An RTX 6000 Pro owner has reported a melted 16 pin power connector despite using an ASRock power supply and cable designed to detect dangerous temperatures before damage occurs.
The system used an ASRock Taichi TC 1650T power supply with the company's L Type 12V 2x6 cable. The cable includes an NTC temperature sensor that is supposed to trigger a shutdown when temperatures rise beyond a set limit.
According to the owner, the protection did not activate before the connector on the power supply side overheated and suffered visible damage.
The RTX 6000 Pro itself reportedly survived the incident.
| Detail | Reported setup |
|---|---|
| Graphics card | NVIDIA RTX 6000 Pro |
| Power supply | ASRock Taichi TC 1650T |
| PSU capacity | 1650W |
| Power standard | ATX 3.1, PCIe 5.1 |
| Connector | 12V 2x6 L Type cable |
| Protection | Built in NTC temperature sensor |
| Shutdown threshold | Around 105°C |
| Damage location | Power supply side connector |
| GPU condition | Reportedly unaffected |
Temperature protection did not prevent connector damage
ASRock introduced its L Type 12V 2x6 cable as an additional safeguard against overheating.
The design includes an NTC sensor that monitors temperature and is intended to shut down the system if the connector reaches roughly 105°C.
In this case, the connector reportedly overheated anyway.
The owner said both ends of the cable were fully inserted, which would reduce the likelihood that an obviously loose connection caused the problem. However, the exact cause has not been independently confirmed.
The incident therefore does not establish that every ASRock cable has the same issue.
Sensor position may have limited its effectiveness
The owner believes the location of the temperature sensor may explain why the protection failed.
According to the report, the sensor is positioned on the ground side of the connector rather than near the area where the highest temperature developed.
If the hottest point was on another section of the connector, the sensor may not have detected the rise quickly enough to trigger the shutdown.
That remains the owner's explanation rather than a confirmed engineering diagnosis.
More detailed testing would be needed to determine whether the sensor placement played a direct role.
RTX 6000 Pro makes the incident particularly costly
The RTX 6000 Pro is one of NVIDIA's high end Blackwell workstation graphics cards and carries a price of roughly $15,000.
That makes any power connector failure especially concerning because damage to the card could be extremely expensive.
In this case, the graphics card reportedly remained functional, while the visible damage was concentrated around the power connection.
The incident also involved a premium 1650W PSU rather than a low cost or undersized power supply.
16 pin connector protection remains an ongoing challenge
Hardware vendors have introduced several methods intended to reduce 16 pin connector failures.
These include temperature sensors, individual wire monitoring, warning lights, improved connector designs and automatic shutdown systems.
Recent reports show that none of these protections should be treated as an absolute guarantee against overheating.
The 12V 2x6 standard is designed to improve reliability compared with earlier 16 pin implementations, but high current still means that poor contact, uneven load distribution or other electrical problems can generate substantial heat.
This latest report does not prove that ASRock's protection system is fundamentally defective, but it does show that temperature monitoring alone may not prevent every failure.
For owners of high power GPUs, careful cable installation, regular inspection and avoiding excessive cable strain around the connector remain sensible precautions even when additional monitoring hardware is present.
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