Thursday, October 27th 2022
NVIDIA Tells AICs to Collect RTX 4090 Cards with Burnt Power Connectors, Send Them to HQ
NVIDIA is responding to reports of the 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR power connector of its new GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada" graphics cards being unreliable, and posing a potential fire hazard. The company has reportedly instructed its add-in card (AIC) partners, companies that sell custom-design graphics cards; to collect all retail graphics cards with burnt power connectors, and send them over directly to NVIDIA HQ for investigation. Reports of the 12VHPWR connectors overheating due to improper terminal contact aren't new, but this is the first time a retail product implementing the connector is experiencing reliability issues.
It came to light when a Reddit user posted pictures of a melted 12VHPWR connector from an NVIDIA-supplied adapter that converts four 8-pin PCIe to one 600 W-capable 12VHPWR. There is also charring on the female connector on the card, but the user claims that the card is functional. Later this week, another Reddit user posted similar pictures of a burnt connector for their RTX 4090 card. NVIDIA director of global PR for GeForce, Bryan Del Rizzo, in a statement to The Verge, said that the company is in touch with the first owner who reported this problem, and is reaching out to the other, as part of their investigation.
The GeForce RTX 4090 isn't just a thick graphics card, with air-cooled custom-design cards typically being 4 slots thick; but is also a "tall" card, with heights typically in the neighborhood of 150-160 mm. Add the 35 mm minimum clearance recommended for the 12VHPWR to not bend in order to function safely; and you have a total effective add-on card height requirement of 180-190 mm, which can be a very tight fit for most ATX mid-tower cases that offer a maximum CPU cooler height clearance of around 160-170 mm. A bending of the connector is almost a certainty.
Sources:
The Verge, Igor's Lab, VideoCardz
It came to light when a Reddit user posted pictures of a melted 12VHPWR connector from an NVIDIA-supplied adapter that converts four 8-pin PCIe to one 600 W-capable 12VHPWR. There is also charring on the female connector on the card, but the user claims that the card is functional. Later this week, another Reddit user posted similar pictures of a burnt connector for their RTX 4090 card. NVIDIA director of global PR for GeForce, Bryan Del Rizzo, in a statement to The Verge, said that the company is in touch with the first owner who reported this problem, and is reaching out to the other, as part of their investigation.
125 Comments on NVIDIA Tells AICs to Collect RTX 4090 Cards with Burnt Power Connectors, Send Them to HQ
Source: I have two cats.
1. very few GPUs with the issue
2. quickly fixed by drivers plus firmware rev ( if its overloading the lines like the Rx 480 did, it could just require a driver update.)
proof once-again that its always better to wait on a new GPU lineup!
And even then, it realistically didn't or doesn't even require four to get like 90~95% of its end performance. Moreover, competition makes do with 3x8pin.
Karma is a bitch.
PC enthusiasts have marinated in a culture that preaches bending cables to create tidy builds. Practically every build video on youtube will feature power cables bent at a 180° angle, then pulled taut, so as to expose as little as possible above the plane of the motherboard. Industry marketing reinforces the message; it is currently easier to find an affordable computer case with transparent side panels than it is to find one with more than 2 HDD mounts. RGB accents are on almost every internal component too; they're meant to be shown off, and you basically can't avoid buying them, nowadays.
Then NVIDIA goes and compounds the problem by putting this brittle, unbendable connector on top of what is already probably the tallest GPU ever made, and at a 90° angle, virtually guaranteeing that people will bend the shit out of the adapter to make it fit.
All of which is to say that even if you could get everyone to read the instruction not to bend this adapter, there's zero realistic chance that most people will heed that instruction. The design of the card itself, the design of computer cases, and nearly two decades of tech enthusiast culture tell them it'll probably be fine. "I've never had a problem bending a cable before!" You can call that user error or stubbornness or ignorance if you like, but it is what it is. NVIDIA not only should know better than to pair a fragile cheapo adapter cable with a high-wattage $1600 graphics card and hand it to the most hardcore hardware-bragging-rights enthusiasts; NVIDIA does know better.
Between this and the pre-emptively recalled
4060 Ti4080 12 GB, Ada's off to a very rocky start.Which I guess brings us back to the real core issue: that 450W TDPs are just not sustainable in any sense of the word - environmentally, business wise, electrically, you name it. It's stupid all the way down. I really, really hope AMD stays with RX 6000-series TDP levels, though recent rumors sadly put them pretty close to this stupidity as well. I guess we'll see.Exactly this. It's a design that ignores fundamental norms and practices in PC building on the level of actual structural integrity and fire safety(!), which is just blindingly stupid and incompetent - and as you say (and as others have pointed out elsewhere, regarding the Cablemod instructions), there are exceptionally few cases that could actually fit one of these GPUs + the required length of cabling to safely bend this as instructed. Whether this is per Nvidia's spec or an OEM taking massive shortcuts, either way it's completely unacceptable.
Evga in this moments
:)
I definitely think we need to see more examples before calling this a wide-spread issue. It might be a case of reddit being reddit.
Also cards were smaller, so there was less pressure on the connectors.
I suspect Nvidia did all their test on test bench a not in a real case.
Seriously though, don't discount just how dumb four connectors would look on the GPU. Even three looks pretty silly. Four would make Nvidia the laughing stock of the tech world, for five minutes at least.
The card is too big for our cases, the adapter too flaky, end of story. Only 90° adapter can fix this fiasco, that everknowing nvidiots didn't know to provide. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools... :laugh:
:)
Seriously, the people treating this request as if it's somehow suspicious: would you actually want Nvidia to not look closely at how these connectors failed?... yes. The difference is, one is an unintended design flaw, the other would by necessity be intentional. Me? I'd prefer the stupidity to be unintentional (and thus fixed once it's found), rather than intentional. PSU makers have shown that it's perfectly possible to make 12VHPWR cables that can handle this level of power without catching fire. I'm not a fan of the new connector, but it should be capable of doing what it says on the box even if the design is a bit dumb IMO. The issue here is Nvidia's adapter and how it's designed.
The connector is'nt bad; it works. It just does'nt work when the thing is being bended. Which increases resistance and things start to get quite hot.