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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

#31

Post by incrudible »

onli wrote: post #5
lyu07282 wrote: post #4

It's strange how Nvidia just doubled down on a flawed design for no apparent reason. It doesn't even do anything, the adapter is so short you still have the same mess of cables in the front of the case as before.

I was under the impression it saves them money. Is that correct? It is also a powerplay. By potentially introducing a PSU connector AMD and Intel do not use they abuse their market power to limit interoperability. Plus probably some internal arrogance about not admitting failures.

> By potentially introducing a PSU connector AMD and Intel do not use they abuse their market power to limit interoperability.

They are free to use them, they just don’t because it is a stupid connector. The cards that need 600W are gonna need an enormous amount of cooling, therefore they will need a lot of space anyway, no point in making the connector small.

Yes, NVIDIA created an amazingly small 5090 FE, but none of the board partners have followed suit, so most customers will see no benefit at all.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#32

Post by whywhywhywhy »

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 the cables that came with the product if you don't want to risk issues, especially with this specific ports poor history with 3rd party cables.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#33

Post by mlsu »

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…

Connectors are actually extremely difficult to make.

- you have to ensure that the metal connectors take shape and bond to the wire properly. This is done by crimping. Look up how much a good crimping tool costs for a rough approximation of how difficult it can be to get this right.

- one plastic bit has to mate with another plastic bit, mechanically. This needs to be easy enough for 99.99% of users to do easily, yet it needs to be 99.99% reliable, so that the two bits will not become separated, even partially. Even under thermal expansion.

- the electrical contacts inside must be mechanically mated over a large surface area so that current can pass from one connector to another.

- it must be intuitive for people to use. Ideally user pushes it and it clicks right in. No weird angles either, it could be behind a mechanical component that's tough to reach. Also, user has to be able to un-mate the connector from the same position. It should be tough for a user to accidentally plug in an ill suited connector into the wrong slot.

- has to cost peanuts. Nobody will pay $3 for a connector. Nobody will even want to pay $1 for a connector. BOM cost is 15-20% finished goods cost. Will the end user pay $8, $10, $12 for a good connector? No.

- repeatable to manufacture (on the board and on the cable) at high quality. User might take apart their PC a dozen times, to fix things, clean, etc for the lifetime of the component. So the quality bar is actually very high. Nothing can come loose or break off, not even internal parts.

- physically compact. PCB space is at an extreme premium.

- your connector design has to live across many product cycles, since people are going to be connecting old parts to new boards and they'll be upset if they can't do this. So this increases risk by a lot as redesigning a connector means breaking compatibility for existing users.

Connectors are actually a very very deep and interesting well.

I'm not surprised at all that they are running into issues here, these cards are pulling 500+ watts. That is a LOT of current.

I think next gen we will begin seeing 24V power supplies to deal with this.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#34

Post by whywhywhywhy »

BigJono wrote: post #23
Dylan16807 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the 4/6/8 pin plugs? I find them perfectly good. And they have a high power variant that would have worked much better here, rated for twice the current per pin.

They're the best of the bunch when it comes to PC parts, but think how far off they are in terms of usability compared to USB, or Ethernet, or HDMI, or Displayport, or those old VGA cables you had to screw in, or literally anything else. They only look good in comparison to the other power connectors.

> They're the best of the bunch when it comes to PC parts

Not really, the PSU side isn't standardized at all and it's not obvious at all because the cables will happily fit when you plug cables from PSU A into PSU B and fry your entire build.

Theres no benefit to not having standards on that side, and the other side is all standard so they are able to follow standards there, "It's just the way it's always been" so they keep doing it

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#35

Post by 0x073 »

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…

"didn't realize the 5090FE actually uses 12V-2x6 not 12VHPWR, while the port is the same the pins are different lengths"

Broken by design.

I use always the cables that are shipped with the psu and noth the cables from gpu.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#36

Post by CharlieDigital »

vvv5 wrote: post #16
hgomersall wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 12V, which means the currents are very high (like >40A). It feels like perhaps they need higher voltage power supplies.

I think the problem with this is that chips can only use a relatively low voltage around 1-1.5 volts. So if you supply 48 volts to the card it still has to be stepped down and this means more components and heat dissipation on the card. We are basically arriving at the idea of graphic cards having their own integrated PSUs, but this doesn't fit well with the current physical design of computers.

I feel like it could work with an external power brick and the card exposing a dedicated external port.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#37

Post by numpad0 »

onli wrote: post #5
lyu07282 wrote: post #4

It's strange how Nvidia just doubled down on a flawed design for no apparent reason. It doesn't even do anything, the adapter is so short you still have the same mess of cables in the front of the case as before.

I was under the impression it saves them money. Is that correct? It is also a powerplay. By potentially introducing a PSU connector AMD and Intel do not use they abuse their market power to limit interoperability. Plus probably some internal arrogance about not admitting failures.

That's the majority understanding, but I suspect it was a simple "update" into "same" connector - the old one was a product called Molex Mini-Fit, and the new one is their newer Micro-Fit connector.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#38

Post by jiwidi »

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…

NVIDIA made the 12V-2x6 port retro compatible with the previous 4000 series 12VHPWR. If you make your port compatible with past gen and it breaks with it its a design flaw, dont make it retro compatible.

This is not a user error, this is NVIDIA design error.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#39

Post by Dylan16807 »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #36
vvv5 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with this is that chips can only use a relatively low voltage around 1-1.5 volts. So if you supply 48 volts to the card it still has to be stepped down and this means more components and heat dissipation on the card. We are basically arriving at the idea of graphic cards having their own integrated PSUs, but this doesn't fit well with the current physical design of computers.

I feel like it could work with an external power brick and the card exposing a dedicated external port.

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

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#40

Post by lyu07282 »

formerly_proven wrote: post #17
onli wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression it saves them money. Is that correct? It is also a powerplay. By potentially introducing a PSU connector AMD and Intel do not use they abuse their market power to limit interoperability. Plus probably some internal arrogance about not admitting failures.

I doubt engineering a new connector (I think it's new? Unlike the Mini-Fit Jr which has been around for like 40-50 years) and standing up a supply chain for it could offset the potentially slightly lower BOM cost of using one specialty connector instead of three MiniFit Jr 8-pins. However, three of those would not have been enough for the 4090, nevermind the 5090.

> three of those would not have been enough for the 4090, nevermind the 5090.

Oh you are right these PCIe power connectors can only draw 150W, so you would need 4 of those for 4090/5090. I guess that makes sense then to create a new standard for it actually, hopefully they can make a newer revision of that connector that makes it safer.

In theory with the new standard you can have a single cable from the PSU to the GPU instead of 4, which would be a huge improvement. Except if you use those and then your PC catches fire, you will be blamed by the community for it. People on the reddit thread [1] were arguing that it was his own fault for using a "third party" connector.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1ilhfk0/rtx_5090fe_...

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