Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) has announced that users of select power supplies can now get an official 16-pin power cable for “more peace of mind” for free. That must be talking about connector gates, which are reportedly melting the power cable attached to Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 4090 at an alarming rate. Notifications of this free 16-pin offer were posted today on the official Asus ROG social media channels in China. Bilibili.
The image above shows Asus ROG providing a 16-pin power cable for owners of Strix series PSUs (left) and 1st generation Thor PSUs (right). Characterizing its action as “giving back to its loyal users”, it invites anyone to apply for a free official 16-pin cable via the Asus ROG WeChat channel.
of Accompanying descriptive text, Asus ROG China highlights a few key T&Cs before the flood of free cable seekers. Owners of 1st Gen Asus ROG Thor and Strix PSUs can apply for a free cable as long as the PSU is rated at 850W or higher, although Asus is ignoring his ROG Strix 750W PSU owner. not. If you have one of these PSUs, the company wants proof of purchase for a GeForce RTX 40 GPU to qualify for a free official cable. but might be enough for an RTX 4080 or RTX 4070 Ti with a 16-pin power connector.
New generation Asus ROG PSUs with higher wattage like the Thor II come standard with a 16-pin connector in the modular cable bundle, but check the specific product specs before purchasing.
For those who haven’t followed Nvidia’s unfortunate connector-gate drama, it’s commonly believed that the official 16-pin power cable that comes with the PSU (rather than the in-box GPU adapter) is less likely to suffer from fusing issues. It appears that there were 1 or 2 instances. on the contrary.
Connector Gate has almost as many points of view as technical experts on YouTube. As such, we are still awaiting official analysis and/or guidance from Nvidia or our leading AIB partners. There was a brief Nvidia statement today about the dual sourcing of 16-pin power adapters, but the company’s minions must still be very busy with research and reporting.
