4 ms·

One word: cost. Look up how much industrial/automotive connectors cost, and you'll see the huge difference in quality.

by userbinator 2y ago

Manozco 2y ago
I've bought cars that cost me less than a nVidia card (and they were running).
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Which new cars cost less than 2000$-1000$?
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    They didn't say new cars.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      Then what's the point of such an arbitrary comparison? It's normal that plenty of commodities that were expensive when new have been devalued by age and can cost less on the used market than the top of the line BRAND NEW cutting edge GPU today, which itself will be worthless in 10-20 years on the used market and so on.
      - ziddoap 2y ago
        Presumably, the point is that a working car is more complicated & cheaper (in this case) than the graphics card, while the graphics card can't figure out how to make a connector. I read it as a kind of funny comment making a broader point (and a bit of a jab at nVidia), not a rigorous comparison. I think you might be taking it a bit more seriously than was intended.
        FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        An old legacy car is definitely not more complicated than designing and manufacturing a cutting edge silicon made for high performance compute. The price difference is just the free market supply and demand at work. People and businesses pay more for the latest Nvidia GPUs than for an old car because for their use case it's worth it, they can't get a better GPU from anywhere else because they're complex to design and manufacture en-masse and nobody else than Nvidia + TSMC can do it right now. People pay less for an old beater car than for Nvidia GPUs, because it's not worth it, there's a lot better options out there in terms of cars and cars are interchangeable commodities easy and cheap to design and manufacture at scale at this point, but there's no better options easier to replace what Nvidia is selling. Comparing a top GPU with old cars is like comparing apples to monkeys, it makes no sense that doesn't prove any point.
        ziddoap 2y ago
        >An old legacy car is definitely not more complicated than designing and manufacturing a cutting edge silicon made for high performance compute. A car is more complicated than a connector, at least. Anyways, the rest of your comment is again taking a humorous one-liner way too seriously. Thanks for the econ lesson though, I guess. I liked the part where you explained to me the basics of supply and demand like I am in 5th grade.
        FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        >A car is more complicated than a connector, at least. The connectors on a new car cost more than the connectors on a new GPU part for part. >I liked the part where you explained to me the basics of supply and demand like I am in 5th grade. You'd be surprised about the state of HN understanding of how basic things in the world work.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      used objects and imports from economically isolated land are traded at meme value, doesn't count.
broeng 2y ago
No, not for a connector for 500W, on a $2000 GPU from one of the worlds biggest companies. They can do better.
drdaeman 2y ago
Those GPUs aren’t particularly cheap, even a $100 connector and cable wouldn’t be a huge deal breaker for a $2000-3000 device if it means it’s reliable and won’t start a fire (that’ll cost way more than $3100)
vollbrecht 2y ago
Yes cheap connectors exist and there is a marked for it, like everything "cheap". But to what point one wants to "defend" a trillion dollar company, on a product that was never marketed as "cheap", that actually comes with a hefty price tag, to skimp on something that is 0.01% of there BoM cost. If you sell for a premium price you should better make sure your product is premium.
jnwatson 2y ago
Nvidia is clearing 4 figures on each 5090. They can afford another few dollars on connectors.
Henchman21 2y ago
Well surely they can take that cost out of the $5090 people are paying for these cards.
janalsncm 2y ago
That would be relevant if the margins on GPUs weren’t astronomical.
state_less 2y ago
They could use a common XT90 or something similar. You find high amperage connectors on all the RC lipo batteries and they are cheap enough, you find them on $100 products (batteries). I regularly work with 100amp+ at 12v. It’s obvious the connector NVidia is using is atrocious and we all know it.

One word: cost. Look up how much industrial/automotive connectors cost, and you'll see the huge difference in quality.

Manozco 2y ago

I've bought cars that cost me less than a nVidia card (and they were running).

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
Which new cars cost less than 2000$-1000$?
- ziddoap 2y ago
  They didn't say new cars.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Then what's the point of such an arbitrary comparison? It's normal that plenty of commodities that were expensive when new have been devalued by age and can cost less on the used market than the top of the line BRAND NEW cutting edge GPU today, which itself will be worthless in 10-20 years on the used market and so on.
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      Presumably, the point is that a working car is more complicated & cheaper (in this case) than the graphics card, while the graphics card can't figure out how to make a connector. I read it as a kind of funny comment making a broader point (and a bit of a jab at nVidia), not a rigorous comparison. I think you might be taking it a bit more seriously than was intended.
      - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        An old legacy car is definitely not more complicated than designing and manufacturing a cutting edge silicon made for high performance compute. The price difference is just the free market supply and demand at work. People and businesses pay more for the latest Nvidia GPUs than for an old car because for their use case it's worth it, they can't get a better GPU from anywhere else because they're complex to design and manufacture en-masse and nobody else than Nvidia + TSMC can do it right now. People pay less for an old beater car than for Nvidia GPUs, because it's not worth it, there's a lot better options out there in terms of cars and cars are interchangeable commodities easy and cheap to design and manufacture at scale at this point, but there's no better options easier to replace what Nvidia is selling. Comparing a top GPU with old cars is like comparing apples to monkeys, it makes no sense that doesn't prove any point.
        ziddoap 2y ago
        >An old legacy car is definitely not more complicated than designing and manufacturing a cutting edge silicon made for high performance compute. A car is more complicated than a connector, at least. Anyways, the rest of your comment is again taking a humorous one-liner way too seriously. Thanks for the econ lesson though, I guess. I liked the part where you explained to me the basics of supply and demand like I am in 5th grade.
        FirmwareBurner 2y ago
        >A car is more complicated than a connector, at least. The connectors on a new car cost more than the connectors on a new GPU part for part. >I liked the part where you explained to me the basics of supply and demand like I am in 5th grade. You'd be surprised about the state of HN understanding of how basic things in the world work.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    used objects and imports from economically isolated land are traded at meme value, doesn't count.

broeng 2y ago

No, not for a connector for 500W, on a $2000 GPU from one of the worlds biggest companies. They can do better.

drdaeman 2y ago

Those GPUs aren’t particularly cheap, even a $100 connector and cable wouldn’t be a huge deal breaker for a $2000-3000 device if it means it’s reliable and won’t start a fire (that’ll cost way more than $3100)

vollbrecht 2y ago

Yes cheap connectors exist and there is a marked for it, like everything "cheap". But to what point one wants to "defend" a trillion dollar company, on a product that was never marketed as "cheap", that actually comes with a hefty price tag, to skimp on something that is 0.01% of there BoM cost. If you sell for a premium price you should better make sure your product is premium.

jnwatson 2y ago

Nvidia is clearing 4 figures on each 5090. They can afford another few dollars on connectors.

Henchman21 2y ago

Well surely they can take that cost out of the $5090 people are paying for these cards.

janalsncm 2y ago

That would be relevant if the margins on GPUs weren’t astronomical.

state_less 2y ago

They could use a common XT90 or something similar. You find high amperage connectors on all the RC lipo batteries and they are cheap enough, you find them on $100 products (batteries). I regularly work with 100amp+ at 12v. It’s obvious the connector NVidia is using is atrocious and we all know it.