NVIDIA AIC (add-in-card) partners have been asked to collect cards that have been reported to have their 16-pin power connectors melted. A growing amount of RTX 4090 owners have been posting images of their cards and adapters on the internet leading to more suspicions about the 12VHPWR adapters. Igor’s Lab, calling it “adapter gate,” said that NVIDIA has briefed its AIC partners to begin collecting any damaged cards customers have reported on.
nVIDIA just notified all AIC this morning … All damaged cards need to be sent directly to HQ for failure analysis, this is first time… Even a few years ago when 2080 Ti got issue with Micron, they didn’t do this.
It is now being suggested that the quality of the adapter is coming into question. A company called Astron is said to be the manufacturer of 12VHPWR adapters as well as plugs, and connectors. VideoCardz has reported that poor-quality soldering, not repeated plugging or unplugging, could be the culprit. However, due to the suspected low-quality nature of the connectors, they could be more susceptible to damage from bending and thus break off, but it has been noted that standard-compliant power supply cables made by other manufacturers do not share this issue. The inner bridge between the pins is also said to be too thin as well. Users on Redditor had been asking if perhaps the 4x 8-pin adapter could be a culprit and it appears that could, in fact, be the case.
- The current trigger is NVIDIA’s own adapter to 4x 8-pin in the accessories, whose inferior quality can lead to failures and has already caused damage in single cases.
- Splitting each of the four 14AWG leads onto each of the 6 pins in the 12VHPWR connector of the adapter by soldering them onto bridges that are much too thin is dangerous because the ends of the leads can break off at the solder joint (e.g., when kinked or bent several times).
- Bending or kinking the wires directly at the connector of the adapter puts too much pressure on the solder joints and bridges, so that they can break off.
- The inner bridge between the pins is too thin (resulting cross section) to compensate the current flow on two or three instead of four connected 12V lines.
Common melting points?
Multiple posted images have shown a similarity in that the two corner connectors/pins in the row next to the 4-pin power-sense connectors are almost always the first to be damaged. Other pins can be seen damaged in other photos but these 2 seem to be consistently seen in all. The three images below are from three different Redditor users. The first two images were said to be ASUS RTX 4090 TUF OC cards while the third, which has been widely publicized at this point, hasn’t identified which model it is.
Another user has posted images using a FLIR camera of their MSI Gaming X Trio RTX 4090 using a 3x 8-pin connector. They said they benched the card using Superpostion for 20 minutes and saw an average temperature of 120F. They do not know what the spec threshold for the adapter/plug is but the images do show it as a hot spot.
One thing that is certain is that NVIDIA is taking these reports seriously as it is investigating the matter and has now begun a process to collect the cards.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →Woohoo. That's good news. Actually is it? I want a 4090 for performance... but not at the price of my home.
The air temp of really bad airflow cases can easily be higher than 120F so that seems like a non-issue (in that specific case)
Edit --- According to experts the connectors should be good to 105C so yeah that is more than fine
Well, I mean this is cutting, I mean burning edge technology after all.
Yeah, I figured something along those lines as well. It's just in a situation like this, allegedly poor-quality connectors, a known hotspot should be the last place to cut corners.
All I can say is if you spend 1700 bucks on a piece of hardware and it goes up in flames because somebody cheaped out on a 20 dollar adapter,
well I guess you'd say that guy would be unhappy.
The obvious question to ask.....doesn't somebody check this sh!t out every which way and twice on Sunday before it goes out the door?
Any bets on a recall?
As someone who just spent 4 hours chasing down a non working connection because of a missing character... things get missed. But it should have been THUROUGHLY tested before it was EVER deemed done.
I would bet that NVIDIA/AIBs will send out replacement squids free of cost to the end user (all covered by NVIDIA)
The big question for me is how fast can they re-engineer the squid and produce it to the quantity needed for the replacements & new shipments
Something I was thinking about yesterday. Scalper inventory. That's all I'm saying as I imagine we can all think of the many ramifications there.
I agree about NV probably not going to do recalls but instead get replacement parts out as quickly as possible, but also possibly trying to get something in place to expedite returns for ones already damaged but not yet discovered. However, someone loses a home, or worse, over this, or some class-action suits come into play, and they may have to do a recall.
On the cards themselves? no, as they are not the culcript. But maybe the adapters.
Unlikely. If some class action suit is filed, it will end up as always.
Settled outside of court.
Lawyers making millions.
nvidia acknowledging no wrong doing.
users getting pennies.
BTW the easiest route would be just not bundling the adapter, just get a new PS.
If you can buy the whisky, you can buy the ice.
After installing my 4090, reading all the articles, and watching the YouTube nonsense, I noticed something. I am wondering if some people are just plain not plugging in the connector to the card all the way in some cases. I thought mine was plugged in and before turning the system back on after some tinkering I gave it another check and sure enough it needed to be pushed in a little further to hear that very faint click. This connector doesn't have that definitive click like the eight pin connectors do currently. I physically checked the connector by holding a flashlight under the cable to notice this since the tab for this connector is there so this could easily be missed. Not taking anything away from the other theories about poor soldering and bending and whatnot, just a observation on my part.
Good observation - I know I was taking that for granted and assuming people would get it all the way in there.
You know, I wondered the same. When I got my 3090 Ti 's I noticed the same because they have the same connector. I remember each didn't give that satisfactory click and sense that they were fully connected. I ended up attaching the adapters to both before installing them in their respective cases because I just didn't want to take the chance. I know that leaves room for error with bending while installing but I made sure to be mindful of that. Yeah, overall, I'm not overly ecstatic with the connector. I like the idea of minimizing but it does feel a bit too small for my tastes.
Just to add: Not to say that they don't click but considering the amount of juice that could potentially be going through these things they should have a more assertive feel to them.