Sunday, October 30th 2022
PSA: Don't Just Arm-wrestle with 16-pin 12VHPWR for Cable-Management, It Will Burn Up
Despite sticking with PCI-Express Gen 4 as its host interface, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada" graphics card standardizes the new 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR power connector, even across custom-designs by NVIDIA's add-in card (AIC) partners. This tiny connector is capable of delivering 600 W of power continuously, and briefly take 200% excursions (spikes). Normally, it should make your life easier as it condenses multiple 8-pin PCIe power connectors into one neat little connector; but in reality the connector is proving to be quite impractical. For starters, most custom RTX 4090 graphics cards have their PCBs being only two-thirds of the actual card length, which puts the power connector closer to the middle of the graphics card, making it aesthetically unappealing, but then there's a bigger problem, as uncovered by Buildzoid of Actually Hardcore Overclocking, an expert with PC hardware power-delivery designs.
CableMod, a company that specializes in custom modular-PSU cables targeting the case-modding community and PC enthusiasts, has designed a custom 12VHPWR cable that plugs into multiple 12 V output points on a modular PSU, converting them to a 16-pin 12VHPWR. It comes with a pretty exhaustive set of dos and don'ts; the latter are more relevant: apparently, you should not try to arm-wrestle with an 12VHPWR connector: do not attempt to bend the cable horizontally or vertically close to the connector, but leave a distance of at least 3.5 cm (1.37-inch). This ensures reduced pressure on the contacts in the connector. Combine this with the already tall RTX 4090 graphics cards, and you have yourself a power connector that's impractical for most standard-width mid-tower cases (chassis), with no room for cable-management. Attempting to "wrestle" with the connector, and somehow bending it to your desired shape, will cause improper contacts, which pose a fire-hazard.
Update Oct 26th: There are multiple updates to the story.
The 12VHPWR connector is a new standard, which means most PSUs in the market lack it, much in the same way as PSUs some 17 years ago lacked PCIe power connectors; and graphics cards included 4-pin Molex-to-PCIe adapters. NVIDIA probably figured out early on when implementing this connector that it cannot rely on adapters by AICs or PSU vendors to perform reliably (i.e. not cause problems with their graphics cards, resulting in a flood of RMAs); and so took it upon itself to design an adapter that converts 8-pin PCIe connectors to a 12VHPWR, which all AICs are required to include with their custom-design RTX 4090 cards. This adapter is rightfully overengineered by NVIDIA to be as reliable as possible, and NVIDIA even includes a rather short service-span of 30 connections and disconnections; before the contacts of the adapter begin to wear out and become unreliable. The only problem with NVIDIA's adapter is that it is ugly, and ruins the aesthetics of the otherwise brilliant RTX 4090 custom designs; which means a market is created for custom adapters.
Update 15:59 UTC: A user on Reddit who goes by "reggie_gakil" posted pictures of a GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card with with a burnt out 12VHPWR. While the card itself is "fine" (functional); the NVIDIA-designed adapter that converts 4x 8-pin PCIe to 12VHPWR, has a few melted pins that are probably caused due to improper contact, causing them to overheat or short. "I don't know how it happened but it smelled badly and I saw smoke. Definetly the Adapter who had Problems as card still seems to work," goes the caption with these images.
Update Oct 26th: Aris Mpitziopoulos, our associate PSU reviewer and editor of Hardware Busters, did an in-depth video presentation on the issue, where he details how the 12VHPWR design may not be at fault, but extreme abuse by end-users attempting to cable-manage their builds. Mpitziopoulos details the durability of the connector in its normal straight form, versus when tightly bent. You can catch the presentation on YouTube here.
Update Oct 26th: In related news, AMD confirmed that none of its upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series RDNA3 graphics cards features the 12VHPWR connector, and that the company will stick to 8-pin PCIe connectors.
Update Oct 30th: Jon Gerow, aka Jonny Guru, has posted a write-up about the 12VHPWR connector on his website. It's an interesting read with great technical info.
Sources:
Buildzoid (Twitter), reggie_gakil (Reddit), Hardware Busters (YouTube)
CableMod, a company that specializes in custom modular-PSU cables targeting the case-modding community and PC enthusiasts, has designed a custom 12VHPWR cable that plugs into multiple 12 V output points on a modular PSU, converting them to a 16-pin 12VHPWR. It comes with a pretty exhaustive set of dos and don'ts; the latter are more relevant: apparently, you should not try to arm-wrestle with an 12VHPWR connector: do not attempt to bend the cable horizontally or vertically close to the connector, but leave a distance of at least 3.5 cm (1.37-inch). This ensures reduced pressure on the contacts in the connector. Combine this with the already tall RTX 4090 graphics cards, and you have yourself a power connector that's impractical for most standard-width mid-tower cases (chassis), with no room for cable-management. Attempting to "wrestle" with the connector, and somehow bending it to your desired shape, will cause improper contacts, which pose a fire-hazard.
The 12VHPWR connector is a new standard, which means most PSUs in the market lack it, much in the same way as PSUs some 17 years ago lacked PCIe power connectors; and graphics cards included 4-pin Molex-to-PCIe adapters. NVIDIA probably figured out early on when implementing this connector that it cannot rely on adapters by AICs or PSU vendors to perform reliably (i.e. not cause problems with their graphics cards, resulting in a flood of RMAs); and so took it upon itself to design an adapter that converts 8-pin PCIe connectors to a 12VHPWR, which all AICs are required to include with their custom-design RTX 4090 cards. This adapter is rightfully overengineered by NVIDIA to be as reliable as possible, and NVIDIA even includes a rather short service-span of 30 connections and disconnections; before the contacts of the adapter begin to wear out and become unreliable. The only problem with NVIDIA's adapter is that it is ugly, and ruins the aesthetics of the otherwise brilliant RTX 4090 custom designs; which means a market is created for custom adapters.
Update 15:59 UTC: A user on Reddit who goes by "reggie_gakil" posted pictures of a GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card with with a burnt out 12VHPWR. While the card itself is "fine" (functional); the NVIDIA-designed adapter that converts 4x 8-pin PCIe to 12VHPWR, has a few melted pins that are probably caused due to improper contact, causing them to overheat or short. "I don't know how it happened but it smelled badly and I saw smoke. Definetly the Adapter who had Problems as card still seems to work," goes the caption with these images.
Update Oct 26th: Aris Mpitziopoulos, our associate PSU reviewer and editor of Hardware Busters, did an in-depth video presentation on the issue, where he details how the 12VHPWR design may not be at fault, but extreme abuse by end-users attempting to cable-manage their builds. Mpitziopoulos details the durability of the connector in its normal straight form, versus when tightly bent. You can catch the presentation on YouTube here.
Update Oct 26th: In related news, AMD confirmed that none of its upcoming Radeon RX 7000 series RDNA3 graphics cards features the 12VHPWR connector, and that the company will stick to 8-pin PCIe connectors.
Update Oct 30th: Jon Gerow, aka Jonny Guru, has posted a write-up about the 12VHPWR connector on his website. It's an interesting read with great technical info.
230 Comments on PSA: Don't Just Arm-wrestle with 16-pin 12VHPWR for Cable-Management, It Will Burn Up
Cable training/management has always put some kind of force on gpus in opposition to the pcie slot in my experience, especially in smaller mid tower cases and sff builds.
Im guessing there’s a good reason they haven’t. I wonder if even changing the orientation of the pcie plug would have been a better solution in the long run (vertically off the pcb in either up/down direction like a motherboard power connector). Seems like an odd limitation to stand by when I think about it.
for having it facing the top, it's another story, you would have to have a mezzanine card to prevent it from sticking out on the back of the card. not impossible but way more complex and again, they would need to secure that in place to avoid frying your board.
But god, that would look way better than that.
The best alternative would probably be at the end of the card, but again, due to cooling, the PCB no longer extend to the end of the cards as they allow air to go thru there.
At this point, why now redoing the whole PCI-E connector to allow it to deliver 600+ watt and just have a beefier connector on the motherboard.
No simple solution right now
also redesigning pci-e spec because a single gpu from a single vendor ? are you outta your mind
So yeah, it's real. They get worn out over the amount of times its installed and removed. The more i guess at the cost of any coating on top of the metal pins or so.
Every psu I've bought to date included 6 vga cables
When will nvidia include 6 adapters ?
Or will psu makers send the same 6 cables for new gpu's
All on the PCB.
IE pciex ish but with additional power connector.
I had heard of apple and they're walled garden so nothing you just said did I not know.
So if it's been done, it could be again or did apple patent inline PCB power connection somehow.
And inline PCB power is'nt something new.
Look for OAM formfactor. It's capable of more then 500W of power delivery per "card" pretty much. There's servers out there with 8 of those things stacked into it:
Servers that require almost 4KW of power at it's full operation.
Wtaf do you really think I asked without knowing this stuff ?!
I just wasn't sure if Apple used something like it on the dual Vega card they had.
And despite two replys I'm still not 100%.
Like said above, carrying such amount of power on very complex circuit board is already done on server side. This is not something impossible. very far from it.
The biggest challenge is how you address the transition to the new stardard, cards with 8pin/16pin + board power until enough motherboard have the new gpu slot. not impossible but just need multiple corporation to agree on a timeline.
Anyway, It is still interested to know the details (if there any..) on how it was connected: was it fully "click" on? Dose the wire were bent and if so, was any force applied on the connector to make hime tilt as a result.
Unless we will see multiple incidens of non-bented yet melted connectors it can be classified as simple 'human error'.
Also, I can totally see this will be a deal breaker to some and more than that, the holy-grail of bashing ammo.
The Samsung exploding battery kind of things.
All of this and 4090ti, with it's 525w stock, is yet to come. Yummy!
You imply you have one(4090).
Why would anyone though, other than a journalist, do this to their £1600$$ /260000$ :p purchase,.
Just to see.
Igor just confirmed the Built by Nvidia adaptor has such a high quality, that the wires are held (only) by soldering onto a very very thin piece of metal , and can be broken with very little force.
The card doesn't even know one of the soldering is broken, cause all the pins are joint inside the adaptor so the pin didn't "disconnected" , the load just spread to other wires and pump up the Amps (and wire temps) , it just keeps going until it melts.
What a wonderful design !
Welp! Connectors from Corsair, beQuiet, CableMod, etc... don't use this method and use a standard crimp so.. buy them up guys! :D
Now i'd like to know how CableMod does their cables.
a 1500 dollar card and they are using bonded tin on the connector
.
that being said if I where AIBS I would be installing a thermal probe on the connector to ensure the thing throttles or shuts down if it starts getting hot set it at 50-60c if the connector ever gets that hot there is a problem