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Users report Nvidia RTX 4090 GPUs with melted 16-pin power connectors
- dusted 4y agoI've had this happen back in on a modular 1100 watt psu on my 8800 Ultra.. The system was unstable at high graphics load, and it took me a long time to find the fault, the PCI-E power connector was high-resistance at the PSU end, the connector was totally melted when I found it, the instability was due to the gfx card browning out from insufficient power supply due to the high connector resistance.
- porbelm 4y agoA loose connector on my RX580 did the same to me, could never explain the weird resets even with power draw diagnosis until I opened the case and just "wtf" So happy it didn't burn up now!
- bdonlan 4y agoFeels like a thermistor would be a good safety device to add to those connectors…
- dusted 4y agoyes, by all means, add additional components, complexity and digital logic to detect the overheating of an underspecced component, that sound much more reasonable than using a connector that can carry the required current without heating up.
- awestroke 4y agoLet's add some IOT wifi-connected temperature sensors with RGB LED
- nicce 4y agoThat will sell. What a wonderful idea!
- moffkalast 4y agoIn fact let's forget the temperature thing and just do the RGB leds.
- misnome 4y agoWho needs LEDs when you can dual-purpose the power connectors and just run enough current to make them glow?
- arghwhat 4y agoHmm, but that will only get us red, and if we're persistent enough, white. That's not good enough for RGB!
- dusted 4y agoShouldn't we be able to get all colors except pink ?
- arghwhat 4y agoThe color a black body emits at certain temperatures follow the planckian locus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planckian_locus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planckian_locus). The only saturated primary color on that curve is red.
- wincy 4y agoLet’s add a propane torch in there so we can get an authentic blue color!
- anticensor 4y ago
- hulitu 4y agoand a touchscreen.
- skyeto 4y agoEven easier to use the old standard instead of making a new solution to a problem that didn't exist in the first place (except for aesthetic reasons). The old connectors were solid and had plenty of headroom if used within spec, with the new cards you'd still just need 3-4 to be well within spec - no monitoring circuitry needed.
- baybal2 4y ago
- hulitu 4y agoOld bad, new better.
- arghwhat 4y agoThe PCI-SIG maximum safe rating for the old and janky 8-pin connectors was 150 watt, despite how bulky it was. The 4090 would need 4 of those (5 if you account for when it exceeds 600 watt). A new connector was absolutely necessary, even for more reasonable GPU power levels. That the current connector is broken is a different problem, and could likely be fixed without manufacturing changes without a new overall connector design.
- bioemerl 4y agoThen when they redesign the spec they should have made the connector they used larger. There's a problem with running 600 Watts through that connector, if this fire thing is regular issue it's going to burn someone's house down or kill someone
- arghwhat 4y agoThey could have made it even smaller. The problem is not at all the size, it’s just bad contact.
- bioemerl 4y agoBad contact shouldn't be an issue. You should have to be hilariously and obviously bad with the contact in order for it to be a problem. If slightly bent cables are the problem, it's clear that your cable is rated far too high for what it is and you need to mandate larger conductors or more conductors carrying less current so that there is no chance it burns unless the cable is very badly damaged or misused.
- smileybarry 4y agoStill don't know why a smaller cable was needed. This card is the size of a game console, why does it need a slim cable? I would much rather buy some AIB partner 4090 that has four 8-pin connectors instead of one new connector.
- michaelt 4y agoThe old mini-fit connector had evolved to be kind of sketchy - a six-pin connector with two pins you hold on the side to turn it into an 8-pin connector? Not pretty. And the new connector also adds 'sideband pins' so the power supply can tell the card how much power is available. That should reduce problems with random shutdowns due to drawing too much power. With that said, a connector that melts clearly isn't an improvement.
- borissk 4y ago"a six-pin connector with two pins you hold on the side to turn it into an 8-pin connector" No, most modern PSUs come with solid 8 pin connectors (as well as 6+2 pin connectors that you mention). If you watch the YouTube PC building channels, you'll see no one uses the latter for cards with 8 pin connector.
- smileybarry 4y agoNew modular PSUs come with both 6+2- and 8-pin cables. OEM PCs and eGPUs still come with 6+2 cables for compatibility reasons IIRC.
- _rs 4y agoFWIW I just helped build a new PC and the Seasonic PX PSU used only had 6+2 cables in the box
- smileybarry 4y agoWeird, I bought multiple Corsair RMx PSUs over the years and they came with both versions. I guess it wasn't as widespread as I thought.
- unwind 4y agoInteresting that the connector (12VHPWR) in question seems to be safe for only 40 (forty) cycles. That's really not a lot, as these things go. Of course it's an internal connector and not something you're supposed to plug/unplug all that often, but I still think it sounds like a really low number.
- formerly_proven 4y agoAll internal PC connectors are only rated for 20-50 cycles or so.
- worthless-trash 4y agoDo you have a citation for that, as I'd love to refer to it.
- gambiting 4y agoThey are absolutely right and I have no idea why they are getting downvoted. Last time this was posted someone linked industry specsheets for all common PC connectors, from 8-pin GPU power plugs, to the good old MOLEX plug, and they all were rated for about ~30 connections in their lifetime. Edit: there you go, found it - normal bog standard 8-pin PCI-e connector, rated for 30 connections: https://www.molex.com/webdocs/datasheets/pdf/en-us/0455860005_PCB_HEADERS.pdf https://www.molex.com/webdocs/datasheets/pdf/en-us/045586000... Edit 2: found the quote from another article too: WCCFTECH: "Update: We have confirmed with NVIDIA that the 30-cycle spec for the 16-pin connector is the same as it has been for the past 20+ years. The same 30-cycle spec exists for the standard PCIe/ATX 8-pin connector (aka mini-fit Molex). The same connector is used by AMD and all other GPU vendors too so all of those cards also share a 30-cycle life. So in short, nothing has changed for the RTX 40 GPU series."
- Sakos 4y agoI've never heard of other connectors melting though. They might be rated for only so many cycles, but how many real cycles are required for them to melt like these adapters?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- prettyStandard 4y agoSeems like Zotac was warning about this a month ago. https://en.overclocking.com/12vhpwr-adaptator-is-a-consumable https://en.overclocking.com/12vhpwr-adaptator-is-a-consumabl...
- marcinzm 4y agoSounds like the issue can happen due to high bend in the cable or too many cycles. Given the size of these video cards, placement of the connector and the size of computer cases I don't see why they didn't opt for right angle connectors so there is no bend needed. edit: Looks like the nvidia designed version has the connector angled front at 45 degrees while the non-nvidia versions in the article don't.
- packetlost 4y agoMaybe so, but the connectors are rated for like 16 cycles, which is insane in a consumer product like this.
- gruez 4y agoUnder the typical use case (ie. you install it and leave it there for a few years), 16 cycles is more than enough. Now, if you're an enthusiast running benchmarks or whatever it might cause issues, but isn't really "insane" under the typical use case. Also, I'm not sure where the "16 cycles" number is from, but other commenters linked to an article that says it's rated for 40 cycles. [1] https://en.overclocking.com/12vhpwr-adaptator-is-a-consumable https://en.overclocking.com/12vhpwr-adaptator-is-a-consumabl...
- biftek 4y ago30–40 cycles is still very low for it to start failing. For comparison TE's popular Deutsch connectors are tested to 100 cycles without electrical or mechanical failure
- dannyw 4y agoIt really is fine. Benchmarkers have done hundreds of cycles without issue. Finally, replacing a power connector is a basic solder job.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Betelgeuse90 4y agoWaiting to see if people on new ATX 3.0 PSUs suffer the same issues. It looks like the 12VHPWR cables don't bend very much close to the connection itself.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoI wonder if this is a case of the wrong, but cheaper, metal alloy being used by the subsidiaries. There has been many well known cases of diluting alloy ratios to save cost until a problem is found. Unfortunately, it can be quite expensive to check atomistic ratios of metal parts in mass production.
- datpiff 4y agoIt's very cheap to check the electrical resistance.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoMaybe the 4090 has really intense current draw and higher voltages to speed up degradation?
- mengibar10 4y agoI wonder what would be your suggestion for someone who wants to build his own first ML machine (and actually first computer as well). I would like to start small and add (graphics) cards and then maybe upgrade them later one by one. Should I go with high-end cards? latest? Thanks for any good pointers as well. (sorry for the off topic question)
- WithinReason 4y agoYou should go for lots of memory and Nvidia for CUDA.
- useful 4y agoBoth my 3090s have heat problems. I would avoid the 3090 and 4090. Get a 3080ti or 3060 with 12gb of ram. If you want to experiment with very high memory models then pay for colab pro.
- rjh29 4y agoWhat manufacturers are your 3090 from? I heard the Founders Edition has memory issues, but they can be fixed by replacing the heating pads?
- joshvm 4y agoIs there a reason you can't use Colab? That would be the first suggestion. A pro license costs about 600 a year. Next question is what are you training? The latest cards are almost certainly faster, but you're normally concerned by VRAM than absolute speed. The 3090 (or the older Titan series) is unique in consumer cards in that you get almost double the RAM of the next cards down. I've had no problem training models on an 1080ti 8GB card but I wouldn't want to go smaller than that. System RAM is cheap in comparison, you can easily spec a 128GB machine, M.2 SSDs are a must for fast data loading, etc. Most CPUs are quads now, but more cores and lots of RAM means you can run more parallel dataloaders. Otherwise there are plenty of guides that do a cost analysis of which cards to buy. If money no object then the 3090/Titan series, but maybe you don't need that much RAM. I saw a sibling comment mentions issues with heat - the stock 3090 has terrible VRAM cooling. I water cooled mine and it works well, but it's not cheap at all.
- LordHeini 4y agoMaybe they should start to amp up the voltage. Since those cards already have dedicated power connectors why not have 24 or even 48 volt lines?
- sschueller 4y agoI am not aware of an ATX power supply nor any proposed standard for ATX that will provide more than 12V.
- LordHeini 4y agoMe neither and i wonder why. There really should be no reason. I had to throw away many perfectly good power supplies when upgrading the graphics cards because they had not enough pins. So i would count out economic reasons. Many 3d Printers started to convert to 24v recently because you have thin cables and overburdened plugs for high powered heaters and stepper motors. That caused no issue either it is amazing what modern voltage regulators can do.
- scohesc 4y agoI believe it was for energy saving purposes. The reasons were for better and more efficient power supplies, not having multiple voltage outputs with multiple current ratings, etc. I'd be happy with a separate tier of PSU that has the standard 12v rails, but also includes a rail with 36 or 48 volts for dedicated GPUs. The less amperage running down those slim wires, the better...
- jnsaff2 4y ago> Maybe they should start to amp up the voltage. You mean "amp down with up the voltage"? But this is my reaction too. Running 50 Amps even these short distances is just silly. I would think about maybe saying that the card is 48V and here are the dongles that let you put four of the regular power supplies in series.
- eternityforest 4y ago
- JRKrause 4y agoTime to stop dancing around the issue and just run solid-copper bus-bars directly from the PSU to your GPU. That aesthetic could be made appealing.
- orbital-decay 4y agoWhile we're at it, can we get a new motherboard standard that acknowledges the fact that video cards are at least as complex as the motherboard itself? With the strong preference for a ring configuration for central cooling, like the trash can Mac Pros. Or a star one.
- geoffeg 4y agoCan we just go full back plane with the CPU being just one of those cards on the back plane?
- xxpor 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_1
- albrewer 4y agoIf I recall correctly the only reason that configuration was abandoned was because the physical distance between the CPU and RAM needed to be as short as possible. I liked the Pentium 2 card as much as the next guy but I like faster system speeds more.
- 4y ago
- egeozcan 4y agoThe cards are just insanely wide, look at this photo: https://imgur.com/a/VqTU1QR https://imgur.com/a/VqTU1QR Why would you still put the power connector on the side where the card will definitely get very close to the side of the case?
- pantalaimon 4y agoIt’s so you can’t use it in a server
- Finnucane 4y agoWould it be feasible to put one of these in its own case and use it as an external peripheral? I admit to losing track of what's the current standard for connector speeds, which seems to be changing every week.