Enlarge / Nvidia's RTX 4090.
Sam Machkovech
A fewer weeks ago, immoderate aboriginal adopters of Nvidia's caller flagship RTX 4090 GPU began reporting that the cards' powerfulness connectors were overheating and melting their integrative casing, sometimes causing harm to the outrageously accelerated and costly GPUs.
For Nvidia's part, the institution is inactive looking into the failures. "We proceed to analyse the reports, nevertheless we don't person further details to stock yet," according to an Nvidia rep talking to KitGuru earlier this week. But the YouTubers astatine the Gamers Nexus transmission person been conducting their ain in-depth research, and successful short, they judge that the problems are mostly being caused by improperly seated powerfulness connectors. "Foreign-object debris" wrong the connector tin besides origin problems, but Gamers Nexus believes this benignant of harm is overmuch rarer.
The nonaccomplishment that Gamers Nexus was capable to re-create successful its labs progressive connecting the 12VHPWR powerfulness connector to an RTX 4090 without inserting it afloat and past bending the cablegram to 1 side, making the transportation adjacent worse. After conscionable a fewer minutes of testing, the escaped connection's precocious powerfulness absorption generated vigor supra 250° Celsius, causing fume and disposable bubbling arsenic the connector melted successful its socket.
Enlarge / A inactive from Gamers Nexus' investigating video. A visibly escaped transportation combined with a cablegram bent astatine a harsh space caused rapidly expanding temperatures and, eventually, smoking and melting.
Gamers Nexus describes the occupation arsenic "a operation of idiosyncratic mistake and plan oversight." That is, the cables are melting due to the fact that they haven't been inserted each the way. But the deficiency of a tactile "click" dependable oregon a much robust retention mechanics makes this benignant of mistake much apt with the 12VHPWR connector than with the older 6- and 8-pin PCIe powerfulness connectors. The size of the 4090 and 4080 cards is besides exacerbating problems. The cards tin beryllium choky fits adjacent successful comparatively roomy ATX PC cases—you whitethorn request to crook the cablegram 1 mode oregon different to get your lawsuit to adjacent backmost up, and this benignant of bending tin origin the escaped transportation that contributed to overheating and melting successful Gamers Nexus' testing.
Notably, the failures tin affect any cablegram oregon adapter utilizing the 12VHPWR connector—this goes for some kinds of adapters that Nvidia and its partners person been utilizing for 4090s truthful far, arsenic good arsenic "native" 12VHPWR cables that tally straight to a powerfulness proviso with nary adapter successful between. Earlier investigation suggested that adapters from a peculiar shaper could beryllium much failure-prone than others, but Gamers Nexus didn't find that it made a difference. This besides means, presumably, that 12VHPWR adapters shipping with the RTX 4080 cards could person the aforesaid issues, too.
For now, the champion happening you tin bash is marque perfectly definite that your powerfulness connector is firmly seated—if it is, you should beryllium capable to yank connected it beauteous firmly without really pulling it retired (we were capable to trial this firsthand). You should besides beryllium cautious to debar immoderate benignant of harsh bending of the powerfulness cablegram successful immoderate direction. We'll support an oculus retired for an authoritative connection from Nvidia, to spot if it has further recommendations oregon plans for immoderate benignant of callback oregon replacement for affected cards.
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