f you still treat AI upscaling as a magical cheat code for free frame rates with zero thermal penalty, it is time for a reality check. Hardware enthusiast Erek recently reported on the HardOCP forums that an MSI RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC literally melted its 16-pin power connector during extended testing of DLSS 5 in NBA 2K27. That particular MSI custom board ships with an already formidable 575W rated TDP.
Before flipping the toggle, native gameplay drew an expected 450W. Once DLSS 5 kicked in, GPU-Z logs recorded continuous power consumption settling above 610W rather than producing an isolated transient spike.
"damage was clearly visible, with at least five pins on the 16-pin cable scorched; one pin's housing had completely melted away."
A post-mortem of the damaged hardware showed at least five scorched pins on the 16-pin harness, with one terminal housing completely liquefied. Crucially, this failure occurred on a cable equipped with yellow-tinted safety indicators designed to ensure flush, fully seated contact.
Real Power Numbers Across Test Labs
On paper, the revised 16-pin 12V-2x6 standard tops out at 600W of dedicated rail delivery, complemented by 75W through the motherboard PCIe slot. While user error and bent leads explain earlier connector scandals, sustained heavy loads reveal that DLSS 5 hammers Tensor cores so aggressively that overall board power surges across multiple flagships.
Lab testing on MSI's top-tier Lightning Z variant—armed with dual 16-pin plugs and a 1,000W extreme-overclocking BIOS—demonstrated the card pulling 800W in Control with DLSS 5 enabled, up from 691W in native raster. In Hogwarts Legacy, power draw surged by 50%, leaping from 480W to a staggering 720W once neural generation took over.
Even reference hardware struggles under the neural load. The RTX 5090 Founders Edition jumped from 417W to 547W in Hogwarts Legacy—a sharp 31% wattage increase. For buyers eyeing flagship silicon, blind trust in Nvidia's efficiency claims is no longer an option: aggressive undervolting and strict cable oversight have become mandatory survival tactics.