NVIDIA Is Reportedly Helping AIBs to Sort Out RTX 4090 12VHPWR Adapter Issues

NVIDIA was recently under fire due to various users facing melted power adapters. For some context, team green introduced the new PCIe Gen 5.0 12VHPWR power connector with Lovelace. Igor’s Lab reports that NVIDIA is currently working with AIBs to fix all of these issues. Reportedly, all AIBs have been directed to collect the ‘effected’ RTX 4090s and ship them to the HQs.

The 12VHPWR Failure

Various incidents have taken place where users are facing burnt RTX 4090 adaptors. Igor’s Lab states;

nVIDIA just notified all AIC this morning…  All damaged cards need to be sent directly to HQ for failure analysis, this is first time… Even a few years ago when 2080 Ti got issue with Micron, they didn’t do this.

~Igor’s Lab

Igor states that the issue arises not due to the cable bending or excessive temperatures. Rather, the cable is built with poor quality material which leads to such issues. The main issue is in the engineering design of these cables.

Pressed wires without real strain relief in the plug, are technically not only mischief and grossly negligent, but actually also forbidden, because they contradict all rules of electrical engineering.

~Igor’s Lab

AMD Dropping the 12VHPWR Adapter

2 days ago, Kyle Bennett posted on Twitter that AMD’s next-gen RDNA3 GPUs will not make use of this adapter. 

After the @NVIDIAGeForce melting drama, I have verified through multiple sources that @Radeon Navi 31 ref cards will NOT use the 12VHPWR power adapter, and I could not verify any AIBs using 12VHPWR on N31 either. Picture in case you don’t know what a smoked 12VHPWR looks like.

~Kyle Bennet

This is a major news because this adapter has some fundamental issues as described by Igor’s Lab;

• The problem is not the 12VHPWR connection as such, nor the repeated plugging or unplugging.
• Standard compliant power supply cables from brand manufacturers are NOT affected by this so far.
• The current trigger is NVIDIA’s own adapter to 4x 8-pin in the accessories, whose inferior quality can lead to failures and has already caused damage in single cases.
• Splitting each of the four 14AWG leads onto each of the 6 pins in the 12VHPWR connector of the adapter by soldering them onto bridges that are much too thin is dangerous because the ends of the leads can break off at the solder joint (e.g., when kinked or bent several times).
• Bending or kinking the wires directly at the connector of the adapter puts too much pressure on the solder joints and bridges, so that they can break off.
• The inner bridge between the pins is too thin (resulting cross section) to compensate the current flow on two or three instead of four connected 12V lines.
• NVIDIA has already been informed in advance and the data and pictures were also provided by be quiet! directly to the R&D department.

Lovelace Lineup