A scorching potato: GeForce RTX 4090 homeowners have steadily reported burned and melted energy cable connectors for over a 12 months. Nvidia acknowledged just a few dozen circumstances worldwide, blamed the issue on person error, and addressed the problem by quietly updating the cables. However, a California restore store disputes the corporate’s claims that it is uncommon.
Computer restore store Northridge Fix claims that far more GeForce RTX 4090 graphics playing cards undergo from melted energy cables than Nvidia admits. Although the connectors in newer shipments seem to have solved the issue, the unique trigger remains to be hotly debated.
In a current YouTube video (masthead), a Northridge Fix repairman claimed that the store receives between 20 and 25 RTX 4090s with burned energy cables per week, or round 100 monthly. The video would not point out how lengthy the enterprise has been fixing melted GPUs, however its numbers far exceed the 50 circumstances Nvidia admitted to a 12 months in the past.
Team Green blamed the issue on customers improperly plugging the cables into the aspect of the graphics card. However, Northridge Fix additionally disputes that presumption as a result of excessive variety of occurrences. Other prospects, together with the plaintiff in final 12 months’s class-action lawsuit in opposition to Nvidia, claimed to have appropriately put in their energy cables, suggesting a deeper flaw in 12VHPWR adapters.
The difficulty stems from the unique adapters Nvidia shipped with the 4090 so customers could set up 8-pin cables from older ATX 2.0 energy provide items into its 16-pin socket. In September 2022, PCI-SIG warned that the adapters could attain unsafe temperatures in particular conditions, however Nvidia mentioned it fastened the issue earlier than the flagship GPU’s launch.
Customers have not reported issues since Nvidia up to date its 12V-2×6 adapters in current months. Third-party checks verify that the brand new headers keep comparatively low temperatures even when improperly put in.
Those utilizing the previous cables ought to severely think about putting in the 4090 with an ATX 3.0 PSU, which natively helps 16-pin connectors with out requiring the troublesome adapter and prices much less than probably changing the GPU. At least one individual reported a 16-pin cable that burned whereas plugged into an ATX 3.0 unit, however the incidence seems far rarer than the melted 2.0 adapters.
Looking ahead, Asus is testing a more everlasting answer – GPUs that change exterior cables with a PCIe x16 energy connector on the motherboard. The cableless system helps no less than 600W, and RTX 4070 GPUs using it ought to seem by early 2024.