NVIDIA's DLSS 5 launch has sparked controversy, with concerns now focusing on hardware impact. Korean site QuasarZone tested an RTX 5090 Founders Edition in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with DLSS Quality and Ultra preset. The 12V-2x6 connector's sense‑pin side hit 91.7°C (up from 80.9°C) and the latch side rose to 83.4°C (from 77.1°C) with DLSS 5 enabled.

An RTX 5080 FE remained cooler, reaching only 48.6°C and 52.2°C. Power draw also surged: HWiNFO logged average GPU power climbing from 509.2 W to 575.1 W on the RTX 5090 (right at its 575 W limit) and from 298.2 W to 350.3 W on the RTX 5080 (near its 360 W ceiling). External PCAT readings showed total board power averages rising from 527.3 W to 593.9 W and peaks from 582.5 W to 658.0 W.

The 16‑pin 12V‑2x6 connector alone drew 582.7 W on average and spiked as high as 646.7 W. While spikes over 600 W are typical, the increased draw aligns with earlier Tom’s Hardware observations of higher power consumption when DLSS 5 is active.