Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

People are acting like this is some long-term position. There's no evidence of that. AMD didn't give up on the high end permanently after the RX 480 / 580 generation.

What AMD does need right now is:

* Don't cannibalize advanced packaging (which big RDNA4 required) from high-margin and high-growth AI chips

* Focus on software features like upscaling tech (which is a big multiplier and allows midrange GPUs to punch far above their weight) and compute drivers (which they badly need to improve to have a real shot at taking AI chip marketshare)

* Focus on a few SKUs and execute as well as possible to build mindshare and a reputation for quality

"Big" consumer GPUs are increasingly pointless. The better upscaling gets, the less raw power you need, and 4K gaming is already passable (1440p gaming very good) on the current gen with no obvious market for going beyond that. Both Intel and Nvidia are independently suffering from this masturbatory obsession with "moar power" causing downstream issues. I'm glad AMD didn't go down that road personally.

If "midrange" RDNA4 is around the same strength as "high-end" RDNA3, but $300 cheaper and with much better ray tracing and an upscaling solution at least on par with DLSS 3, then that's a solid card that should sell well. Especially given how dumb the RTX 5080 looks from a value perspective.

The two standards are compatible, the port end hasn't changed, just the connector. The shorter sense pins are just designed to help detect an improperly connected cable, so that the sense pins only connect when the power pins are definitely connected.

Buildzoid and others have covered the design issues of the 12VHPWR cable and especially it's horrific implementation on the 5090FE well enough[1] that I don't think it's worth going into too much detail here. For some god forsaken reason, they decided to just dump all of the voltage lines in parallel and then run a single shunt resistor to it, so if a conductor fails and the load becomes improperly distributed, there's no way for the card or the user to know until it catches fire. It's hard to come up with a reasonable justification for this.

But just so we're clear, there are 2 reports of catastrophic failures with the 5090 already, which should be even more alarming considering how few 5090 actually exist right now. The other failure didn't involve third-party cables.

Of course, if used improperly, you can burn through basically any cable, and any cable can fail... but when the failure rate of a specific cable is so high above the rest, it raises many questions. If a specific model of aircraft seems to have an oddly bad problem with pilot error, you can't just shrug that off. In my opinion, consumer computer equipment is the same. It shouldn't light on fire unless you've done something horribly wrong. And even if you do something horribly wrong, the hardware should at least be designed in a way that gives it a chance at failing gracefully first. The connectors that 12VHPWR replaced were specced with good safety margins and previous NVIDIA cards were designed to ensure current was balanced across voltage lines.

It is unclear why NVIDIA didn't see the issue with the 12VHPWR last generation and put some serious effort into fixing the problem. If they continue recklessly like this, there is a non-zero chance that the 12VHPWR connector is only retired after it finally causes loss of life.

[1]: https://youtu.be/kb5YzMoVQyw

Of course there is, same on motherboards and to a smaller extent hard drives.

Honestly with 50A of current we should be using connectors that screw into place firmly and have a single wipe or a single solid conductor pin style. Multi-pin connectors will always inherently have issues with imbalance of power delivery. With extremely slim engineering margins this is basically asking for disaster. I stand by what I've said elsewhere: If I was an insurance company I'd issue a notice that fires caused by this connector will not be covered by any issued policy as it does not satisfy reasonable engineering margins.

edit: replaced power with current... we're talking amps not watts

There's also 20 amp circuits which are common.

Many houses run circuits that are rated for 20 amps even if they don't have the right outlet for it so this is an inexpensive upgrade for most.