Melting GeForce RTX 4090 power cables: A timeline of events

Nvidia’s wonderful GeForce RTX 4090 wowed customers and set a brand-new bar for simply how stupidly quick a graphics card might be. The launch of the $1,600 GPU has actually been ruined by numerous reports of melting 12 VHPWR adapters utilized in the cards harming both the port and the GPUs at times.

The brand-new 12 VHPWR adapter is a compact power adapter that integrates the ability of numerous older 6- and 8-pin adapters into one small plug. It was initially embraced with the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition and is now utilized in the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition in addition to customized variations of the RTX 4090 constructed by the similarity Asus, MSI, et cetera The 12 VHPWR port was likewise utilized in more recent RTX 40- series graphics cards like the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti, though not in AMD’s Radeon RX 7000- series GPUs.

Update: The newest updates we’ve contributed to the legend of the melting 12 VHWPR ports focuses on Intel a little modifying the ATX 3.0 power supply specification to advise particular kinds of internal ports for included dependability.

With this fast-moving, complicated, and likewise extremely major scenario, PCWorld has actually chosen to assemble the realities you require to understand to assist different truth from fiction. Nvidia authorities have actually decreased to comment while it examines, however the most recent advancement appear to indicate bad 12 VHPWR adapter cable televisions. There’s likewise the possibility that not completely placing the cable television might trigger increased resistance and adequate heat to melt the ports. We’ll upgrade this story as brand-new details is launched.

• Sept. 10 Hassan Mujtaba of WCCFTech reports of an alert provided from PCI-SIG to members of a “thermal variation, which might lead to security problems under specific security conditions.” The member alert encourages suppliers to “work carefully with their port suppliers and workout due diligence in utilizing high-power connections”

• Sept. 14 The complete e-mail and extra information from the PCI-SIG are reported by Stephen Burke of Gamers Nexus and keeps in mind that “failures have actually been observed in specific cable television routing conditions from PSUs and test boards that produce side load on the user interface.” Burke stated the report– obviously produced by Nvidia– from PCI-SIG revealed 3 various producers have actually been checked with 10 sample assemblies with failures manifesting from 10 hours to 30 hours with melting. It’s worth explaining that the internal report appears to describe the connection on the PSU side– not the GPU side. In basic, nevertheless, ATX 3.0 power materials PCWorld have actually seen show the cable televisions to be similar on both ends.

• Sept. 22 VideoCardz’s editor WhyCry reports that GPU maker Zotac’s assistance on the brand-new 12 VHPWR adapter is ranked for 30- insertion cycles which raises alarms regarding the life expectancy and sturdiness of the brand-new port. VideoCardz later on changes its report to state that while 30 cycles appears really low, numerous Molex adapters presented over the last 20 years have actually had comparable breeding cycles.

• Oct. 24 The very first report of a melted12 HPWR port is published on the Nvidia sub-reddit. The GPU seems a Gigabyte 4090 Gaming OC utilizing an Nvidia-branded 12 VHPWR adapter cable television. Both Nvidia and Gigabyte connect to the owner who reports a replacement card has actually been gotten. A 2nd report of a melted dongle is gotten too on that day with damage to the adapter cable television and an Asus RTX 4090 TUF Gaming OC Edition taking place. The Reddit post right away goes viral on the prominent graphics card with numerous presuming the brand-new adapter to be at fault.

• Oct. 24 A couple of hours after the preliminary melting report on Reddit, distinguished power supply customer and the concept behind PSU accreditation business Cybenetics, Aristeidis Bitziopoulos, tries to reproduce the melting 12 VHPWR port by subjecting it to 600 watt loads for more than 90 minutes. He is not able to harm the cable television while seeing just a little thermal difference. It ought to be kept in mind that the test utilized a native 12 VHPWR cable television on an ATX 3.0 power supply instead of Nvidia’s adapter. Bitziopoulos concludes the 12 VHPWR adapter does not appear to be a concern in his screening.

• Oct. 24 Overclocker Buildzoid of Actually Hardware Overclocking, posts a video slamming the brand-new 12 VHPWR adapter keeping in mind that the brand-new adapter significantly minimizes the variety of pins and wires bring power.

• Oct.25 With failures now reported at 3, Nvidia authorities inform the Verge’s Tom Warren that “we are examining the reports” and touch with the owners of the affected cards.

• Oct. 25 Former HardOCP editor Kyle Bennett reports AMD’s upcoming RDNA3 GPUs will not utilize the 12 VHWPR adapter in its recommendation styles. Neither Bennett, nor his sources at AMD suggest when the style choice was made to avoid 12 VHPWR.

• Oct. 25 Showing what a diversion the 12 VHPWR has actually ended up being, AMD’s Scott Herkelman openly verifies the brand-new Radeon cards will avoid 12 VHPWR and gets reactions such as “That is a HUGE relief, pleased with that news.”

• Oct. 26 The main Reddit megathread listing revealing recorded failures now numbers 5 harmed 12 VHWPR ports.

• Oct. 26 Jason Langiven, aka JayzTwoCents, who has actually long been crucial of the adapter being “harmful,” tries to duplicate the failure on a native 12 VHWPR cable television and is not able to cause a failure on the cable television under heavy loads.

• Oct. 27 Igor Wallossek of IgorsLab.de carries out a take down and failure test of a 12 VHPWR power adapter and concludes that the problem does not seem the 12 VHPWR style itself nor the much-touted insertion cycle issue raised formerly. Rather, Wallossek concludes it is the style of Nvidia’s adapter itself, which he refers to as “inferior quality (and) can result in failures and has actually currently triggered damage in single cases.” Wallossek stated he thinks flexing and kinking of the adapter can trigger weak solder joints and bridges to break and increase the resistance triggering the melting.

• Oct. 28 Ronaldo Buassali of TecLab.net.br posts his own failure tests, consisting of swinging a power supply utilizing simply the adapter and subjecting to a tension test of 1,532– well beyond its ranked continual wattage of 600 watts.

• Oct. 29 The variety of validated harmed ports on Reddit now numbers 15.

• Oct. 30 Stephen Burke of Gamers Nexus tries to reproduce the melting failure by deliberately harming a 12 VHPWR adapter comparable to what IgorsLab.de had actually reported and subjected it to a 99 percent load for 8 hours without any melting observed. Burke likewise keeps in mind that his 5 adapters all seem built the exact same– and yet in a different way than the adapter IgorsLab had. Burke stated his 5 12 VHWPR adapters utilize wires identified for 300 volts versus the 150 volts the adapter Wallossek had. Burke concludes that we simply do not understand what the concern is, however it is a genuine issue on some adapters– however not all of them. He likewise discusses a theory being drifted that the smaller sized adapter might not quickly seat along with the bigger conventional power adapters. He likewise mentions that contrary to what lots of customers think, a native port that plugs straight into a power supply might likewise stop working the exact same method if the native cable television is built the like the stopped working adapters. Burke likewise asks owners of RTX 4090 cards to report which cable television adapters they have.

Just keeping everybody upgraded: Out of about 130 e-mails up until now to the 4090 cable television inbox, we’ve gotten 7 that are 150 V ranked wires (and for that reason possibly a sign of various supply), so 5%. That ranking does not immediately indicate it’s bad. Responding to a couple of for details

— GamersNexus (@GamersNexus) October 31, 2022

• Oct. 30 With news that there seem various 12 VHPWR adapters being supplied, Stephen Burke of Gamer’s Nexus reports through Twitter that of the 130 e-mails he has actually gotten, 7 percent of owners report they have the 150 V cabling that was utilized in IgorsLab’s adapter cable television. Burke keeps in mind that while the cable television marking might state 150 V, that just suggests it utilizes the exact same evident specification cable televisions– and does not suggest they are might have the low-grade solder joints that IgorsLab discovered. Burke likewise keeps in mind that of the 130, “very few are burned.”

• Oct. 30 Andreas Schilling of Hardwareluxx.de performs his own survey of online forum members who have actually bought RTX 4090 cards. He reports that 12 have a 4-pins-to-12 VHPWR adapter marked “300 V.” One has a 3-pins-to-12 VHPWR significant “150 V,” and 2 individuals have 4-pins-to-12 VHPWR significant “150 V.”

• Nov. 1 Ronaldo Buassali of TecLab.net.br posts a longer video of screening from the initial live stream with extra descriptions of how he evaluated the 12 VHPWR. Unlike the majority of the screening up until now, which utilized real GeForce RTX 4090 cards, Buassali physically gets rid of the 12 VHPWR adapter from the GPU and wires it up for tension screening. This lets Buassali press the adapter assembly well past the 600 watts required, consisting of loads of 900 watts, 1,200 watts and 1,500 watts. Buassali’s conclusion? The 12 VHPWR adapter itself is “well sized, a lot so that it supported a lot more than its spec.” Buassali concludes that even though the adapter can manage more than it’s ranked for, an improperly placed adapter that produces resistance might certainly be behind the melting of the port. Buassali likewise does not dismiss a batch of bad cable televisions, however that indicates a production concern, not a style issue.

• Nov. 2 Jon Gerow, director of R&D at Corsair and previously of Jonnyguru.com, posts results from purposefully harmed 12 VHPWR cable television adapters under load and is not able to cause melting. Gerow had the ability to source numerous 12 VHPWR adapter cable televisions for harmful screening, and regardless of breaking off solder joints, he was not able to cause melting or a failure. He did note that a few of the adapters weren’t built extremely well however even the worst of the batch passed tension screening without stopping working. Gerow concludes that a few of the issues might have taken place when the owners didn’t totally seat the 12 VHPWR adapter cable televisions and likewise posts pictures of set up PCs where even a little space of 1 mm might lead to increased resistance.

• Nov. 3 AMD officially reveals its RDNA3-based Radeon 7900 XT and Radeon 7900 XTX and happily keeps in mind that it did not utilize 12 VHPWR connections. The business points out that the basic understanding that it altered its styles just after the melting issues cropped up a couple of weeks back is not remedy. AMD decided to stick with standard 8-pin power ports more than a year back.

• Nov. 4 A brand-new post in the Nvidia subreddit, drawn from a Facebook post of a Hong Kong-based RTX 4090 owner, is the initially reported harmed 12 VHPWR cable television from a native cable television plugged straight into a power supply. Previous to this report, all of the reported concerns had actually just taken place in 12 VHPWR adapter cable televisions, foreign cable televisions. The following day, another individual reports a melted port utilizing a native 12 VHPWR cable television from an ATX 3.0 power supply. This appears to rush hopes that a native plug would resolve the issue.

• Nov 7 The variety of verified stopped working adapters now numbers 23 on the Reddit megathread, with concerns spread out amongst lots of graphics card makers. Strangely, there are no Nvidia Founders Edition cards noted with failures. There are likewise 5 unofficial cases noted from other board makers.

• Nov. 7 VideoCardz editor WhyCry reports that an individual on Reddit has actually been informed his/her Gainward GeForce RTX 4090 will be postponed till the middle of November as it awaits replacement 12 VHPWR adapter cable televisions. The e-mail, sent out from Australian PC business Techfast to a consumer, stated “While examinations are still continuing and Nvidia has actually not launched a public declaration, Gainward has actually informed us that cable televisions delivered with their cards will (are) being changed. As an outcome, they are holding shipping of all cards up until this has actually happened. We likewise comprehend this cable television replacement will not be restricted to Gainward alone.” PCWorld connected to Techfast who verified the credibility of the e-mail.

• Nov. 8 Despite Australian PC home builder Techfast verifying an e-mail sent out to consumers stating some RTX 4090 cards would be postponed while Gainward ships replacement cable televisions and indicating other GPU makers would do the very same, Gainward’s EU Facebook page states that is not the case and has actually released an information. “There is inaccurate info recommending Gainward is postponing the RTX 4090 delivery to change the cable televisions recently. Here we want to clarify that– Gainward is not holding any RTX 40 delivery to change the cable televisions, and has no strategy to do so. The cable televisions Gainward presently utilized on the RTX 40 have actually been checked by NVIDIA group and discovered no concerns. All Gainward delivery is being made as normal. Please do not think twice to get the Gainward graphics cards if you prepare to purchase one!”

• Nov. 11 UK hardware website KitGuru gets an upgrade from Nvidia that it is continuing to examine the circumstance. “” We continue to examine the reports, nevertheless we do not have additional information to share. NVIDIA and our partners are devoted to supporting our clients and guaranteeing an accelerated RMA procedure for them,” KitGuru states by means of Twitter

• Nov. 13 There are now 26 verified GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs with melted ports recorded in the Nvidia subreddit consisting of for the very first time, a report of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition with a melted adapter.

• Nov 14 Igor Wallossek of Igorslab.de verifies there are at least 2 makers of the Nvidia provided adapter plugs with among the adapters apparently utilizing a rougher casting making insertions harder. Wallossek, who stated he has actually spoken with Nvidia’s director of engineering Gabriele Gorla, does not blame end users, however does think the rougher castings might perhaps have lead some clients to rock the 12 VHWPR port into the socket which might be why so lots of reports reveal melted adapters beginning from one side of the port with couple of to none melting from the. The service, Wallossek stated, might suggest the PCI SIG requires to release assistance on stay out zones to offer customers much better access to the socket to straight placing it instead of rocking the adapters in from one side. Wallossek likewise keeps in mind that of the 2 adapter cable televisions utilized provided by Nvidia, one style just gets pins on 2 sides while the other style grabs pins on all 4 sides.

• Nov. 16 In an extensive examination counting on third-party failure analysis utilizing X-ray evaluation in addition to electron microscopic lense test, along with replicating the failures, Gamers Nexus’ EIC Stephen Burke concludes particles inside the adapters from producing or from insertion in addition to poorly seating the cable televisions is mostly behind the majority of the failures seen. Burke likewise mentions numbers from a supplier that the threat of failure is from 0.05 to.1 percent at this moment. Incorrectly seating the cable televisions while putting it under stress appears to get the majority of the blame, Burke likewise questions if the style of the adapter should not have actually prepared for the concerns.

• Nov. 16 Tom’s Hardware reports that a GeForce RTX 4090 owner has actually submitted a class-action in the United States District Court for the Northern District Court of California over the melting ports. Submitted by Lucas Genova on Nov. 11, the match declares Nvidia “marketed and offered the RTX 4090 with a faulty and harmful power cable television plug and socket, which has actually rendered customers’ cards unusable and presents a major electrical and fire danger for each and every buyer,” according to the Tom’s Hardware report.

• Nov. 17 Looking to put a little salt into the injuries of its rival, AMD authorities have actually been promoting their fortune of not carrying out the brand-new 12 VHPWR port in its upcoming Radeon 7000- series of cards.

• Nov. 18 After weeks of primarily silence, Nvidia lastly releases a declaration that it has actually gotten 50 recognized reports of melted ports and after evaluating the returned cable televisions, has actually mainly discovered incorrect insertion to be the most likely cause, according to a report by Gamers Nexus. The business likewise put cold water on structure issue that utilize of third-party 12 VHPWR cable televisions would void guarantees. The business informed Gamers Nexus EIC Stephen Burke that it would honor service warranties connected to the problems and would speed up the RMA procedure. While inappropriate insertion would suggest user mistake throughout setup of the cards is to blame, Nvidia likewise informed Gamers Nexus it is taking a look at methods to enhance the ports that was homologated by the PCI-SIG.

• Nov. 18 The main Nvidia Reddit megathread liquidates its logging of reported events which appear to drop off after Gamers Nexus video and Nvidia’s main notification. One Reddit user posts an image of a melted RTX 4090 12 VHPWR port in the PCMR subreddit on Nov. 24.

• Dec. 1 With issue over melting 12 VHPWR ports significantly decreasing after reports that incorrect insertion is most likely the main cause, the PCI SIG launches a declaration advising individuals that its spec addresses interoperability, not security, and each member is accountable for their own items. “PCI-SIG wants to impress upon all Members that make, market or offer PCI-SIG innovations (consisting of 12 VHPWR connections) of the requirement to take all suitable and sensible steps to guarantee end user security, consisting of screening for the reported issue cases including customers as declared in the above-referenced claim. Members are advised that PCI-SIG specs offer needed technical details for interoperability and do not try to deal with correct style, making approaches, products, security screening, security tolerances or craftsmanship. When executing a PCI-SIG spec, Members are accountable for the style, production, and screening, consisting of security screening, of their items.”

• Feb. 2023 Intel launches a small upgrade to the ATX 3.0 specification that suggests that power supply suppliers utilize internal connections utilizing spring-type instead of dimple-type connections. Intel stated it did this as the recommendation of connection business themselves as the spring-type style provides more area. The various connection suggestion, nevertheless, does not mandate it for all, and older dimple-style adapters can continued to be utilized if a power supply supplier selects to. Existing power materials utilizing dimple-style ports likewise do not require to be changed– they work as anticipated if placed properly.

Author: Gordon Mah Ung, Executive Editor