Friday, June 16th 2023
be quiet! Dark Power PSU Owner Reports Melting of 12VHPWR Connector
A member of the amusingly named and low populated r/4090Burning subreddit has reported a strange incident where the PSU side of his 12VHPWR connector had melted. Shiftyeyes67k shared his equipment's plight two days ago and included two photos with his story: "Started noticing a smell coming from my PSU (be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000 W) recently that smelled like burnt plastic. Decided to swap it out and noticed that the 12VHPWR cable was burned...From everything I've read this generally happens to the connector on the GPU side so I'm wondering if anyone has seen this yet?" His feedback shows that the relatively new connection standard has ongoing reliability issues, even though most 16-pin connector problem cases have affected beastly GPUs such as NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090.
The be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000 W PSU has native support for the 16-pin cable standard, and no type of adapter was used in Shiftyeyes67k's example. Tom's Hardware reported on this sole incident recently, and a be quiet! representative responded to the article's content (updated today): "This is a unique case and we already have reached out to the customer to learn more." The company statement continues: "As our brand is known for highest quality standards, we treat this seriously and have initiated an investigation." be quiet! recommends that any customers experiencing similar issues should contact their support team directly. Tom's Hardware has attempted to get a comment from NVIDIA about the latest problem, but "an Nvidia spokesperson said we may not hear back for a few days due to a company closure."
The article's author, Aaron Klotz, signs off with this reckoning: "This issue couldn't have come at a worse time with more RTX 4090 16-pin connector melting reports still coming in. NVIDIA claims that all of the 16-pin issues are related to user error, with the connector not being seated properly. But it's hard to believe that all of the errors were due to user error since some of these latest reports come from people who claim to be veteran system builders. Hopefully, this power supply issue with the 16-pin power connector does not extend to more users. But if it does, this could become an even more serious problem for the graphics card and power supply industries."
Sources:
4090Burning Subreddit, Tom's Hardware
The be quiet! Dark Power 13 1000 W PSU has native support for the 16-pin cable standard, and no type of adapter was used in Shiftyeyes67k's example. Tom's Hardware reported on this sole incident recently, and a be quiet! representative responded to the article's content (updated today): "This is a unique case and we already have reached out to the customer to learn more." The company statement continues: "As our brand is known for highest quality standards, we treat this seriously and have initiated an investigation." be quiet! recommends that any customers experiencing similar issues should contact their support team directly. Tom's Hardware has attempted to get a comment from NVIDIA about the latest problem, but "an Nvidia spokesperson said we may not hear back for a few days due to a company closure."
98 Comments on be quiet! Dark Power PSU Owner Reports Melting of 12VHPWR Connector
But if a single cable was the cause of several fires i can guarantee you that cable you'd be discontinued, recalled and the matter would be investigated. And if the company knew and continue to sell them them were in for a bad time, including jail time.
www.igorslab.de/en/this-is-how-nvidias-4-fold-adapter-for-12vhpwr-connection-of-geforce-rtx-4090-works-with-workaround/
As for the pure 12VHPWER cable designed for / come with ATX 3.0 PSU's that actually have the 12VHPWER connector, that will also depend on how those sense pins are wired to both connectors (GPU side to PSU side), most will be wired to allow full wattage (600 watts) as these PSU's are supposed to have the logic circuit built into them.
Well its a shockingly bad design that these events can happen from just being 1 or 2 millimetres not homed into the socket
Cant say I have ever had any issues with other prior lead designs like they are having with this one in the near 29 years of building and maintain PCs personally and professionally.
THERE IS MORE POWER GOING THROUGH SMALLER/LESS CABLES=MORE HEAT=NEEDS MUCH MORE PRESSURE TO HAVE A TIGHT CONNECTION, AND MORE MEETING SURFACE.
In addition, we still don't know how many of these instances we'll see when the market fully saturates with this connector and how many of them fail as their wear increases. As of right now the current failure numbers are a best case scenario for this connector. People are taking pre-cautions to ensure it's fully connected because it's mostly enthusiasts that purchase the card and these connectors are brand new with no wear. Obviously the total number of burned up connectors will increase as saturation increases but it'll be interesting to see if the rate increase as wear and less savvy users get their hands on the cards.It's a known issue with the connector due to the way it's designed. Unfortunately a lot of people are not going to care about that or don't have a choice due to case restrictions. Not sure if bending alone can cause the connector to burn up but then again the PSU should be robust as it typically lasts multiple platforms.Yep, the cables aren't the issue. It's litteraly just the pin design and locking mechanism that are the problem here. Intel has suggested a version with an updated pin design but they should also improve the locking mechanism as some users have reported the cable backing out over time even when they fully clicked it in.
Bad connector is bad, such wow. Sometimes size does matter, oh and pins should be round and solid instead of square and hollow.
A case of Intel saying to nVidia "here, take this and run" and nVidia dying on the 12VHPWR hill instead of Intel?
This might do for a funy SNL comedy sketch.
www.techpowerup.com/300931/intel-data-center-max-gpu-ponte-vecchio-implements-16-pin-12vhpwr-connector
:shadedshu:
If you, by any sad chance, have got a "diploma" in Electrical engineering, you must throw it in the trash. NOW!
The only fix I see is to have a cable with thermal sensors on both sides with color coded and or digital user feedback etc etc. Thoughts?
These pins with the dimples (ASTRON) are not up to the job and should not be used in the connectors, they don't provide enough surface area for power to flow with those dimples for 600 watts.
The image below shows the female pin from ASTRON, they are not ideal for the job, they are weak due to the two slots in it for a start vs the NTK female pin.
The NTK pins allow for more surface contact on the male pin when they are connected together and allow better power flow and reduce the heat, the pin does not have the two open slots to weaken it either (splay apart), I have not seen any GPU with melted connector using these pins (RTX30x0 FE, RTX3090 Ti, RTX 4090 FE, RTX 4080 FE).
AMD is wiser. AMD doesn't use it. Do you know why?