In a statement reported by Tom's Hardware, the group sent its members a reminder that they, not the PCI-SIG, were responsible for safety testing products using connector specs like 12VHPWR.
"When implementing a PCI-SIG specification, Members are responsible for the design, manufacturing, and testing, including safety testing, of their products.".
In other words: the PCI-SIG tells companies how to make their 12VHPWR products work with other companies' 12VHPWR products, but they're not involved in the manufacturing or safety testing of any specific 12VHPWR product.Testing from third parties and Nvidia suggests the RTX 4090 GPUs' overheating power connectors are mostly due to user error rather than a fundamental issue with the design—in most cases, overheating and melting connectors displayed evidence that they had not been fully inserted into the GPUs' 12VHPWR connector.