I saw many 4090's second hand at one point being sold for £950 - £1000 and would allow you to inspect the card before purchase and clearly showed no damage to the connectors... I was so close to buying and then common sense kicked in and said nope don't do it as you can't trust any 4090 with that power connector on it, every brand and even the FE has had the melting issues so far, even using the cables provided with the gpu.. so not adapter faults or bad psu cables..
Every time I see one selling at a good price I step back and remember this mess and puts me right off.. Sadly a dead generation for me for more than one reason and the power issue reason is now number one and then missing nvlink is reason one too so too many reasons right at the start for me and even if I wanted one just for gaming for a single gpu system I think no thanks and could do without a house fire if I walk away from the system and the never ending checking if the connector has decided to finally melt or not..
I wish they would just go back to the previous 8/6 pin connectors that have proven to work and safe, then drop this silly connector on their next products, if they carry on with this connector for 5000 series and ends up again with melting issues then again no 5000 series for me too.