After teasing its new PSUs at the end of last week, MSI has now announced a new feature for its power supplies that aims to “combat certain issues around the 12V-2×6 connector”. This connector is utilized in many recent high-end graphics cards, and as you may know, there has been an issue with melting cables on GPUs such as the RTX 5090, 4090, and more. We’ve even seen AMD’s flagship RX 9070 XT running into problems with the 12V 16-pin connector.

MSI says its new GPU Safeguard & Safeguard+ feature is designed to address burning or melting on high-end cards such as the RTX 5090 delivering power through a 12V-2×6 connector – this 16-pin connector is actually a follow-up to the 12VHPWR, which also suffered from the same issue; the newer standard has failed to fully address them despite shorter sense pins and longer power pins designed to provide to reliably secure the cable in place.

MSI will warn you about power connector issues and turn your screen black

One of the problems with these connectors is related to imbalanced power draw across individual wires and wins, which was highlighted by techtuber der8auer last year on the older 12VHPWR connector, but it has persisted with 12V-2×6. MSI says that a peak power surge lasting “longer than a few milliseconds” can cause things to go horribly wrong. These issues often remain hidden until it’s too late – by the time you notice a fault or experience crashes, the hardware is already damaged. GPU Safeguard is designed to detect any anomalies and blatantly warn the user of a potential problem.

You might’ve seen examples of such issues presenting themselves as reports of connectors burning and/or melting in the past couple of years. While our dual-color connectors have mostly addressed issues caused by loose connections, we wanted to do a bit more to address the other factors that can contribute to this overheating.

Source: MSI blog

Above, you’ll find the new MSI power supplies that take advantage of the GPU Safeguard technology. You’ll notice that there are two tiers of the feature (Safeguard and Safeguard+), which vary in coverage. While the safeguards are in place to warn the user, it is ultimately up to them to shut down the system and investigate the hardware themselves.

Most 12V-2×6 graphics cards will use a single connector, while some top-end models that exceed the default TDP (such as MSI’s new Lightning Z model) have two for overclocking up to 1000W.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.