Poorly manufactured adapter responsible for melting Nvidia RTX 4090 cables, report claims

[Shawn Knight]

A hot potato: As Nvidia continues to investigate incidents of burning and melting power adapters that come bundled with its new RTX 4090 graphics card, the team over at Igor's Lab believes it has found the culprit. According to the publication, the issue isn't the 12VHPWR connection itself but rather, the quad 8-pin to 16-pin adapter distributed by Nvidia. Specifically, whoever manufactured the adapter performed a very poor soldering job.

Upon closer inspection, the crew discovered that four 14 gauge wires are distributed across a total of six contacts (each outer contact is tied to one wire, and the two inner contacts each have two wires soldered to them).

"The solder base is a mere 0.2 mm thin copper base with a width of 2 mm per incoming wire, which then results in 4 mm per pair for the middle connections," Igor's added. It is so fragile that "carefully lifting off the enveloping layer causes the thin plate to tear immediately." Similarly, bending the cables at the connector – which can easily happen when plugging them in or unplugging them during normal installation or removal – could also induce damage.

Igor's Lab has contacted Nvidia about the issue and believes a recall of the adapter is the least the GPU maker could do for customers at this stage.

Based on the evidence they have presented and the reports of damage that have surfaced so far, it would probably be best to discontinue using the Nvidia-supplied adapter and replace it with a quality third-party solution. At the very least, you will want to avoid excessively bending the adapter near the connection points and prevent them from being stuffed against a side panel at an awkward angle.

The best course of action would be to simply replace your existing ATX 2.0 power supply with a new ATX 3.0 version that has a native 16-pin PCIe cable. Several companies including MSI, Gigabyte and SilverStone already offer power supplies with native 12VHPWR connectors and more are in the pipeline.

Sure, that is more money out of your pocket but if you are already spending no less than $1,600 on a new graphics card, what is another couple hundred bucks to ensure your rig isn't a giant fire hazard?

Image credit: Igor's Lab

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96471-poorly-manufactured-adapter-responsible-melting-rtx-4090-cables.html

 

[m4a4]

You'd think SOMEONE would've checked if the cables (during and after finalizing the design) were sturdy...

Well, at the least, that's added to a checklist.

 

[stewi0001]

You'd think SOMEONE would've checked if the cables (during and after finalizing the design) were sturdy...

Well, at the least, that's added to a checklist.

I would not be surprised if the development was rushed to meet a deadline.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Embarrassing, but easy fix.
Personally I would never use a free adapter with a $1600 GPU, but I do understand it should be perfectly safe to use.

 

[Gregtombstone]

Its seems big money does not buy quality. Too busy counting the money to care.

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

G, great service quality for over 2000$...

 

[takaozo]

I've seen many stupid ideas in my life but soldering a thick wire to a thin metal sheet and expecting to last more than one bend beats them all.
Also soldering 4 wires to 6 pins , dah funk.

Nvidia should have embrace this tested design.

 

[Arbie]

I would not be surprised if the development was rushed to meet a deadline.

IIRC the 4090s were built well ahead of time and held for a strategic release date. But development may have been too rushed somewhere along the line. Looking at the connector construction... this is an awful piece of work.

 

[MagusISS]

As mentioned, a recall should be in order... I would think that Nvidia, or "whoever manufactured the adapter", should take responsibility though a recall of the defective item. I don't see where it is different from an auto manufacturer that puts out a vehicle with defective seat-belts or airbags. If the product has been discovered to be defective, somebody should take ownership and make it right.

 

[Avro Arrow]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I GIVE YOU... NVIDIA'S NEW THEME SONG!

 

[kiwigraeme]

Given red ring of death , dry solder issues are well known etc .
You would think manufacturing know how and QC - this would be a non-issue

Then again go look at some old appliances - like stove tops - the thingy that controls the power to elements had plenty of copper . If they use copper now - they will use minimum unless commercial grade .
I kind of like Sony's approach over engineer the first ones - Blu-Ray players , PS3 etc and then dial back - their first Bluray or CD players were bricks .

500W draw is not insignificant.

Also with the wires heating - when does the PSU protection jump in?

My wife twirls and swings her earbuds chords - she wonders why the don't last - yanks curtains closed , shuts draws too quickly etc- I don't go there - Though make sure my son treats my headphones with care

 

[Geralt]

To the final conclusion of the article poster: Better I buy no 4090 and no ATX 3.0 PSU, and keep my good ATX 2.0 PSU, guy. The way some people support Nvidia on this tech site is just unacceptable.

 

[PEnnn]

You'd think a $1600 item would get a cursory pinch of QA, if any!!

Do they test these combustible paperweights at nGreedia before they unleash them upon its adoring buyers or is that too much to ask??

 

[Burty117]

Has anyone tried buying an ATX 3.0 PSU? Here in the UK at least, I cannot find any in-stock or even listed on most popular tech shops.

Seasonic won't have theirs out until December so I assume we might actually get some ATX 3.0 PSU's early next year?

 

[p51d007]

Hey! You get what you paid for.
Oh wait!

 

[Red34jfp]

To the final conclusion of the article poster: Better I buy no 4090 and no ATX 3.0 PSU, and keep my good ATX 2.0 PSU, guy. The way some people support Nvidia on this tech site is just unacceptable.

Well, there's people out there who use GPUs for their workflows and a fast GPU like the RTX 4090 is an investment, assuming that it doesn't catch fire. Getting an ATX 3.0 PSU, or even simply a 90° 16pin adapter, could save them a lot of time and money.

 

[Moochy]

Just me. I never buy new release bleeding edge stuff. I wait for the guinea pigs to finish testing the new stuff. Besides, I refuse to pay a premium for goods that no one really needs.

 

[Watzupken]

Embarrassing, but easy fix.
Personally I would never use a free adapter with a $1600 GPU, but I do understand it should be perfectly safe to use.

Free or paid for adapter, it actually makes no difference. Just because you paid for it, does not mean that it is better built than one that came free from a reputable company, if you get what I mean? I've seen poor quality cables/ adapters sold at reasonably high price. The unfortunate fact is that a lot of companies just source their products from OEMs, which I think is no different in this case.
To me, the main issue here is how precarious this new connector standard is. Besides the fact that you should not even subtly bend the cable 30 to 35mm away from the connector, you need to make sure that the connector is plugged in snuggly, you also need to use a "good" adaptor/ cable. The last point in which most people will not be able to tell. In addition, there seems to be a limited number of plug/ unplug cycles as the connector may come loose. So to me, there are too many potential failure points here, which I am not sure if it is worth the aesthetics (smaller connector).
Anyway, it also seems like Nvidia's flagship tends to launch with teething issue. RTX 2080 Ti was reported with very high failure rates (not sure the actual cause but was one of the reasons I dare not buy it). RTX 3090/ 3080 kicked off with burnt caps issue. RTX 4090 kicked off with melting power connectors.

 

[crackerjacks]

My theory is Nvidia outsourced their QC to a 3rd party, being in QC/QA in China for a number of years, the inspectors didn't really know what they were looking at, money exchanged under the table, 'samples' provided for the inspectors to 'inspect'.
Very common here, also the factory probably sub contracted the production to another factory without any certifications then shipped to authorized factory.
Things like this, you would like any large company would actually send their own rep out and spend at least a day or 2 randomly selecting samples and checking the whole chain instead of palming it off to a 3rd party who will have no responsibility.

 

[nnguy2]

Hear me out... great opportunity for Nvidia to sell Founder's edition power adapters HAHAHAHA

 

[terzaerian]

Funny how Nvidia manages to neatly pin all their problems on those darn third-party manufacturers just not living up to their *high standards of excellence*

What a ****in joke, they really are embracing the Apple model down to poor QC at the micro level

 

[Watzupken]

My theory is Nvidia outsourced their QC to a 3rd party, being in QC/QA in China for a number of years, the inspectors didn't really know what they were looking at, money exchanged under the table, 'samples' provided for the inspectors to 'inspect'.
Very common here, also the factory probably sub contracted the production to another factory without any certifications then shipped to authorized factory.
Things like this, you would like any large company would actually send their own rep out and spend at least a day or 2 randomly selecting samples and checking the whole chain instead of palming it off to a 3rd party who will have no responsibility.

It is not possible to escape with no responsibility. You can delegate responsibility, but at the end of the day, the adapter is in the box of the product, and thus, you will be accountable. And in this case, the bad soldering may not be just a few or affecting certain batches. For all you know, it may well been the design based on the price that Nvidia and partners are willing to pay, and so may not be a QC fault. Now with this becoming an issue, they will have to rectify/ improve on the quality of the adapter.

 

[Gregtombstone]

Given red ring of death , dry solder issues are well known etc .
You would think manufacturing know how and QC - this would be a non-issue

Then again go look at some old appliances - like stove tops - the thingy that controls the power to elements had plenty of copper . If they use copper now - they will use minimum unless commercial grade .
I kind of like Sony's approach over engineer the first ones - Blu-Ray players , PS3 etc and then dial back - their first Bluray or CD players were bricks .

500W draw is not insignificant.

Also with the wires heating - when does the PSU protection jump in?

My wife twirls and swings her earbuds chords - she wonders why the don't last - yanks curtains closed , shuts draws too quickly etc- I don't go there - Though make sure my son treats my headphones with care

My first CD player a Philips CD1 in the 80s weighed 3 kilos and when thru 3 lasers during it 20years of service. Built like the proverbial brick s**t house.

 

[MarcusNumb]

Well well well, I'm curious to see what NVIDIA is going to do with this problem. Obviously they can't re-design the connector. Probably sending a new "quality" cable with "quality" adaptor to everyone who bought a 4090 ?

 

[cristianm]

Looks like the connector was designed in a shed, a disaster waiting to happen. it is not about execution, not a bad solder, not bad qa. You have those double thick wires in order to send a lot of amps but one can't solder those double wires to a thin plate and expect it to not melt while 50A pass through the tiny section of the contact.