Leading up to the launch of the 40-series graphics cards, Nvidia began pushing a new power cable standard that would have higher wattage delivery than the existing 6- and 8-pin PCI-E cables, the 12-Volt High-Power (12VHPWR) cable. With the release of the first model of the generation - the incredibly high-power RTX 4090 - there started appearing a large number of reports of the connectors melting while in use, and damaging the cards.
It became controversial enough that the 12VHPWR cable has already begun to be phased out, with a similarly-intended replacement apparently going to be the sole option for the 50-series.
This video goes into the original design of the cable standard during the 30-series generation, and walks through the whole history and controversy around this short-lived standard.
