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Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

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Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#151

Post by BizarroLand »

michaelt wrote: post #114
ta988 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you would then need to bring it down to the low voltages required by the chips and that would greatly increased cost, volume, weight, electrical noise and heat of the device.

Nah, modern GPUs are already absolutely packed with buck converters, to convert 12v down to 2v or so. Look at the PCB of a 4090 GPU; you can find plenty of images of people removing the heatsink to fit water blocks. They literally have 24 separate transistors and inductors, all with thermal pads so they can be cooled by the heatsink. The industry could change to 48v if they wanted to - although with ATX3.0 and the 16…

They could make a new spec for graphics cards and have a 24v/48v rail for them on a new unique connector.

I guess the problem is not only designing the cards to run on the higher voltages but also getting AMD and Intel on board because otherwise no manufacturer is going to make the new power supplies.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#152

Post by [deleted] »

accrual wrote: post #54
BigJono wrote: post #13

This shit is so fucking dumb. Sorry for the unhinged rant, but it's ridiculous how bad every single connector involved with building a PC is in 2025. I'm just a software guy, so maybe some hardware engineer can chime in (and I'd love to find out exactly what I'm missing and why it might be harder than it seems), but why on earth can everything not just be easily accessible and click nicely into place? I'm paying mult…

I know we're just ranting, and there are reasons for the seemingly bad designs. But I have a very recent 1200W Corsair (ATX 3.1/PCIe 5.1) which uses these special "type 5" mini connectors on the PSU side. It's painful to try and get your fingers between them to unclip a cable, and yesterday two of the clips broke off just trying to remove them. I ended up taking the whole PSU out just to make sure I didn't lose plast…

[deleted]

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#153

Post by mminer237 »

dcrazy wrote: post #120

Is NVIDIA breaching any consumer safety laws by pumping twice the rated current through a 24ish gauge wire? Perhaps by violating their UL certification?

UL is a private company. There're no laws requiring it or penalizing violations. I would think the only legal consequences would be through civil product liability/breach of warranty claims. Plus, like, losing the certification would mean most stores would no longer stock it.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#154

Post by Dylan16807 »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #46
Dylan16807 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what purpose? That gives you similar cabling problems to internal connections, but now that cable is far less protected.

It would be a different connector and it moves some mass and heat outside of the case.

If you want a different connector then just use a different connector.

Moving 5% of the mass and 1% of the heat outside the case is a bad thing. One of the main purposes of the case is to be one big hunk of mass.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#155

Post by Dylan16807 »

account42 wrote: post #44
hulitu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how far off they are in terms of usability compared to USB, or Ethernet, or HDMI, or Displayport, or those old VGA cables Those connectors were not designed to carry power.

USB, especially USB C, is very much designed to carry power. Not quite as much as high end graphics cards guzzle these days but it goes up to 240W. Ethernet, HDMI, DP and even VGA (with extensiosn) are also all used to carry power even if much smaller currents.

It's designed for 5 amps. In this context, that's close enough to "not carrying power".

If we're considering the bigger voltages that allow higher power on USB C, then the existing GPU plugs are fine because we can deliver 600W using the same current as a 150W 8 pin plug.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#156

Post by reaperman »

mminer237 wrote: post #153
dcrazy wrote: post #120

Is NVIDIA breaching any consumer safety laws by pumping twice the rated current through a 24ish gauge wire? Perhaps by violating their UL certification?

UL is a private company. There're no laws requiring it or penalizing violations. I would think the only legal consequences would be through civil product liability/breach of warranty claims. Plus, like, losing the certification would mean most stores would no longer stock it.

https://www.cpsc.gov/

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#157

Post by hibikir »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #91
ulfbert_inc wrote: post #71

Derbauer and Buildzoid on YouTube made nice informative videos on subject, and no it is not "simply a user error". So glad I went with 7900 XTX - should be all set for a couple of years.

Yeah, I expect my next card with be AMD. I'm happy with my 3080 for now, but the cards have nearly double in price in two generations and I'm not going to support that. I can't abide the prices nor the insane power draw. I'm OK with not having DLSS.

I agree with the prices, but you say you have a 3080, which has a higher max power draw than the 5080 or 4080. Power requirements actually went down

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#158

Post by RobotToaster »

dcrazy wrote: post #120

Is NVIDIA breaching any consumer safety laws by pumping twice the rated current through a 24ish gauge wire? Perhaps by violating their UL certification?

CE marking in Europe could be an issue. There's potential for a fine or forced recall.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#159

Post by whywhywhywhy »

stordoff wrote: post #60
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #32

People are letting their hatred of Nvidia blind them to what happened here, a customer upgraded from a 4090FE to 5090FE, they were using a 3rd party ASUS 12VHPWR cable and didn't realize the 5090FE actually uses 12V-2x6 not 12VHPWR, while the port is the same the pins are different lengths. End of the day PC power cabling is such a shambles with things that look standard but are not so you should only ever really use…

At least according to Corsair, there are no changes to the cable, only the PSU/GPU-side connectors: > Cable: 12V-2x6 = 12VHPWR No difference! > So what does this mean if you’ve already got hardware for 12VHPWR? Fortunately, existing 12VHPWR cables and adapters will work with the new 12V-2x6 connector as the new changes are only related to the GPU and some PSUs (Our new RMx PSUs for example). The cables you've got alr…

Connectors are where the issue is and there is a difference even if they fit in the same plugs and power can still go through them.

From your link

> Compared to the original 12VHPWR connector, the new 12V-2x6 connector has shorter sensing pins (1.5mm) while the conductor terminals are 0.25mm longer

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#160

Post by ziddoap »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #146
ziddoap wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't say new cars.

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.

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.

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