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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

#371

Post by Schiendelman »

numpad0 wrote: post #213
Schiendelman wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I wondered, you may not understand all the players. I believe the PCI standard specifies this Molex connector. Somewhere between what Nvidia ships and the power supply itself, that standard is the only common connection.

No, NVIDIA's use of the connector and first reports of melting predates the spec. They were never had hands tied to use it. Gaming GPUs are having sagging problems for years too, and little is done to solve it. The cards are bending in their own weight. They're not products of proper engineering.

Oh, tell me more - what year was this added to the spec, and what year did nvidia start offering this connector?

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#372

Post by structural »

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…

Good connectors are expensive. All-plastic connectors like these are extremely cheap. Here's an example of a connector style as used in internal PC power cabling:

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/amphenol-icc-fci/...

This is $0.20/ea in bulk from a distributor, after import into the US, and after distributor markup. Probably $0.10-0.15 or even less at he scale board manufacturers are working at. You have 4 of these kind of connectors in your system (1 on the GPU, one on the power supply, and two on the cable). So still A quality d-sub power connector that has a metal housing and screws in place is going to be about $10/each. That's $40 just in connector parts, just to power your GPU, not including every other power cable in the unit, and not including all the herding cats you need to do to get the entire PC industry to shift over to using your new connector.

So, yes, you could do this, but you'd probably double the cost of a PC power supply (if all connectors used were upgraded to the same standard) and increase the cost of every GPU by $100-200, minimum.

People are already complaining that modern GPUs cost too much, so businesses making parts have assessed that it hasn't been worth it to spend this kind of money on connectors. Now, this may change at 600+W... clearly something has to change soon, as we're seeing the limits of what the existing standards can do.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#373

Post by lmm »

Ygg2 wrote: post #328
rincebrain wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but it turns out, a fair fraction of the people who day 1 purchase a GPU for that much may not necessarily be described as wholly sane.

They aren't insane, just not thrifty with their money.

Doesn't mean they prioritise everything the same way. Plenty of people buy an expensive car and put cheap tires on it or what have you.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#374

Post by bongodongobob »

shawnz wrote: post #364
MBCook wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe having cards drawing >500/600 watts is just a bad idea. Add in a CPU and such and we’re quickly approaching the maximum amount of power that can be drawn from a standard 12 amp circuit continuously.

What's the proposal here, just convince everyone to stop demanding more powerful hardware?

Idk but if computers are drawing enough power to melt themselves just to play ray traced Minecraft or write boilerplate Python code, perhaps we've gone wrong somewhere.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#375

Post by bongodongobob »

diggan wrote: post #217
engineer_22 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envy my European friends' 240v electric kettles

> I envy my European friends' 240v electric kettles ... do you not have electric kettles in the US? Foolishly, I thought this was a standard kitchen appliance all over the world, I've even seen it in smaller cities in Peru.

We don't have a need for an exclusive water boiling device as we aren't obsessed with tea. Most people drink coffee and the heating element is already built into the coffee maker. Idk what else you'd use it for. The stove works fine for boiling water without needing a separate appliance.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#376

Post by bongodongobob »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #175
dcrazy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most residential wiring is 15A except for bathrooms.

And kitchens. Otherwise, running your microwave, toaster, and coffee maker at the same time would likely trip the breaker. And obviously, the stove/oven is on its own circuit unless it's gas.

Most kitchens don't run on only one circuit for the obvious reasons you've described.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#377

Post by RavSS »

rasz wrote: post #201
Workaccount2 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in power electronics and there are ample connectors that can handle any type of power requirement. What is happening in the computer space is that everyone is clinging to an old style of doing things, likely because it is free and open, and suggestions to move to new connectors get saddled with proprietary licensing fees. D-sub power connectors have been around forever (they even look like the '90s still) and…

You are proposing connector with exposed live 12V pins.

Would it be any less safe than a Molex connector? They sometimes still come with brand new PSUs for compatibility. They have 12 volt pins too (yellow wire) if I remember correctly that can be very loose. Back when they were more standard, I'd seen sparks go off after they touched a case's chassis, as a cable to the PSU could have multiple unused/unplugged Molex connectors on it just hanging somewhere. The older PSUs I've used never came with full covers for them, so wrapping them in electrical tape was the "fix".

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#378

Post by kllrnohj »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #367
nvarsj wrote: post #302

I would love to get some insight from Nvidia engineers on what happened here. The 3 series and before were overbuilt in their power delivery system. How did we get from that to the 1 shunt resistor, incredibly dangerous fire-hazard design of the 5 series? [1] Even after the obvious problems with 4 series, Nvidia actually doubled down and made it _worse_! The level of incompetence here is actually astounding to me. Nv…

In general, poorly designed cables will use steel instead of tin plated copper conductors. The differences become more relevant at higher power levels, as energy losses within the connectors will be higher. Thus, the temperatures rise above the poorly specified unbranded plastic insulator limits, and a melted mess eventually trips the power supply to turn off. I would assume a company like NVIDIA wouldn't make a powe…

derbauer did an analysis of the melted connector. It was nickel & gold, not steel.

buildzodes analysis showed Nvidia removed all ability to load balance the wires which they used to have with the 30xx connector that introduced it, and they had even fancier solutions for the multi 8/6 pin connectors before that.

The specification also has an incredibly low safety factor, much much lower than anything that came before.

They seem to be penny pinching on shunt resistors on a $2000 GPU. Their engineering seems suspect at this point, not worthy of a benefit of the doubt.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#379

Post by ckozlowski »

exmadscientist wrote: post #357
ckozlowski wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great summary. Buildzoid over on YouTube came to a similar conclusion back during the 4xxx series issues[1], and looks like he's released a similar video today[2]. It's worth a watch as he gets well into the electrical side of things. It's been interesting to think that we're probably been dealing with poor connections on the older Molex connectors for years, but because of the ample margins, it was never an issue. N…

> I think the overall mechanism used to make an electrical connection - which hasn't changed much in 30+ years - is probably due for a complete rethink. There are tons of high-power connectors out there, and they look and work pretty much the same as the current ones (to the untrained eye). They are just more expensive. Though at 40A+ you tend to see more "banana" type connectors, with a cylindrical piece that has sl…

> There are tons of high-power connectors out there, and they look and work pretty much the same as the current ones (to the untrained eye). They are just more expensive.

That's fair, so maybe not a complete rethink then. But definately a higher standard of quality. Right now, my experience with any of those molex type connectors (be it a 4 pin HDD connector or 8 pin EATX 12V or PCI-e somethingorother) is that they rely on the pin properly aligning with the holder on the other side, and if those aren't lined up, the pin can simply end up pushing the holder and it's wire back, instead of seating correctly. There's plenty of give and play in those cables, and it's hard to tell at a glance if all of them have seated correctly or if a holder has been pushed backwards in it's socket. I can imagine a higher quality connector with tighter tolerances and stiffer materials would lessen the likelihood of this happening, but no doubt with higher costs to PSUs and cards.

I suspect manufacturers are sensitive to price increases there, but I have to imagine tacking on even a few dollars to an already exorbitantly priced card that might melt otherwise is a good value? I guess we'll see.

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