Nvidia RTX Titan Ada reportedly canceled after it melted PSUs, tripped breakers

[wiyosaya]

Maybe Nvidia should consider naming a variant of the card like this Hephaestus, after the Greek God of Fire, instead of Titan.

 

[Avro Arrow]

My apologies for the simple post, but

No need to apologise. That was my first reaction as well (and I'm sure I'm not alone).

This is fine…

Yeah, it's fine for me too because I don't buy nVidia products. This is just some great entertainment for me!

I guess my days of wanting/needing the best are long gone. And even if I still had that mindset I'm not going to have a 600w+ video card. I bought a 3060 Ti specifically because of the wattage/price to performance, I honestly didn't want anything above it. But that's just me, I can understand that I'm not the hardcore audience this is intended for.

This isn't meant for a "hardcore" audience, it's meant for the most brain-dead nVidia fanboys ever born. That you chose a 3060 shows that you're not one of the mindless fools.

"...it melted PSUs, tripped breakers..Rumors claim the card itself was occasionally melting"

Yep, sounds like NGridia with their "superior", faster at any cost technology - heat and power requirements be damned!!

Well, there's a good number of people who are so brain-dead that they don't read the box that their video card comes in. As long as the box is green, they're happy, everything else be damned!

So after all Nvidia testing was the cause for California power outages this year.

They should've known better than to try this on a privatised grid. Live and learn, eh?

It will only be sold in Canada, Norway, Greenland and Siberia.

In Canada, it will only be sold in the Yukon, Northwest and Nunavut territories. The provinces are just too damn warm!

Frankly, I don't see the problem here.

All those uber gaming addicts, (you know who you are), have to do is these simple things:

1: Go back to full tower cases, but newly designed models with provisions for two (2) PSUs, perhaps a 1200 watt for the VGA, and an 800 watt for the system.

My supertower could probably fit that arrangement already:

2: Most PSUs (all?) offer an operational voltage of 110 to 220 VAC.
3: Lobby the electrical standards board to provide 10 gauge 220 volt extension cords with two (2) female 120 outlets. for the PC.

I don't think that will be enough because the standard electrical wiring in a North American wall will still be only 2-conductor Romex at 14ga each. Romex is only rated for 15A @110-120VAC (1650-1800W) on the whole circuit. You'd have to literally run a new circuit in the wall. As you say, running the PSU at 220-240VAC three-wire would be a lot more efficient.

4: Be patient with Nvidia, while they develop a housing for this monster with four (4), 110 CFM cooling fans. (Or replace the air cooling with a triple fan AIO liquid cooler. (with its own separate PSU).

I wonder if EVGA will ensure that their PSUs won't work with nVidia.

Then when you're ready to "game your a**es off, simply unplug your electric clothes dryer, and plug the rig into that outlet.

Or maybe the stove...

After these "simple steps", have been completed, you can kick and tell anyone who questions your ultimate rig's abilities, and say, "yeah, m*****r f****r, it runs Crysis, at.t000 FPS..

The nVidia Lovelace Titan, the best e-peen extension that money can buy!

And we had to pay for Nvidia to burn our rigs to ashes?

Only the fools who are willing to buy them.

And here they've been saying that Fusion reactors are still 30 years away 1 x RTX Titan to power the world forever or until it melts whichever occurs first

More like one Lovelace Titan to suck all of the power out of said fusion reactor!

What he is, is a guy with a loud mouth and a YT channel, who really likes tech stuff, worships AMD and probably has regular wet dreams about Lisa Su (which must certainly be an improvement over Raja Kadoori).

He doesn't "worship" AMD. Like a lot of tech experts who have been around for a long time (myself included), he probably just hates nVidia because of how they operate and who can blame him? His seeming "love" for AMD is based on a desire for the market to become balanced and his ability to see the big picture, that an nVidia monopoly would be disastrous for everyone (including you). Having said that, he gets a lot more right than wrong.

Jim at AdoredTV also despises Intel and nVidia. I sure hope that you're not going to question his expertise because he is, without a doubt, the best techtuber on YouTube when it comes to investigative tech journalism. He's up there with Charlie Demerjian in that category. Make no mistake, he craps on AMD when they deserve it but when 90%

I only buy AMD but it's not out of love for AMD, it's out of hate for Intel and nVidia, two companies that are 100% deserving of our disdain due to their rather shady and anti-consumer practices. My ethics won't allow me to support their behaviour and thanks to AMD, I don't have to.

 

[BobHome]

"Just because it *can* be built...."

 

[captaincranky]

One can successfully argue that it didn't need to be that high (I.e. Nvidia could have clocked the 4090 lower and it still would perform very well), but stories about the full chip blowing things up is just silly.

So we should cut to the chase and label this as, "fake news"?

I know that decent modern day PSUs have over voltage protections, but I'm not sure if they have over current protection..

I had a 12 year old Antec "Earthwatts 380D" brick on me last week, It did nothing but die quietly, leaving the rest of the system unscathed.(It wouldn't shut off via the case switch. I killed the power with the PSU switch, and that resulted in its timely demise). ACPI failure?

eMachines, (circa 2000-2005) were notorious for their 250 watt OEM trash PSUs failing quickly. and, taking out the mobo with them. But, they're out of business. I haven't heard much whimpering about "system mass destruction", since then.

 

[captaincranky]

I don't think that will be enough because the standard electrical wiring in a North American wall will still be only 2-conductor Romex at 14ga each. Romex is only rated for 15A @110-120VAC (1650-1800W) on the whole circuit. You'd have to literally run a new circuit in the wall. As you say, running the PSU at 220-240VAC three-wire would be a lot more efficient.

Romex? Living in the past much? I don't think you can even buy 2 conductor wire anymore in the US. The insulation is flexible, high temperature tolerant "plastic(?), with separate types for above, or below grade use. Of course, amateur "electricians", may, or may not, be disposed of hooking up the green wire. (It always seems to be such an inconvenience).

As an "amateur electrician" myself, I wired my 120 year old house with 12/3 to the outlets, a dedicated line for a small air compressor, with 14/3 to lighting circuits only. (Ceiling cans and security lighting on separate circuits)

I believe that 12/3 has been codified into all new construction, along with GFCI included on all circuits. (In the recent past it was kitchen and bathroom only)

 

[ZedRM]

I miss how cool it was having 2 graphics cards in a PC case.

Agreed. I miss how easy an upgrade it was.

 

[ChristopherB]

Full-fat versions of the AD102 will obviously exist (that's just the way chip binning works), so Nvidia and its board test partners would have certainly made a 'Titan' version, just as part of their standard product development cycle.

If it was 600-700W in terms of total board power, and used two 12VHPWR cables, it categorically wouldn't have been breaking PSUs. Seasonic has a 1600W PSU, the Prime TX, that comes with two 12VHPWR cables, and a sustained +12V current delivery of 108 to 133A. Is Moore's Law is Dead suggesting that this would blow up? A 700W graphics card, using both 12-pin connectors, would draw 58A (roughly 325W/27A per power connector, the rest via the PCIe slot) leaving plenty for the rest of the test PC and well within the limits of the PSU.

Not that this is the first ultra-high-power card/model that Nvidia has developed. Their recent H100 has a TDP of 700W, although it does use the SXM5 module for connectivity and power (thus designed for rackmounts only). Servers do have different PSUs to desktop PCs but they're not magically more powerful.

Their old desktop Quadro Plex units used standard PSUs and required around 600W or so, and this was back in 2008. The GTX Titan Z from 2014 was a dual GPU card, with a TDP of 375W, and could be run in SLI, albeit in a very custom setup - no blowing up of anything. And high power isn't exclusive to Nvidia. AMD's 2015 Radeon R9 390 X2, another dual GPU card, had a TDP of 580W and it didn't go around tripping PSUs of that time, either.

With 76.3b transistors, the AD102 is the second-largest single-die GPU ever made (the top slot is taken by Nvidia's GH100 at 80b and that's not for general use). Even using TSMC's tweaked N4 process node, it's going to require a lot of power -- 450W for the 4090 is clearly a lot, but that's the same for the 3090 Ti and it's 130W less than the 390 X2.

One can successfully argue that it didn't need to be that high (I.e. Nvidia could have clocked the 4090 lower and it still would perform very well), but stories about the full chip blowing things up is just silly.

I agree with you that the story sounds false and misleading. Its potentially made up BS that someone is spreading to get some hype or attention.

As someone who has been involved in overclocking and some competitive benchmarking, I never had issues with melted cards, trapped breakers, blown power supplies, etc... when running TWO cards in the same system that were drawing 600 to 800 watts each. That's with Ambient or slightly below ambient cooling. No dry ice, no LN2, no cascaded chiller, etc...

Something sounds really fishy with the story.

 

[captaincranky]

Something sounds really fishy with the story.

If you'll note, the preface/premise before the story was "rumor mill". That shouldn't encourage members to embrace this as, "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them whomever".

My own choice for participation, was the opportunity to inject some levity into the narrative. From a personal standpoint, I could abundantly care less about its veracity.

An Nvidia GTX-4090 "Titan", at no point inflicts itself into my hopes, dreams, ambitions, or budget.

 

[neeyik]

With almost all GPU rumours, there's an element of truth behind them. I have no doubt that a fully enabled, maximum clock rate AD102 will have a very high TDP, probably 550W or so. There may have even been a simple error in a test lab, be it Nvidia's, their board partner (PNY), or another AIB vendor, that led to a PSU tripping out because they used too low a rated unit, by accident.

Once such tales have gone through various channels and ultimately vamped up a bit for a YT channel, it's not hard to see how one can end up with a rumour such as this one.

I enjoy reading them, purely because I like the exercise of thinking through the logistics of such a claim. For example, before Ampere was launched, there were rumours that Nvidia had literally doubled the number of CUDA cores compared to Turing. While possible, I was a little suspicious, simply because the TU102 chip was already a very large chip: 754 mm2 in die area, 18.6 billion transistors, and 72 SMs.

When the GA102 appeared, it certainly had a lot more transistors (28.3b) but nowhere enough of an increase to have 144 SMs. In the end, it had 84 of them, so was the doubling rumour completely false? No.

As it turned out, Nvidia altered the CUDA structure from Turing, where each SM partition comprised 16 INT32 and 16 FP32 ALUs. In Ampere, the INT32 units could now handle FP32 operations, giving rise to the double FP32 rumour. Technically, the GA102 still had the same number of CUDA cores per SM partition as in the TU102 (and this is also true for the AD102), it's just that they now had twice the FP32 from before.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Romex? Living in the past much?

Well yeah, I'm a 3rd-year apprentice electrician but I haven't actually done the job in 20 years and that's what we used. That means most homes will still have it in their walls because houses don't just fall down after two decades. Jeez, you should have seen some of the older houses that I had to work on that still had the old "Knob & Tube' system in them from the 1930s.

Just because they use soem new wire now doesn't mean that most houses don't still have Romex, whether it's the white plastic-jacketed Romex or the older tar-covered Romex.

 

[captaincranky]

Well yeah, I'm a 3rd-year apprentice electrician but I haven't actually done the job in 20 years and that's what we used. That means most homes will still have it in their walls because houses don't just fall down after two decades. Jeez, you should have seen some of the older houses that I had to work on that still had the old "Knob & Tube' system in them from the 1930s.

Yeah I still have knob and tube in my upstairs ceiling. But I calculate something on the order of 400 watts absolute maximum draw, usually, it's less than 20 watts.(LED, CFL, and a dimmer on (3) 65 watt PAR 30s for the hallway, (which I don't use much because I'm cheap) A 2 watt LED serves as a "nightlight", instead. I feel safe with a draw averaging 10 watts, even with that antiquated, "solution".

Just because they use soem new wire now doesn't mean that most houses don't still have Romex, whether it's the white plastic-jacketed Romex or the older tar-covered Romex.

That was my, mistake. My aging brain confused, "BX" with Romex", and called it "plastic". IMO Romex if just fine. However in today's"living better electrically" world, 14 gauge wire @15 amps is generally not enough. Hence the new standard of 20 amps, 12 gauge & GFCI is mandatory..

We used to be able to use both 12 gauge and 14 gauge mixed, depending on anticipated draw/circuit used. That has been changed to all 12 gauge, period.

While other countries tout 240 volts line current. it does pose a greater risk of reaching the, "no let go" threshold, than does 120. .But yes, I'm fully aware that 120 volts can kill you, just not as easily.

I may be preaching to the choir, but you can easily get 240 volts by wiring across two black wires, and installing a double slot breaker We,"backwards Americans", simply reserve its use for situations where it's actually needed

So, Romex is just fine, 120 volts is fine, but older homes are simply not wired for today's electrical needs_full stop.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yeah I still have knob and tube in my upstairs ceiling. But I calculate something on the order of 400 watts absolute maximum draw, usually, it's less than 20 watts.(LED, CFL, and a dimmer on (3) 65 watt PAR 30s for the hallway, (which I don't use much because I'm cheap) A 2 watt LED serves as a "nightlight", instead. I feel safe with a draw averaging 10 watts, even with that antiquated, "solution".

Yeah, you're probably just fine with that. It's still a properly-made electrical conductor with its biggest drawback being that it's not grounded. The good thing about lighting is that, with everything going to LED, the amount of power used for lighting has gone down by more than 80%.

That was my, mistake. My aging brain confused, "BX" with Romex", and called it "plastic". IMO Romex if just fine. However in today's"living better electrically" world, 14 gauge wire @15 amps is generally not enough. Hence the new standard of 20 amps, 12 gauge & GFCI is mandatory..

That's ok, $hit happens.

We used to be able to use both 12 gauge and 14 gauge mixed, depending on anticipated draw/circuit used. That has been changed to all 12 gauge, period.

Personally, I think that the standard of 20A on 12ga. wire is a great idea because you can never be too safe. It's an interesting situation because while many things use less juice than before (LED lighting, induction cooking), electronics have now started using more.

While other countries tout 240 volts line current. it does pose a greater risk of reaching the, "no let go" threshold, than does 120. .But yes, I'm fully aware that 120 volts can kill you, just not as easily.

I may be preaching to the choir, but you can easily get 240 volts by wiring across two black wires, and installing a double slot breaker We,"backwards Americans", simply reserve its use for situations where it's actually needed

Well to be fair, both Americans and Canadians do have 220/240VAC service, we just split it to 110/120VAC. I've run 240VAC circuits before, it's just the same 3-wire commonly used for stairwell lighting (with switches at the top and bottom of the stairs). As you say, two hot, one neutral and one ground with two breakers needed for the hot wires.

So, Romex is just fine, 120 volts is fine, but older homes are simply not wired for today's electrical needs_full stop.

I agree completely. The problem is that it's far too expensive to run a home's electrical system when it's not in the skeleton stage of being built. I think that a workable idea is to rewire the ground floor circuits. This would be helpful because most of a home's electrical use is on the ground floor. If the kitchen, basement/laundry room and living/family rooms are re-wired with modern equipment that should be enough in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Let's consider that historically, the greatest use of power on the upper floors of a home was lighting. We're talking 60-100W per bulb here and if we consider the upper floor use of power, here's what the lighting alone historically used with those older home grids:
Standard bedroom: 2 ceiling bulbs (+lamps but not used at the same time)
Standard bathroom: 2 vanity bulbs (some as many as 5 but they're rare)
Master bedroom: 2 ceiling bulbs + 2 vanity bulbs in the ensuite
Upstairs Corridor: 2 ceiling fixtures with 2 bulbs each
Stairwell: 1 ceiling fixture with two bulbs (or sometimes a 5+bulb chandelier)

Since most people back then never thought of how much power they used, it's very common that they only used 100W bulbs. I wouldn't say that this as everyone but it was common enough that home grids would be made to handle it without blowing any fuses. If we do the math, if all of the upstairs lights are on in a typical 3-bedroom home, we could be looking at 1.4kW on at once.

The advent of CFLs reduced that draw by about 75% to a total of 350W and LEDs reduced that 35% further to a total of 120W for the entire floor. That's a total reduction from 1.4kW of 91%. That leaves more than enough capacity for things like laptops (<50W), PCs (<500W) and LCD TVs (<200W) just from the reduction in lighting power use without even touching the fact that rooms have electrical outlets as well.