Check Your 4090's 12vhpwr Connectors To Make Sure They are in Pristine Condition

[Grim5]

A few hours ago Galax released some of their internal testing on the 16 to 4x8 pin adaptors that come with their 4090 cards. They hooked it up to a commercial power supply unit to artificially pump more power through it.

They say they pushed 1500w through the adaptor and they did the test with the cables straight and bent. What they observed was a significant increase in temperature when the cable was bent, however the temperature was still well within spec and not enough to melt the connector.

Because of this they believe those with burnt connectors is either some sort of manufacturing failure that's quite rare causing some pins to not be making proper contact or the user is simply not pressing the connector deep enough into the GPU pcie power pins, causing additional heat resistance.
They decided to test the latter and they found when they pull the connector slightly out of the GPU but still enough to make contact, the GPU would work ok but the connector would reach 100c

 

[arknor]

Because of this they believe those with burnt connectors is either some sort of manufacturing failure that's quite rare causing some pins to not be making proper contact or the user is simply not pressing the connector deep enough into the GPU pcie power pins, causing additional heat resistance.

Back when the cards came out, jay2cents was telling people to be careful pushing the connector because it can snap off the gpu

 

[Purgatory]

 

[^JP^]

YouTube

Just keep the nvidia adapter in the box or bin it to be safe!

 

[arknor]

Just keep the nvidia adapter in the box or bin it to be safe!

or just use it since everywhere is failing to have an actual issue with it

 

[^JP^]

or just use it since everywhere is failing to have an actual issue with it

My issue is it looks crap and difficult to cable manage but I have the Corsair one so not an issue in my case.
Anyone remember the old 2x 4pin molex to 6 pin pcie when gpus started using them and you had an old psu?
Those molex 4 pins were so dodgy and loose you’d get arcing in them and black pins inside the transparent white connector.
Feel like this is the same kind of thing happening again but with a lot more amps going though them.

 

[cHk4]

Another one from reddit

C87-FDF9-B-2-E21-45-E3-A7-B2-B4-E429-CDE3-B3

Image C87-FDF9-B-2-E21-45-E3-A7-B2-B4-E429-CDE3-B3 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

AC57-FAB2-694-A-4-CC3-9-CDF-83-F225356-DAD

Image AC57-FAB2-694-A-4-CC3-9-CDF-83-F225356-DAD hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

 

[Purgatory]

Another one from reddit

C87-FDF9-B-2-E21-45-E3-A7-B2-B4-E429-CDE3-B3

Image C87-FDF9-B-2-E21-45-E3-A7-B2-B4-E429-CDE3-B3 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

AC57-FAB2-694-A-4-CC3-9-CDF-83-F225356-DAD

Image AC57-FAB2-694-A-4-CC3-9-CDF-83-F225356-DAD hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

This thread has been locked by the moderators of r/nvidia
New comments cannot be posted


Get the feeling they are trying now to hide the issue ?

 

[Gerard]

Nvidia shills or employees with mod privelages...what a joke.

 

[Grim5]

This thread has been locked by the moderators of r/nvidia
New comments cannot be posted


Get the feeling they are trying now to hide the issue ?

Or maybe it's because they have a giant sticky thread on the main page and have moved the post into there so all the complaints are grouped together in one easy to access list so they don't get lost

It's not all a conspiracy

 

[Grim5]

That Reggie person who was first to report the issue on Reddit says he has already received a replacement GPU and Nvidia came to collect his damaged GPU and cables for investigation

 

[Purgatory]

Or maybe it's because they have a giant sticky thread on the main page and have moved the post into there so all the complaints are grouped together in one easy to access list to see

It's not all a conspiracy

It's not all a conspiracy but it is when the top 20 odd posts are about this issue and they are trying to limit the amount of posts regarding this issue....

Open your eyes why they are doing that. It is not for your benefit or anyone else's apart from them trying to now do damage control to benefit themselves.

 

[DDH]

That Reggie person who was first to report the issue on Reddit says he has already received a replacement GPU and Nvidia came to collect his damaged GPU and cables for investigation

**** that's some service. They must be concerned if they personally showed up to replace it

And as for the sticky megathread, it's also a nice way of containing any new posts about other people with the same issue

 

[andybird123]

It's not all a conspiracy but it is when the top 20 odd posts are about this issue and they are trying to limit the amount of posts regarding this issue....

Open your eyes why they are doing that. It is not for your benefit or anyone else's apart from them trying to now do damage control to benefit themselves.

That's exactly how Reddit works, whenever there is a hot topic they pin a sticky thread and redirect everyone to the same thread, it's not a conspiracy it's like a fundamental rule across the whole of Reddit - even this forum does it with a lot of new 4090 threads being locked and people being redirected to one of the several other already existing threads.
No sub wants the whole front page of their sub being many multiple posts about the same subject.

 

[RBImGuy]

Fault is at badly designed Nvidia adapter according to Igor

The horror has a face - NVIDIA’s hot 12VHPWR adapter for the GeForce RTX 4090 with a built-in breaking point | igor´sLAB

Those who are now beating up on the new 12VHPWR (although I don’t really like the part either) may generate nice traffic with it, but they simply haven’t recognized the actual problem with the…

www.igorslab.de

 

[Grim5]

Fault is at badly designed Nvidia adapter according to Igor

The horror has a face - NVIDIA’s hot 12VHPWR adapter for the GeForce RTX 4090 with a built-in breaking point | igor´sLAB

Those who are now beating up on the new 12VHPWR (although I don’t really like the part either) may generate nice traffic with it, but they simply haven’t recognized the actual problem with the…

www.igorslab.de

Yeah no he's wrong, just look at some of his statements

"Standard compliant power supply cables from brand manufacturers are NOT affected by this so far."

This is false, cables from Corsair and Be Quiet have already shown to be affected and Nvidia did not design this cable, it was actually designed by Intel as part of their ATX3.0 spec


Here is a Be Quiet cable





Here is a Corsair cable

 

[clone]

Be quiet looks like a pin is coming out in that picture.

 

[srekal34]

So the problem is the adapter indeed... its not 12 pin... its 2 pin in all fairness as everything is connected to each other and soldered... what the actual f....

 

[EastCoastHandle]

I’m pretty sure that NVIDIA itself doesn’t know or didn’t know exactly what kind of contact party the supplier is having inside the molded connector. Otherwise, this part should not have been approved in this form. When you remove layer after layer, something gradually emerges that you would have been better off not seeing in the first place:

A total of four thick 14AWG wires are distributed over a total of six contacts, with the two outer leads soldered to one pin each and the two middle leads soldered to two pins each. The solder base is a mere 0.2 mm thin copper base with a width of 2 mm per incoming wire, which then results in 4 mm per pair for the middle connections. Soldering one or even two 14AWG wires to it is very sporty. Confucius says succinctly, “What is cast in cannot be seen, and what cannot be seen cannot be broken.”

But just carefully lifting off the enveloping layer causes the thin plate to tear immediately. With which we also see that bending the cables at the connector in the housing can cause such damage. Wobbly contacts or unsafe bridges, as well as increased resistances as a result of such actions are highly dangerous at these current strengths and very quickly lead to exactly the errors that we have already seen above. And you can now also see why especially the two outer contacts of the connector are affected. The scorched socket on the card is then only the consequential damage.

However, you can cut the plug open even further and see what exactly is inside. Because this detail is also highly interesting for the cause research. We see that the contacts in the connector are once again interconnected. If, in the worst case, the outer two wires break off, the entire current in the middle flows through the remaining two wires and is only then distributed in the plug again. But even this “foil” is thin and does not replace a real 14AWG. The fact that this then becomes really hot does not have to be explained separately….

From Igors Lab.
The gist of this is very simple and some, if not most already knew it. The adapter is defective. Soldering 14awg wire onto a 0.2mm tab (anything) is why the issue occurs. And it's completely and utterly absurd to actually see that this is how they where manufactured. Knowing the amount of power this small connector has to use. As you can see from above the tab breaks off with the huge ball of solder still holding the exposed wire in tacked. As it will simply break off with the slightly bit of pressure.

The horror has a face - NVIDIA’s hot 12VHPWR adapter for the GeForce RTX 4090 with a built-in breaking point | igor´sLAB

Those who are now beating up on the new 12VHPWR (although I don’t really like the part either) may generate nice traffic with it, but they simply haven’t recognized the actual problem with the…

www.igorslab.de

 

[0h_no_not_again]

So the problem is the adapter indeed... its not 12 pin... its 2 pin in all fairness as everything is connected to each other and soldered... what the actual f....

This image is just ugh...

The NVidia adaptor is soldered. Every cabling standard that exists has a clause that says "Do not use solder on connections without strain relief". You get a high stress concentration at the joint between solder and no solder, where you'll get broken cores in single digit articulation cycles...

It's literally 101 of cabling and connectors. You use a crimping tool or you don't use the connector.

NV deserve BIG heat for this. Unimaginably dumb.