NVIDIA Tells AICs to Collect RTX 4090 Cards with Burnt Power Connectors, Send Them to HQ

[Valantar]

I have the slight impression that those cables seem to have been bitten by a cat...

View attachment 267446

Those marks are most likely from wrestling that strain relief boot off to expose the solder joints. Even non-molded boots like that can be a very tight fit.

 

[Toothless]

I have the slight impression that those cables seem to have been bitten by a cat...

View attachment 267446

Those are definitely not cat teeth marks.

Source: I have two cats.

 

[Valantar]

Those are definitely not cat teeth marks.

Source: I have two cats.

Need pics to confirm plz.

 

[Lionheart]

You forgot you tinfoil hat and be careful of the water you drink today,

You forgot to be original

 

[Upgrayedd]

You forgot you tinfoil hat and be careful of the water you drink today,

A lot of people said similar things as you when others were trying to warn of these connectors being hazardous. They will absolutely blame you instead of themselves for a burnt connector.

 

[defaultluser]

I smellz a cover-up in the making....

They want all the cards back so they can:

1) destroy as much of the evidence as possible, and

2) debunk all the claims with some lame-assed blame-game directed at the end users.....ie "they bent the cable too close to the connector", or at the "wrong" angles, or "they shoved these giant monster cards into cases that did not have sufficient room & air flow for them" yada yads yada.....

yeah, but much like Turing's Space Invaders:

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!

 

[Vayra86]

When your GPU requires four 8-pin PCIe power connectors there's definitely an extant problem - just one they created for themselves.

Because... 3 was fine, but 4? nooooo we can't have four! Its not like you don't have the necessary card height ( ) there to place a stack of 2x2 8 pin sockets right.

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.

 

[Wasteland]

Looking at those connector teardown pics from Igor's Lab, it's really no wonder these are failing. Those outer wires are soldered to a single thin sheet of copper with no bends, ridges or crimps to strengthen it, meaning even moderate bending stress will shear the metal - like you can see happened during disassembly. It's really no wonder Cablemod tells you not to bend the wire horizontally, as that essentially guarantees that the outer solder tabs will shear off. Nvidia did use a strain relief boot to try and alleviate this (or as @jonnyGURU mentioned in another thread, give people something to grab so they don't tear out the wiring when trying to disconnect the plug), but it was clearly insufficient - and arguably this design is fundamentally flawed and should never have made it to market. I wouldn't call this a major scandal, but for a hyper-expensive, ultra-premium GPU? It's completely and utterly unacceptable. Heck, it would be unacceptable for a $300 GPU - but a $300 GPU likely woldn't need a stupid power adapter in the first place.


... or they want to look at what went wrong so that they can figure out how and improve on their design? How else would you suggest that they do so?

Great breakdown. The "don't bend this adapter" rule is especially silly given the product's intended audience.

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 Ti 4080 12 GB, Ada's off to a very rocky start.

 

[Valantar]

Because... 3 was fine, but 4? nooooo we can't have four! Its not like you don't have the necessary card height ( ) there to place a stack of 2x2 8 pin sockets right.

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.

Well, I guess 3 was the limit for "this is stupid, but fine I guess", whereas four then tips over into "fine, this really makes us look like idiots, we have to change this" territory. I mean, I know Nvidia would have been laughed out of the room if they launched a reference card with four 8-pin connectors - and they'd need four for a 450W TDP+any meaningful power limit headroom.

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.

Great breakdown. The "don't bend this adapter" rule is especially silly given the product's intended audience.

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 Ti 4080 12 GB, Ada's off to a very rocky start.

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.

 

[R-T-B]

I have the slight impression that those cables seem to have been bitten by a cat...

View attachment 267446

Good spot, may be part of the problem, but it still seems as per the igorslab analysis, the cable needs a redesign.

 

[catulitechup]

NVIDIA just notified all AIC this morning… All damaged cards need to be sent directly to HQ

Evga in this moments

 

[RedBear]

Basically nVidia messed up.
No idea why they pushed for this new connector why most people are still using "old" PSU, at least wait till there is more PSU available, maybe once all PSU makers offer this connector as standard.

The real question is why this new connector is seemingly failing so spectacularly, while their proprietary 12pin cable used in the RTX 30 Founders Edition didn't appear to have so many issues.

 

[evernessince]

The real question is why this new connector is seemingly failing so spectacularly, while their proprietary 12pin cable used in the RTX 30 Founders Edition didn't appear to have so many issues.

It might just be that the 4090 is consuming more power. The 3090 and 3080 did have an issue where, when paired with the 12-pin cable, noise was introduced that could trip the power supply's OCP protection. I'm not sure if that's due to the cable itself or the GPU but in any cases Nvidia does not have a good reputation when it comes to power delivery.

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.

 

[Valantar]

The real question is why this new connector is seemingly failing so spectacularly, while their proprietary 12pin cable used in the RTX 30 Founders Edition didn't appear to have so many issues.

It likely didn't use a construction like this at all, but probably used more conventional crimped pins - or at least a more robust soldered terminal.

 

[mechtech]

So what if it’s the PSU cord? Would that not go to PSU manf.?? Or does this cable come with the card??

 

[Valantar]

So what if it’s the PSU cord? Would that not go to PSU manf.?? Or does this cable come with the card??

This only applies to the Nvidia-supplied 4x8-pin-to-12VHPWR adapters that are bundled with RTX 4090 GPUs, not PSUs that come with their own direct 12VHPWR cables.

 

[shovenose]

Still just do not understand what would have been wrong with a 4x "traditional" PCI-E power connector approach.

 

[Punkenjoy]

The real question is why this new connector is seemingly failing so spectacularly, while their proprietary 12pin cable used in the RTX 30 Founders Edition didn't appear to have so many issues.

If you look on 30xx series, the connector is not in a traight 90° angle but is angled toward the front of the case. So it probably put less pressure on the connector.

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.

 

[Valantar]

Still just do not understand what would have been wrong with a 4x "traditional" PCI-E power connector approach.

HUGE, honking sections of the PCB and cooler set aside for these for connectors? The sheer stupidity of having four 8-pin cables coming off your GPU? The even sheerer stupidity of people plugging two pairs of daisy-chained PSU cables into this and then complaining when their wiring melts?

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.

 

[shovenose]

HUGE, honking sections of the PCB and cooler set aside for these for connectors? The sheer stupidity of having four 8-pin cables coming off your GPU? The even sheerer stupidity of people plugging two pairs of daisy-chained PSU cables into this and then complaining when their wiring melts?

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.

I disagree. You know what looks dumb? Having this ridiculous looking adapter that you can't bend sticking up from the middle of your GPU and oh my you better not put your side panel on because then the connector will melt and your $2K GPU can go in the garbage.

 

[pavle]

nvidia have put together a panel to judge that the cards did not burn because of their poor workmanship. Unbelievable. I mean what's there to inspect?
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...

 

[catulitechup]

Another jokes of 4090 cable

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1585673288851808261

 

[Valantar]

I mean what's there to inspect?

... how it failed and how they can change the design to avoid this?

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?

I disagree. You know what looks dumb? Having this ridiculous looking adapter that you can't bend sticking up from the middle of your GPU and oh my you better not put your side panel on because then the connector will melt and your $2K GPU can go in the garbage.

... 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.

 

[Tomgang]

I am just waiting for the alternative connectora to be available and will throw this fire hazard out of my pc asap.

 

[Jism]

Basically nVidia messed up.
No idea why they pushed for this new connector why most people are still using "old" PSU, at least wait till there is more PSU available, maybe once all PSU makers offer this connector as standard.

If they make compute and / or graphics cards universal in relation of power delivery they are cutting costs but also e-waste.

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.