Right here we go once more: Half a 12 months after Nvidia’s final official assertion concerning broken RTX 4090 cable adapters, new instances point out the issue hasn’t light. The blame has been handed between Nvidia, person error, and the specification writer. Switching to ATX 3.0 energy provides remains to be the most secure wager.
Not less than three new stories of melting 16-pin adapters for Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card appeared on Reddit this week. The complaints may sign one thing remains to be unsuitable with the connectors six months after the controversy emerged.
The issues began in October when a number of 4090 homeowners stated their energy cables had burned or melted. In November, Nvidia acknowledged 50 instances worldwide, saying the customers had improperly linked the adapters. Nevertheless, Igor’s Lab questioned the soldering high quality of the provided adapters. One person opened a class-action lawsuit towards Staff Inexperienced, and AMD took the chance to take a jab at its competitor in a vacation tweet final 12 months (beneath).
Keep protected this vacation season. @amdradeon pic.twitter.com/DOpg0f2qaP
— Sasa Marinkovic (@SasaMarinkovic) November 17, 2022
The RTX 4090 makes use of 16-pin 12VHPWR connectors and natively helps ATX 3.0 energy provides. Customers who do not wish to spend further to improve from their ATX 2.0 PSUs can use the bundled adapters on their 8-pin connectors.
One of many new incidents occurred after round six months of use. The person claims to have set the connectors appropriately and securely. Equally, a second person claims his properly-connected adapter went up in smoke about six or seven months after set up. The person primarily used the PC to coach AI fashions somewhat than play video games. A peculiar facet of the second report is that the affected PC accommodates a second RTX 4090 that hasn’t skilled any issues.
A 3rd report comes from somebody using a third-party Corsair SF750 platinum adapter. Assuming it was appropriately linked, this occasion may counsel that the adapter is not the issue. Even stranger is that the person restricted the GPU to 70 p.c energy and paired it with a modest Ryzen 7600 CPU, so the PSU actually wasn’t overtaxed.
Studies of 4090 connectors melting or burning in ATX 3.0 provides have not appeared. So the most effective safeguard towards the problem might be to keep away from utilizing any adapter and easily improve to an ATX 3.0 PSU, which most likely would not value a lot further in comparison with the $1,600 graphics card. Those that cannot keep away from utilizing the adapters can examine the standing of their 16-pin reference to a brand new characteristic in GPU-Z.