New testing from Korean outlet QuasarZone, covered by Tom's Hardware, indicates that DLSS 5 can sharply increase both power draw and temperatures on Nvidia's RTX 50-series cards. In Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with DLSS Quality and Ultra settings, the RTX 5090 Founders Edition peaked at 646.7W through the 16-pin power connector and hit 91.7°C on the connector's opposite side — hotter than the GPU's 86.3°C peak core temperature.
With DLSS 5 disabled, that same connector measured 80.9°C, meaning enabling the feature produced about a 13% temperature increase. Power draw also rose roughly 13% on average and at peak, according to PCAT measurements, pushing the RTX 5090 past its 575W official TDP. HWiNFO readings showed a 575.1W average with DLSS 5 on, about 3% lower than PCAT. The RTX 5080 FE also ran hotter and drew more power with DLSS 5, but stayed far cooler: its connector peaked at 52.2°C on the latch side.
QuasarZone also measured current through individual pins on the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090. With DLSS 5 active, per-pin current ranged from 7.83A to 8.51A — still below the PCI-SIG 9.2A limit, but with only 0.69A of headroom at the top. Tom's Hardware notes that 16-pin connector meltdown reports continue on both Nvidia and AMD cards, and that DLSS 5 may add additional stress to an already contentious connector.