News Nvidia RTX 5090's 16-pin power connector hits 150C in reviewer's thermal camera shots

[greymaterial]

they should start using a new power standard like 48V DC, as the power demands keep increasing. The old 12V will not satisfy the power just like it is not 5V or 3.3V supply.

 

[valthuer]

Melting cables? I don't know anything about that.

During my time as a 4090 owner (which, by the way, was roughly two years), i was hearing a lot about the possibility of my power connector burning.

I put my card under the most strenuous gaming situations - and for lengthy periods of time; Alan Wake II/Cyberpunk 2077 4K Ultra Path Tracing, Avatar Unobtainium, Star Wars Outlaw settings, Indiana Jones PT... Not a single problem. 4090 passed all of those tests with flying colours.

Due to hardware paranoia, i even unplugged the connector several times. But there was nothing wrong with it. Everything went fine.

Now, 5090 with its increased power draw, might be another story, and we'll be around to see how this whole situation evolves. But, if i had to guess, it's just another case of things blown out of proportion.

Isolated incidents and user errors, have always been and always will be, with all sorts of hardware.

I'm not a man to let exceptions determine my decisions, so i bought 5090, and everything has been ok so far.

P.S. IMHO, the fear of melting cables, will only serve as a convenient excuse for people who wouldn't buy 5090 anyways.

 

[Alex/AT]

The industry was transitioning back to single rail years before 12VHPWR came on the scene.

Do you have some examples of modern PSUs with multiple 12V rails? Because AFAIK single rail has been more common for a decade or more, even for high power PSUs.

BeQuiet Dark Power Pro series just as an example
(I own one, and I do use it in default split rails mode, in part to isolate sensitive AE-9 audio board to a rail)

 

[Alex/AT]

P.S. The fear of melting cables, will only serve as a convenient excuse for people who wouldn't buy 5090 anyways.

I am an owner of 4090 and I'm planning to sell it once AMD releases a decent card. Partly 'cause risks grow over time, partly because nV drivers are a horrible mess.

 

[valthuer]

I am an owner of 4090 and I'm planning to sell it once AMD releases a decent card.

If by that you mean an equivalent of 4090, i'm afraid you'll find yourself waiting for a long time.

AMD have essentially quit that segment of the market.

Unfortunately for all of us, pc users can only look to Nvidia when it comes to high-end GPUs.

 

[BFG-9000]

they should start using a new power standard like 48V DC, as the power demands keep increasing. The old 12V will not satisfy the power just like it is not 5V or 3.3V supply.

If they want to keep increasing the power consumption, they should just switch to an external power brick like the Voodoo Volts for V5 6000. Only it should just have a rectifier in it to supply 120v DC.

This would allow plugging it into a separate dedicated 15A branch circuit for up to 1440w (for continuous loads such as EVSE, breakers should leave a 20% margin so only 12A max) by itself so it wouldn't be limited by having to share power capacity with the rest of the PC setup. And this would only require 14AWG copper wire or 12AWG aluminum wire to not exceed 60°C.

 

[tamalero]

BeQuiet Dark Power Pro series just as an example
(I own one, and I do use it in default split rails mode, in part to isolate sensitive AE-9 audio board to a rail)

I had bought the dark power pro titanium 4 or so years ago.. and it was sold as a single rail only. Is this split thing a new thing from them?

If by that you mean an equivalent of 4090, i'm afraid you'll find yourself waiting for a long time.

AMD have essentially quit that segment of the market.

Unfortunately for all of us, pc users can only look to Nvidia when it comes to high-end GPUs.

They said the same during the post VEGA (480, 580) cards. They still returned later on.

 

[setx]

You know what's funny? Look at Nvidia's professional cards, like A6000. It uses single standard and proven EPS-12V (like motherboard CPU) connector for 300W. 2 of them (or 3 to be safe) would be able to handle 600W. No new standards needed, we had this connector for many years!

 

[qwertymac93]

I had bought the dark power pro titanium 4 or so years ago.. and it was sold as a single rail only. Is this split thing a new thing from them?




They said the same during the post VEGA (480, 580) cards. They still returned later on.

They said that all the way back when the 2900xt failed and the mid-range 3870 was their highest end replacement. ATI didn't return to the high end until the 5870, where they traded the #1 spot with Nvidia a few times until giving up again for Polaris (RX480), where they didn't go for the high-end again until RDNA2. AMD may claim they've given up on the high-end, but that could easily change for the UDNA cards that may share dies with the AI accelerators at the high end. Nvidia can sell Blackwell in the workstation market for several thousand dollars, AMD has no confidence in anyone buying RDNA4 for pro/AI work.

 

[newtechldtech]

move away from 12V please ? 600 watts on 12V is a joke.

 

[King_V]

Of course, I got a bit of a chuckle with Dawid Does Tech Stuff when he opened a 5070 box and noted that it comes with the "Dual-8-pin-to-arson adapter."

But, it's starting to seem like less of a joke after this article. And probably after the next, etc.

 

[palladin9479]

they should start using a new power standard like 48V DC, as the power demands keep increasing. The old 12V will not satisfy the power just like it is not 5V or 3.3V supply.

48v can run into regulatory issues, 24v would be fine though. Wouldn't even be hard to do with current PSUs.

As for why this terrible design, costs. With this design the card can use a single power circuit. The pcie 12v cables require a separate power circuit for each cable.

 

[TJ Hooker]

BeQuiet Dark Power Pro series just as an example
(I own one, and I do use it in default split rails mode, in part to isolate sensitive AE-9 audio board to a rail)

I'm getting off topic here, but I don't think you're really getting isolation there. The multiple 12V rails aren't generated independently, they all come from the same source. Multi vs single rail is essentially about how over-current protection is configured. Likely the only thing separating the rails are some current-sense shunt resistors on the order of a few miliohms.

 

[heffeque]

I have just the right song for this occasion:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmin5WkOuPw

Let me continue it with this: