ASRock PSU Thermal Protection Did Not Prevent Melting of 16-Pin Cable on RTX PRO 6000 Worth Around $16,000
The NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell reportedly suffered a power-connector failure again, this time with the 16-pin cable melting at the power supply end while the graphics card itself was left intact.
The affected system was sent for repair containing an RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition paired with an ASRock Taichi TC-1650T 1650W power supply. According to the report, the 16-pin connector melted directly in the PSU socket despite both ends of the cable having been fully seated prior to the incident.
The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell features 96 GB of memory and is specified to draw up to 600 W through a single 16-pin PCIe CEM5 connector. Its peak power draw matches that of the GeForce RTX 5090, but the PRO 6000 is targeted at professional and AI workloads.
ASRock’s Taichi TC-1650T is an ATX 3.1-compliant unit and ships with two 12V-2×6 cables that include a TempGuard implementation and an NTC temperature sensor. ASRock designed the sensor to monitor cable/connector heating and to signal the PSU to shut down if temperatures exceed safe levels; reviews of the system noted that it is expected to power off under dangerous heating conditions. In this reported case, however, the protection did not appear to activate before the connector melted.
This incident echoes a March case involving the same GPU and PSU combination in which a 12V-2×6 cable burned out on the graphics card side. In that earlier instance, PNY inspected the accelerator and returned it to the owner as functional, while ASRock provided a replacement cable.
The author of the report suggested that placing temperature sensors at both ends of the cable might prevent similar failures in the future. Because the most recent damage occurred on the PSU side, the owner’s RTX PRO 6000—valued by them at about $16,000—survived the event.