175°C! Hardware Unboxed suffers from a melted 12V-2×6 cable

Hardware reviewer gets burned by a 12V-2×6 power connector

Hardware Unboxed has released a new video detailing the immediate aftermath of their 12V-2×6 cable melting incident. After benchmarking an ASUS ROG RTX 5090 Astral GPU, Hardware Unboxed’s Steve Walton burned their thumb trying to remove the GPU’s 12V-2×6 power cable. The cable was later found to have melted at the PSU end.

Before completely dismantling the system, Steve ran additional tests and found that the cable reached 175.4 degrees under load. Using a Thermal Grizzly WireView Pro, the reviewer discovered that current was only flowing through two of the cable’s six connectors. Thankfully, Hardware Unboxed’s ROG Astral RTX 5090 graphics card was undamaged. However, their 12V-2×6 power connector had melted and fused with their be quiet Dark Power Pro 13 PSU. The damage to this PSU is catastrophic. However, on the plus side, the PSU is far less expensive than the GPU it was connected to.

Hardware Unboxed claims that their cables were fully seated and doesn’t blame be quiet for their PSU failure. What this incident shows is that 12V-2×6 cable failures can happen to anyone, and that “user error” is not the cause of these failures. Hardware Unboxed quickly noted that this problem has occurred with PSUs from every major brand. Again, be quiet should not be blamed for this.

In 2026, 12V-2×6 melting incidents are still common. With RTX 5090 GPUs now costing more than 100% above Nvidia’s MSRP, it is crazy that they can fall victim to this problem. Sadly, Hardware Unboxed is unlikely to be the last victim of this specific problem. 12V-2×6 power issues may not end until GPUs, or the 12V-2×6 standard itself, undergo a major overhaul.

Join the discussion on Hardware Unboxed’s melted 12V-2×6 cable on the OC3D Forums.