Ouch, ouch, ouch… Even ASRock’s graphics card protection technology eventually fails. A concrete example is this RTX 5090 and this PG1000-PSF power supply, where TempGuard unfortunately failed to protect the system. In fact, the connector on the power supply side melted, even though the protection didn’t even kick in!
TempGuard: ASRock’s protection fails to safeguard a system!
A power supply affected!
Simply put, TempGuard is a protection feature built into certain power supplies from the brand. Basically, the 12V-2×5 cable includes a thermal sensor that shuts down the PC when the connector reaches an excessively high temperature. This feature has worked well in the past, but not this time.
The owner reports that his PC had become unstable and was even crashing. It was during an inspection that he realized the damage to his power supply—and the worst part is that the protection never kicked in. He also states that he plugged the connector in correctly and did not bend it excessively in any way. It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time this has happened to him; he’s already had a setup featuring an RTX 5090 and a Corsair SF1000 that was ruined by this connector.
Yet another load-balancing issue:
While the power supply has been returned to Amazon, the graphics card was sent to a friend of the owner for testing. It appears to still be functional. However, Der8auer managed to get his hands on photos of the connector, which he then sent to our colleague. Based on the condition of pin 1 on the connector, our colleague indicates that the underlying cause is an electrical load balancing issue.
In short, this is yet another issue that will need to be resolved by customer service through a return request (RMA)… Too bad for the owner, who is seeing his second build go up in smoke.
