . Right now, there are a total of 26 recorded incidents of GeForce RTX 4090 owners seeing their card destroyed as the 16-pin power adapter started to melt while the graphics card was running.
In case you want a refresher, the new generation of Nvidia graphics cards leaves the familiar 8pin connections in the past. Instead, the cards can be powered with up to 600W from a single connection, the new PCIe 5.0 12VHPWR power connector. The connector in question is only present in the latest generation ATX 3.0 power supplies and thus in computers with older PSUs the use of an adapter is necessary.
Before the RTX 4090 was well on the market, there were reports of problems with this new power connection. Indeed, after hitting store shelves, one after the other, reports started surfacing from owners of the brand new GPU that the adapter included in the package from the company can melt while the card is working.
However, the real headache for Nvidia started when incidents of burnt graphics cards from users who had new power supplies and did not use adapters began to circulate on the internet!
In the midst of all this crisis, the company remains silent, only confirming that it is looking into the matter. Nvidia has not made any statement even now, regarding the lawsuit from the user.
