News AMD Exec Burns Nvidia Over Melting Connectors

[Admin]

AMD's senior director of gaming marketing is lobbing insults at Nvidia over reported issues with its 16-pin connectors on the RTX 4090.

AMD Exec Burns Nvidia Over Melting Connectors : Read more

 

[Jake Hall]

Ha! That's great

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

It's not even a joking matter. Where are regulators on this. You have cables melting on a electric appliance consuming 300 watt. How is there no forced recall yet.

 

[gggplaya]

It's not even a joking matter. Where are regulators on this. You have cables melting on a electric appliance consuming 300 watt. How is there no forced recall yet.

It's funny until someone gets hurt, relax.

Yes, there should be a stop use notice sent out and a recall effort to replace the problem connector with a new solution.

 

[thently]

This has been solved as user error not directly an issue with plug.. I do understand that this issue has not happened in the past so there is something to be said about that but give this a look.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig2px7ofKhQ

I myself would not be worried about the plug at all but would be very careful about making sure it is plugged in all the way.

 

[eklipz330]

it's releasing a week before christmas, there will be no inventory of the new amd cards for months.

 

[dwn2brasstacks]

"If you're spending any time on what's left of Twitter these days..."
Nice backhanded slap... Twitter was literally a heavy handed one-sided echo chamber for the blue that now actually stands for free speech. I would think a journalist would appreciate the improvement. Color me surprised. Twitter is actually being made to be profitable when it was a ridiculous luxury sweet for people abusing the system and causing it to be unprofitable. Good riddance.

As for the dodgy power connector...yeah, they should have stuck with the 8-pins. EVGA was right to backlash and GTFO. Having said that, NVIDIA has had amaizing products, everyone screws up. As long as they take ownership and correct it, no hard feelings. It does indeed seem to be a very limited number of cases where people bent the cable out of spec, but the 8 pins are very superior in every way except they take up a bit more space. Oof.

 

[PEnns]

"There's no need to rebuild your PC, no need to upgrade your case and there's no need for a new power adapter "

And you don't need to have the Fire Dept on speed dial!!

Meanwhile, nGreedia and its shills are still blaming the users instead of their shoddy workmanship!!

 

[thently]

The Plug was created by PCI-SIG not NVidia they are for sure having the early adopter tax here but it is getting a little old seeing people blame Nvidia for this issue alone. If you were a company and are told by the governing body this is the new PCI-E 5 plug and then said company uses it who is to blame here.. I can concede maybe Nvidia could have tested more stringently but from their stand point they are most likely thinking if these people plugged in their cables right we could just move on...

 

[-Fran-]

Now we just need nVidia to tweet "this is fine".

Regards xD

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

This has been solved as user error not directly an issue with plug.. I do understand that this issue has not happened in the past so there is something to be said about that but give this a look.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig2px7ofKhQ

I myself would not be worried about the plug at all but would be very careful about making sure it is plugged in all the way.

Look! Steve caused an adapter to melt... by not plugging it in correctly! That must be the only possible explanation as to what's going on, right? Seriously, for all his "fact" talk, the reality is that we still don't have a clear answer on what is causing problems — and more importantly, we don't have a guaranteed solution. His rant on responsible reporting rings a bit hollow, considering he himself has been a major part of the theorycrafting that's taken place. Also, even though he mentioned FOD (foreign object debris) as a factor, like Igor, he has no actual proof that FOD caused any of the failures — he hasn't replicated that; he just showed that FOD is present and then jumped to a conclusion. Anyway, GN spent a LOT of money to make these videos, but it's not like he can actually solve the problem — that's up to Nvidia and its partners. The videos were done to increase his street cred and to get lots of views, while officially providing no answer whatsoever.

The Plug was created by PCI-SIG not NVidia they are for sure having the early adopter tax here but it is getting a little old seeing people blame Nvidia for this issue alone. If you were a company and are told by the governing body this is the new PCI-E 5 plug and then said company uses it who is to blame here.. I can concede maybe Nvidia could have tested more stringently but from their stand point they are most likely thinking if these dumbasses plugged in their cables right we could just move on...

Not quite! The connector was created by PCI-SIG at the behest of Nvidia. That's important to remember. On its own, PCI-SIG almost certainly wouldn't have made this connector. Nvidia even pre-empted PCI-SIG's version with the 12-pin connector two years ago. It's exactly the same, but without the sense pins — and funny enough might actually be safer, as there's reason to suppose the extra four sense pins are part of what's potentially causing people to incorrectly install the connector. If the true root cause is user error — not proved yet, but possible — then it indicates a faulty design. People haven't been experiencing melting 8-pin and 12-pin connectors, so what changed that's causing problems now?

I'm also still quite concerned with connector longevity, as someone who swaps GPUs in my test beds often multiple times per day. For that reason, I have to use the adapters! Because if I didn't, I'd need a native 16-pin connector (I have one), and then I'd be plugging that in and unplugging it likely more than 500 times in a year. The 12-pin and 16-pin connectors just won't last under that sort of use, while history shows the 8-pin connectors, being larger and more robust, can manage just fine.

 

[palladin9479]

It's not even a joking matter. Where are regulators on this. You have cables melting on a electric appliance consuming 300 watt. How is there no forced recall yet.

Because nVidia can do no wrong, it's everyone else's fault cause people are holding it wrong. This is playing out just like the Antenna issue the iPhones had, where shills insisted it was user error and not a design flaw.

 

[artk2219]

I know these issues have been found to be mostly user error, I'm still not a fan of that new hipower connector, the tolerances are just too tight. Too many tightly packed connections makes it a fidgety connector to seat correctly, makes it a bigger issue if any debris gets in, and like the 21 pin USB 3 connector it also looks like a pain to remove once it is seated. Maybe a slightly bigger connector with looser tolerances would be a better idea.

 

[Arbie]

Also, even though he mentioned FOD (foreign object debris) as a factor, like Igor, he has no actual proof that FOD caused any of the failures — he hasn't replicated that; he just showed that FOD is present and then jumped to a conclusion.

Much respect to Steve as a straight shooter and hard worker. And his evidence of incomplete insertion seems important. But as an EE I couldn't make sense of his comments on foreign objects creating a "high resistance parallel path" and thereby higher local temperatures. Though IIRC the failure lab used the same words. I may be misunderstanding what they meant.

 

[A Stoner]

Hope the AMD cards are fast.

 

[bigdragon]

The Plug was created by PCI-SIG not NVidia they are for sure having the early adopter tax here but it is getting a little old seeing people blame Nvidia for this issue alone. If you were a company and are told by the governing body this is the new PCI-E 5 plug and then said company uses it who is to blame here.. I can concede maybe Nvidia could have tested more stringently but from their stand point they are most likely thinking if these people plugged in their cables right we could just move on...

An influential member of an industry standards or specification organization can push something they really want through the process. Saying PCI-SIG created the HPWR might not be accurate. They approved it, yes, but may not have fully vetted it due to an aggressive organization member.

Looks like Nvidia and Intel had a play in the HPWR connector. I have to wonder if Intel anticipated the melting problems happening but didn't raise objections. Intel totally, honestly, definitely wouldn't want their best friend forever and ever, Nvidia, implement something that would cause them problems down the road! Nvidia's cost-cutting and money-grubbing would make them over-eager to accept something borderline or defective too if it's cheaper.

 

[USAFRet]

This has been solved as user error not directly an issue with plug.. I do understand that this issue has not happened in the past so there is something to be said about that but give this a look.

If it is this easy to get it wrong, then this is a testing and design problem.

Testing should discover this, and design out simple "user error".

 

[ezst036]

It's not even a joking matter. Where are regulators on this. You have cables melting on a electric appliance consuming 300 watt. How is there no forced recall yet.

Did this need to be politicized?

 

[alceryes]

This has been solved as user error not directly an issue with plug.. I do understand that this issue has not happened in the past so there is something to be said about that but give this a look.

Not quite.
PCI-SIG's testing (and subsequent melting) of the 12VHPWR connector happened with a fully inserted cable. They test peripherals - not the 'human factor'.

 

[artk2219]

Not quite.
PCI-SIG's testing (and subsequent melting) of the 12VHPWR connector happened with a fully inserted cable. They test peripherals - not the 'human factor'.

Which is unfortunately a problem when humans are involved :-/

 

[RandomWan]

It's not even a joking matter. Where are regulators on this. You have cables melting on a electric appliance consuming 300 watt. How is there no forced recall yet.

They're not getting involved so far as this is primarily user error as seen in the latest Gamer's Nexus video.

All motherboard connectors can run into the same issue of securing when connecting PSU plugs due to tolerance stacking. I've had a number of them that didn't just click in when inserted and they took some slight manipulation to get the clip to actually hook. You should always be verifying the plug is secure physically, regardless of what it looks like. Until someone manages to show another failure mode, trying to lump the blame on Nvidia for something that affects a tiny fraction of a percent of end users seems a bit jumping the gun.

 

[crimsonfilms]

Look! Steve caused an adapter to melt... by not plugging it in correctly! That must be the only possible explanation as to what's going on, right? Seriously, for all his "fact" talk, the reality is that we still don't have a clear answer on what is causing problems — and more importantly, we don't have a guaranteed solution. His rant on responsible reporting rings a bit hollow, considering he himself has been a major part of the theorycrafting that's taken place. Also, even though he mentioned FOD (foreign object debris) as a factor, like Igor, he has no actual proof that FOD caused any of the failures — he hasn't replicated that; he just showed that FOD is present and then jumped to a conclusion. Anyway, GN spent a LOT of money to make these videos, but it's not like he can actually solve the problem — that's up to Nvidia and its partners. The videos were done to increase his street cred and to get lots of views, while officially providing no answer whatsoever.

Not quite! The connector was created by PCI-SIG at the behest of Nvidia. That's important to remember. On its own, PCI-SIG almost certainly wouldn't have made this connector. Nvidia even pre-empted PCI-SIG's version with the 12-pin connector two years ago. It's exactly the same, but without the sense pins — and funny enough might actually be safer, as there's reason to suppose the extra four sense pins are part of what's potentially causing people to incorrectly install the connector. If the true root cause is user error — not proved yet, but possible — then it indicates a faulty design. People haven't been experiencing melting 8-pin and 12-pin connectors, so what changed that's causing problems now?

I'm also still quite concerned with connector longevity, as someone who swaps GPUs in my test beds often multiple times per day. For that reason, I have to use the adapters! Because if I didn't, I'd need a native 16-pin connector (I have one), and then I'd be plugging that in and unplugging it likely more than 500 times in a year. The 12-pin and 16-pin connectors just won't last under that sort of use, while history shows the 8-pin connectors, being larger and more robust, can manage just fine.

With all due respect, GN put a lot more work and facts than any other publication, including Tom's. I mean all the articles from Tom are just quotes for Nvidia or Reddit users. Im not a GN follower. I read Tom a lot more but the work done to investigate this was done by GN and nothing from Tom's.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

Look! Steve caused an adapter to melt... by not plugging it in correctly! That must be the only possible explanation as to what's going on, right? Seriously, for all his "fact" talk, the reality is that we still don't have a clear answer on what is causing problems — and more importantly, we don't have a guaranteed solution. His rant on responsible reporting rings a bit hollow, considering he himself has been a major part of the theorycrafting that's taken place. Also, even though he mentioned FOD (foreign object debris) as a factor, like Igor, he has no actual proof that FOD caused any of the failures — he hasn't replicated that; he just showed that FOD is present and then jumped to a conclusion. Anyway, GN spent a LOT of money to make these videos, but it's not like he can actually solve the problem — that's up to Nvidia and its partners. The videos were done to increase his street cred and to get lots of views, while officially providing no answer whatsoever.

Not quite! The connector was created by PCI-SIG at the behest of Nvidia. That's important to remember. On its own, PCI-SIG almost certainly wouldn't have made this connector. Nvidia even pre-empted PCI-SIG's version with the 12-pin connector two years ago. It's exactly the same, but without the sense pins — and funny enough might actually be safer, as there's reason to suppose the extra four sense pins are part of what's potentially causing people to incorrectly install the connector. If the true root cause is user error — not proved yet, but possible — then it indicates a faulty design. People haven't been experiencing melting 8-pin and 12-pin connectors, so what changed that's causing problems now?

I'm also still quite concerned with connector longevity, as someone who swaps GPUs in my test beds often multiple times per day. For that reason, I have to use the adapters! Because if I didn't, I'd need a native 16-pin connector (I have one), and then I'd be plugging that in and unplugging it likely more than 500 times in a year. The 12-pin and 16-pin connectors just won't last under that sort of use, while history shows the 8-pin connectors, being larger and more robust, can manage just fine.

Hey Jarred, I completely agree that even though Steve spent a lot of money trying to replicate failure modes we are still not any closer to understanding the root problem with these 12+4 connectors.

However, I do believe your assessment of Steve is too harsh. Of all the popular tech you tubers, Steve feels the most genuine. Sure, he is still influenced by the goals of being a youtuber but he does not sacrifice the quality and detail of his content for the sake of popularity. A good deal of his videos are so unappealing to broader audiences (unlike Linus, j2c, etc.) that Steve deserves some credit for his efforts to identify and attempt to diagnose flaws in consumer products (like NZXT case/pci riser, gunked up threadripper AIO’s, dumpster fire power supplies, etc.)

Anyways, Jarred, I’ve been reading your articles for a long time and enjoy them immensely! Thanks!

 

[-Fran-]

Much respect to Steve as a straight shooter and hard worker. And his evidence of incomplete insertion seems important. But as an EE I couldn't make sense of his comments on foreign objects creating a "high resistance parallel path" and thereby higher local temperatures. Though IIRC the failure lab used the same words. I may be misunderstanding what they meant.

Electricity is conducted over the surface of the metal, so you have very visible "pathways" electricity can take, so if you have surface debris (obstacles), then like a fluid it will just go around them until the alternative path becomes saturated while still hitting that debris on its path creating a lot of heat. That's in layman terms.

Engineering wise, there must be an equation that rules cable conductivity of the adapter and imagine you just put a resistance in the way while still providing the circuit alternate "parallel" paths to choose from until those paths themselves become saturated, or something along those lines?

It's been ages since I've made any circuitry design and resolved the corresponding equations, but this comes down to basics I think.

Regards.

 

[instawookie]

Look! Steve caused an adapter to melt... by not plugging it in correctly! That must be the only possible explanation as to what's going on, right? Seriously, for all his "fact" talk, the reality is that we still don't have a clear answer on what is causing problems — and more importantly, we don't have a guaranteed solution. His rant on responsible reporting rings a bit hollow, considering he himself has been a major part of the theorycrafting that's taken place. Also, even though he mentioned FOD (foreign object debris) as a factor, like Igor, he has no actual proof that FOD caused any of the failures — he hasn't replicated that; he just showed that FOD is present and then jumped to a conclusion. Anyway, GN spent a LOT of money to make these videos, but it's not like he can actually solve the problem — that's up to Nvidia and its partners. The videos were done to increase his street cred and to get lots of views, while officially providing no answer whatsoever.

Not quite! The connector was created by PCI-SIG at the behest of Nvidia. That's important to remember. On its own, PCI-SIG almost certainly wouldn't have made this connector. Nvidia even pre-empted PCI-SIG's version with the 12-pin connector two years ago. It's exactly the same, but without the sense pins — and funny enough might actually be safer, as there's reason to suppose the extra four sense pins are part of what's potentially causing people to incorrectly install the connector. If the true root cause is user error — not proved yet, but possible — then it indicates a faulty design. People haven't been experiencing melting 8-pin and 12-pin connectors, so what changed that's causing problems now?

I'm also still quite concerned with connector longevity, as someone who swaps GPUs in my test beds often multiple times per day. For that reason, I have to use the adapters! Because if I didn't, I'd need a native 16-pin connector (I have one), and then I'd be plugging that in and unplugging it likely more than 500 times in a year. The 12-pin and 16-pin connectors just won't last under that sort of use, while history shows the 8-pin connectors, being larger and more robust, can manage just fine.

Soooooo, what factual evidence have you found causing the issue? You're being pretty harsh to Steve, and not recognizing that he is the only one that got the issue to replicate multiple times... Lets not dive into the integrity of the burnt connections? I've still yet to see any photos of the adapter plugged in with melting at the corners in its natural state before being removed from the GPU and shown to the public... I'm sticking with we got 26 clowns in the world that can't plug in a connector, its not rocket science.... "connector has clip, it should probably latch like all the others"