The connector used by the 3x00 series is different than the one used by the 4x00 series.
How come nobody seated a 3090ti wrong? Or any of the older 12 pins? You'd think with the crazy number of cards they shipped across all the miners and scalpers that someone would have burned a 30 series card too, yet the only burnt 30xx cards I've found online were standard 8pin connectors.
Anyone else remember the 3090 launch and some EVGA cards were frying power delivery caps on the back side? That problem came and went just like this power connector issue. Makes me think, it seems like it wasn't a connector problem but something that was solved in a board revision. Or it is a connector problem and the issues was a small batch of bad female receptacles, and nothing to do with the dongles?
The connector used by the 3x00 series is different than the one used by the 4x00 series.
Exactly right. Calling this "user error" expects us to believe 4090 owners have never installed graphics cards before, or they're incompetent compared to non-4090 users.How come nobody seated a 3090ti wrong?
Yep, don't forget 2080TI space invaders, and the 590 which routinely blew up and TPU put a hidden message "epic fail" in their review:Anyone else remember the 3090 launch and some EVGA cards were frying power delivery caps on the back side?
Microfit that carries the power is the same.
If you look back at 3000 series, it was mostly FE cards that had 12 pin power, and the 3000 FE cards were all lower power than the 4090.
So if we are talking about a problem that happens .04% of the time, and you spread it among fewer cards with lower power, it just didn't manifest in enough numbers to get noticed.
I was thinking it's the fans, not the PCB. Compare the size of the fans from these cards to other cards. They are proportionally bigger in every dimension. For that HSF design, 3 x 8-pins are clearly getting in the way.you would like to think so based on the outer housing, but if you look at the pcb it is a different story. (the 3080 rog has some perspective in the focal length while the 3080 founders is nearly orthogonal, but i've tried to match up the pcie pins as close as possible). the cut and paste of the 3x 8pins is roughly the area they would have to take up. unless nv changed their basic tried/tested layout, they would have to make an even bigger pcb or abandon the through card fan hole. but they cant lose the hole and keep temps down. they made the 4090 through card fan even bigger so they lost even more pcb area.
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They are very similar, but as I recall, the 12 pin in the 3x00 series makes a click when you push it in. The 4x00 series 16 pin does not. Its really mushy.
One more detail to add to your list: average custom card width has increased with the 4000 series. Just one anecdotal example: Asus went from 140mm with TUF 3090Ti to 150mm with TUF 4090. Cases that could fit the last series were suddenly cramped for the new series, hence they introduced additional mechanical stress on the adapter / connector assembly.One more occurred to me. Check the orientation of the connectors for 3000 vs 4000 series:
In the 3000 series the connector is angled and sideways to the length of the card. It seems much less likely to pull the connector from the sides, which was the failure induced by GN.
Both use standard Molex Microfit 3.0 specification for the pins and retention mechanisms.
There is the same subtle click either way.
Main factors are as I mentioned before. Lower power and fewer of them in use.
The 3090Ti uses a lot more power than the 4090 (per TPU). The 3090 uses a bit less.
Having the connector at an angle did also allow the users to SEE the clip and if it was seated or not. Which I think was a boog thing. But that the fact that AIB models all used traditional 8 pins is probably why we didn't hear about it.
The 4090 being larger certainly doesn't help. So people are putting even more stress on the connector.
Hopefully everything is good if it clicked in and there is no issue when no you tried to pull on the wire to see if it would come out.I finally got around to testing my 4090 last night prior to putting a water block on it. Given that I didn't want to drastically alter my PC without testing the card, I just used the adapter with my Gigabyte Aorus 3080's existing 3x 8-pin setup. The biggest thing that I noticed is that the adapter seemed absolutely fine to me. I expected it to have a very minimal clicking noise and to not be sure if it was properly seated or not; however, the click was quite audible and I didn't perceive any difficulty in inserting the cable. Now, to be fair, that might be due to inserting the adapter while the card was out of the case, and plugging the PCI-E cables into the adapter while the card was in the case.
The connector just needs a good enough indicator that it's fully plugged in. That's not the case for common folks right now. Which is bad. Kind of a faulty design one could argue. But if it's plugged in correctly nothing will happen.
Rather ironic since Cablemod were buzzing around the reddit forums when this first started and were basically saying "wait for our cables, it won't happen there!"And now aftermarket cables are melting.
Did you look at the reddit post I posted above? That cable mod adapter was not plugged in correctly. Plain and simple and that's obvious looking at it. Because you can see how far it has been plugged in. Which was not all the way in.Nah, the plug is a defective fire hazard design, plain and simple.
Because the cable design is defective. That's why 8pin doesn't have the same problem, doesn't need side panel clearance "guidance", or mollycoddling when routing it.That cable mod adapter was not plugged in correctly.
Because the cable design is defective. That's why 8pin doesn't have the same problem, doesn't need side panel clearance "guidance", or mollycoddling when routing it.
Show us 50 examples of 8pin connectors burning up in the last 3 months.I'd bet just as many 8 pin connectors aren't plugged in correctly either.
And that's the point. The new connector is smaller and less robust with less tolerances, yet it's expected to provide a whole lot more power. That makes it inherently unsafe by design.The difference is 8 pin connectors only carry 150 watts, and not up to 600 watts.
Show us 50 examples of 8pin connectors burning up in the last 3 months.
Even if you somehow manage this, there are still a thousand 8pin connectors for every 12VHPWR in use.