Recently a design has been shared by a PC Redditor about a 16-pin power connector cabling guide. You can also search for Mike JC’s 3D printed finished result and grab the 3D printing source file to modify and output to your heart’s content. 

PC DIYers and enthusiasts are worried about installing and running Nvidia’s new flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards. After the news about melting quadropus to 16-pin power connectors started to bubble up, the graphics card editor made sure Red Dead Redemption 2 was not going to make RTX 4090 red or dead. No severe bends were inflicted on the cabling. 

The cable bending guide of Mike JC appears to be based on the advice of the CableMod guide that warns against exaggerated bends. It also says that if a cable needs to be bent, it should not start curving until it is 35mm away from the connector assembly. Keeping in mind the measurements, the ‘Nvidia RTX 4090 16 pin cable bend protector’ 3D printer source file was designed. 

As per Mike JC, everyone following cable-gate with Nvidia and the melting 4090 16-pin cable adapters, he says, ‘this is for you.’ He also added, allowing the cable to bend before 35mm mark can cause $1600+ card to melt, this will make sure the cable remains in a fixed position even while smushing your case panel back on. The Redditor and 3D printing enthusiast added that the design was first made as a joke till manufacturer solutions were verified to be safe.  

The other solutions to the overheating cable used by users to protect their sizeable investments in hardware include discarding the PC side panel till a sensible and safe substitute arrives. 

It has been a topic of discussion whether Nvidia’s Quadropus solution is unsafe or not. It is been thought by Igor’s Lab that this adaptor is prone to issues and would likely be the main cause of various problems we are seeing. As per other people, robust right-angle power connectors on the way and direct 16-pin to 16-pin connector cables are potential solutions. 

Irrespective of the problems regarding size, weight, power, heat, and pricing, the RTX 4090 stays in pole position in the list of best graphics cards 2022 charts because of its overwhelming performance. AMD is not going down the 16-pin power route for the next Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs, so this is a sign of greater efficiency and elegance but with proper performance to make them desirable to gamers living on the bleeding edge.