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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

#61

Post by CarVac »

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…

Third party cables were never an issue on sanely designed ports with power balancing.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#62

Post by Manozco »

userbinator wrote: post #56
readingnews wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Connectors are actually extremely difficult to make. While your points listed are valid, we have been making connectors that overcome these points for decades, in some cases approaching the century mark. >> 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. Nonsense. I used to work at an industrial power generation company. 500W is _nothin…

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

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

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#63

Post by ImHereToVote »

mlsu wrote: post #33
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…

"Nobody will pay $3 for a connector"

I would pay $10.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#64

Post by broeng »

userbinator wrote: post #56
readingnews wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Connectors are actually extremely difficult to make. While your points listed are valid, we have been making connectors that overcome these points for decades, in some cases approaching the century mark. >> 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. Nonsense. I used to work at an industrial power generation company. 500W is _nothin…

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

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

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#65

Post by drdaeman »

userbinator wrote: post #56
readingnews wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Connectors are actually extremely difficult to make. While your points listed are valid, we have been making connectors that overcome these points for decades, in some cases approaching the century mark. >> 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. Nonsense. I used to work at an industrial power generation company. 500W is _nothin…

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

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)

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#66

Post by numpad0 »

Schiendelman wrote: post #48
numpad0 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want to use the Molex for some reason. That's what doesn't make sense. They could just like, give it two ring connectors and let gamers screw them on. Bigger ones of rings take 50A(*12V = 600W) just fine.

Define the exact "they" you're talking about and you'll start to see the problem.

I'm suspecting it's really less than half a dozen people at NVIDIA, like guys in purchasing division or PCB designers not wanting to make a drastic parts/footprint change. M8 SMD lug terminal in a gamer accessory is crazy, but not rocket science.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#67

Post by the__alchemist »

emsixteen wrote: post #20

This same thing happening on the 40 series cards was good enough vindication for me not 'upgrading' to that at the time. I'd rather not burn my house down with my beloved inside. Can't believe the same is happening again.

I can relate to this perspective! It's important to step out of the system and recognize priorities like this; balancing risk and reward.

I think, in this particular case, perhaps the risk is not as high as you state? You could imagine a scenario where these connectors could lead to a fire, but I think this is probably a low risk compared to operation of other high-power household appliances.

Bad connector design that's easy to over-current? Yes. Notable house-fire risk? Probably not.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#68

Post by rawling »

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 still have to sit there stressing out because I have no idea if the PSUMobo power connector is seated properly

I recently switched my PSU and my onboard audio volume halved.

There's no way I'm going to switch back to see if the problem goes away because that connector was such a **ache to undo and reconnect.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#69

Post by vollbrecht »

userbinator wrote: post #56
readingnews wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Connectors are actually extremely difficult to make. While your points listed are valid, we have been making connectors that overcome these points for decades, in some cases approaching the century mark. >> 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. Nonsense. I used to work at an industrial power generation company. 500W is _nothin…

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

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.

Re: Nvidia's RTX 5090 power connectors are melting

#70

Post by mastax »

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…

If the new 12V-2x6 connector was incompatible with the old 12VHPWR connector, they should have (and would have) made it physically incompatible. They didn’t. You cannot blame the user for doing something which is specifically allowed by design.
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