The Truth About Nvidia’s RTX 4090 Adapters: Testing, X-Ray, & 12VHPWR Failures

Seems like a huge design failure that the sense pins (which need to be connected for the card to turn on) mate before the power connections are fully mated.

Opinion- these Mini-Fit / Micro-Fit style connectors have no place in PCs. I’ve always hated how much force they require especially those damn clips when you need to take them out, which doesn’t make much sense to me given they barely click in.

Everyone else just speculating and making stuff up while these folks work with an actual FMEA lab to analyze actual failed connectors and reproduce failures.

Mark this as a [video], please.

To note, this is the THIRD time in the past two calendar years that Steve Burke and the folks at Gamers Nexus have done a product investigation on something capable of causing a fire. They also prompted Fractal Design to do their own investigation and catch a fire hazard before Gamers Nexus themselves reproduced the problem. The other cases are:

* August 28, 2021 - Fractal Torrent Fan Hub Short Circuit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxtbLou978)

* August 24, 2021 - Gigabyte GP-P750GM Power Supply Explosion - Uncut Testing Footage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JmPUr-BeEM)

* January 31, 2021 - NZXT H1 PCIe Riser Short Circuit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjUscSRLwks)

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This is a solid summary of the video, courteous of /u/Nestledrink on Reddit in the /r/Nvidia thread:

* Per Nvidia partner: Failure rate is 0.05% - 0.1%. Nvidia may provide more context on this later

* Any of them "can" fail because there are a few mode of failures and one of them involves user error.

* Confirmed 2 Manufacturers: Astron and NTK. Also may have been additional subcontracting to Tricon.

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* Failure in general is overwhelmingly uncommon and many of the failures are very easily avoidable

* Causes are...

1) Foreign object debris in the cable 1A) Caused by improper manufacturing and scraping of the bump combined with high current and or poor connection 1B) Creating poor points of contacts

2) Improper insertion by user

3) Improper insertion in combination with a taut wire on one or more pins. Causing one point of poor contact that heats up.

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GN also went on to debunk several theories out there. Not going to summarize them. Please watch to understand some of the misinformation out there.

Conclusion:

* Cables are melting when connector is unseated

* It requires being unseated AND pulling the cable at an angle. It did not fail when tested unseated but not being pulled at an angle

* "Partial insertion and angling of the pin into the socket could have increased susceptibility for a high resistance parallel connection at the lip of the socket" - Failure Analysis Lab Testing sent to GN

* Any debris will make this worse

* Failures are rare

* Don't chase specific adapters as any of them can fail

* Anxiety surrounding the issue might exacerbate the issue because of 1) When people are unplugging and re-plugging, it could create foreign object debris (not common) and 2) User error when re-plugging the connector

* Purely objectively, GN feels you should be comfortable using 12VHPWR connector but it requires them to be fully connected and seated (critical). There should not be any gap. Push the cable until you can't wiggle it out anymore (GN gave an example of how you could pull the seemingly fully inserted cable out by wiggling it out -- an indication that the cable is NOT fully seated)