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It’s exceedingly rare to witness such explosions on graphics cards, but the GeForce RTX 5090 has experienced uncommon incidents. A Redditor reported that a capacitor near the 16-pin connector of his PNY GeForce RTX 5090 ARGB OC exploded violently late at night while he was editing a video.
He noted that the GPU temperature was below 70 degrees Celsius and everything appeared stable, but suddenly he heard a loud explosion. He described it as if a firecracker went off next to him, with sparks and smoke pouring out of his PC case and an odor of electrical fire filling the room.
Upon investigation, he found that the capacitor had exploded violently near the 16-pin power connector, causing nearby heatsink fins to bend. The incident was quite loud and its impact can be seen in photos. His system included a Super Flower Leadex III 1300W 80+ Gold PSU connected via the 12VHPWR power cable.
The explosion indicates that PNY may be using low-quality components or there could have been a soldering defect. Since NVIDIA only supplies the GPU chip and VRAM, the responsibility lies with PNY. It appears they either used sub-standard capacitors or did not carry out proper quality assurance on the soldering process.
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Thankfully, the user received a replacement through Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA), but this incident raises questions about the component quality on PNY cards. A $2000+ flagship card shouldn’t explode easily. Another user in the thread suggested it could be due to direct contact between the capacitor and heatsink, as the latter transfers heat to the capacitor, leading to premature failure.
Whatever the cause, PNY should investigate this issue thoroughly. While 16-pin melting connectors remain the most reported problem, an exploding capacitor is equally concerning. We await further updates since other PNY RTX 5090 models share a similar design.
