Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why 4090’s Are Catching Fire”.
Let’S jump right into our first big topic of the week: it’s a growing number of RTX 490 owners are posting images of their cards. Melted 12 volt high power connectors. Let’S go ahead and uh here, let’s pop on to Reddit yeah adapter burned: uh whoa! Oh, oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh! No, that looks fine yeah. Apparently you can re-terminate it.
Oh, my goodness that should not be necessary. Uh! No! Okay. That Mega thread apparently was not the right link anyway.
Main culprit is the uh is the adapter that is included in the box with your excessively expensive graphics card people that have gotten third-party adapters from like Coursera, cable, mod and many others. Uh have been having a much better time. I know be quiet, I I believe, and a few other brands as well have have made some third-party ones. The issue is that Nvidia is taking four eight pin connectors and then, even with the smaller gauge wires that they’re using compared to the the standard, eight pin connectors that are going in even with these smaller gauge wires. Taking those like what? What does that work out to 32 32 pins of of wire and they’re trying to bring that all down to these 12 through the these 12 pins in the new adapter and they’re? Using this like uh, it’s really cool Igor’s lab has great pictures. You should head over to Igor’s lab’s website um, because he’ll show you that basically there’s two larger contact pads in the middle for uh.
I forget exactly which pins those are for, but it’s like it’s like a one to one and then on the outside, there’s these like smaller ones. So what happens is if the adapter gets flexed, there’s a strong chance that these these soldered wires on these pads will actually loosen, weaken or loosen, and then, if you guys, are familiar with what happens when a connection loosens. When you have a very, very small point of contact, what can happen is it increases the resistance which causes the heat to go up, which causes well the plastic around it to melt and according to Igor’s lab? This is fundamentally a build quality issue, so it’s essentially either cheaping out, which I don’t think is, I don’t think is likely yeah.
I mean you look at how much nvidia’s like Founders Edition coolers cost, for example. They don’t have to make the whole thing out of metal. You know the Shroud and everything if they were trying to save. You know: 14 cents. There are certainly other areas where they could have shaved.
Some costs right, so it’s either them cheaping out or it’s down to bad quality control or more realistically, Igor’s Labs believes is down to a bad flawed design that just nobody managed to catch um. I guess that’s pretty much it isn’t it there’s really, surprisingly, not a lot else to add to this. The best way to avoid it if you uh currently are a wealthy person with a 40 90, is to get rid of your first party connector and get one of the third party ones. There are a bunch of third-party options.
I have heard that they’re actually kind of difficult to get your hands on potentially harder than 40 90s, which is kind of funny um, but I’m sure the companies that do make them are trying to rush to keep them in stock. So keep your eyes out. Try to uh get one of those cables and you should probably be okay, but even with the third-party cables. As far as my understanding goes because of uh, cable, mods, actually very clear and good instructions, I will jump to my screen.
Really quick. Do not bend it horizontally, do not bend it vertically, do not bend it at all until you are 35 millimeters away from the connector and that’s with their own cable, you can see their little branding on the thing. So that’s even with the better party cable. There’S.
There’S actually someone online – I don’t have a reference to this. Unfortunately right now, but there’s someone online, that’s offering uh, like 3D model files for making a brace, oh. That makes it come straight out for at least I believe it’s actually 35 millimeters, that’s pretty! Then it bends – that’s pretty smart, maybe check and and try to find that uh potentially, if you have the first party or third-party cables um, but yeah, don’t bend them in any direction.
A small form factor. Builders! Beware because you know I mean it’s one of those things where, in a perfect world, we all would have been able to just use native 12-pin connectors on our gpus, but because of the sense wires that detect whether it should be operating in 450, watt or 600 Watt mode, there isn’t really a way to take a legacy power supply and have it have the full functionality of the 12 volt or excuse me, the 12 volt the 12 pin connector so we’re in a situation where I don’t remember a time that we’ve run into This, where you absolutely have to use an adapter like, I think, there’s only what one or two power supplies on the market that actually have the 12 volt high power, connector yeah yeah, not so much of a thing. Uh there’s some people in full playing chat. Talking about um like just don’t bend, it have your power supply outside of your case completely straight line. You know this is actually a problem for me.
I I tweeted recently that I was thinking of skipping the 4000 series yeah and the reason for that is actually well it’s. There are a couple of reasons. Obviously I’m not I’m not skipping, because you know it doesn’t perform well right. It’S a freaking, fast card, yeah sure I’d, I’d love to have a 40. power yeah we’re not 40 90 in my system, sure yeah, it sounds great um. The issues for me are twofold: one is that I’m a big dumb and I water cooled my GPU with Hardline tubing yep.
You got ta. Take that one yep that’s uh pretty dumb, because it means that instead of an upgrade taking, I like, I I tell you – I could probably swap a GPU in like 30 seconds. If I really had to like it’s pretty quick for me. Um done it a lot of times; okay, it takes it from maybe a couple minute operation to like a couple hours.
I I was literally talking within the last week about how Way Way Back you and I tried to kind of push. The popularity of like yeah have have quick disconnects on your GPU, so you can swap them quickly and just no one cared no like immediately after we tried to push that everyone was like. I know I know well, no, no, I mean you can get that kind of concept in aios now yeah, like EK, did did aios and the whole idea was that your new GPU would come with with everything pre-attached and you would just click it back in yeah. I have no idea how many people actually bought into that concept, though I suspect the numbers are extremely low, based on how little marketing I’ve seen around that approach.
Yeah I mean, maybe in more like a commercial or like industrial setting, or something like that like. If I was uh like we, oh we’ve seen it with um. Oh, it’s. A Camino Camino has taken a similar approach where everything is is hot swappable like what we talked about, but the cost of quick disconnects is so high that it just it just doesn’t make sense for the average consumer by the time you spend that money, you should Have bought a better GPU or you should have swirled it away for an upgrade for the next one yeah, but there’s another reason that so there are a couple of reasons that I am not planning to upgrade. First of all is the hassle, and the second reason is that I simply do not believe that a 40 90 would fit in my computer yeah, and I mean another one with these problems that we’re seeing right now. Would you want to have these risks in a computer that is away from where you are so you might not be able to notice.
If there’s a problem, I mean I okay, I don’t want to be dismissive of risk. Obviously, a fire is a really really bad thing, but I don’t think there’s a whole lot to burn near where my GPU yeah, that’s probably fair enough like there’s, there’s the top of the because you’re in a rack, it’s all metal, it’s in a metal rack. It’S like three feet away from any wall on either side. It’S gon na burn itself like if it if it burns some plastic inside the computer.
I suspect that that would stay quite contained yeah. That makes sense, um and to be clear, I’m not saying that you should never worry about a fire in your computer. There have been instances, particularly with those older, remember. Those acrylic cases that were kind of popular in the early 2000s acrylic is a fairly flammable material. Actually – and there were some cases where uh cases caught on fire and you you do not want to have something like that, like Luke said away from you, but no for me, the bigger problem is that that I’m using a 4u rack mount case, which is only About this much taller, so you have to you, have to crank the cables you’re, like eight pin only .