An amusing, if informative tale*:
Ever since the 3xxx series, there have been stories about how Nvidia
cards are catching on fire. Well, not so much fire as melting and
scorching the on-card power connectors. Either way, the card didn't
come out very well from the experience and, while there have been any
tales of actual 'oh-my-god-my-whole-PC-is-on-fire!" experiences, I
think it's probably only a matter of time. These problems were
exacerbated with the release of the 4xxx and 5xxx line of nvidia cards (especially the 49xx and 59xx cards), which demanded even more power
from the connectors.
Nvidia, of course, did what any responsible corporation would do. The
first denied the problem even existed, then tried to lay the blame on
other components (it's the power supply at fault! it's the cheap
cables you're using! It's the user who plugged it in wrong!), before admitting that maybe, in some very rare rare rare cases (which aren't
that rare, apparently) the connectors might fail... but here are some half-hearted work-arounds that, sure, may prevent the melting power
cable issue, but also hobble your GPUs performance, making that $1500
card run the same as something half the price.
In fairness, nvidia isn't entirely wrong that the problem lies (at
least partly) with the cables. The 12 volt 2x6 connectors used in
these cards can pull up to 450 watts of power, and that's a lot of
juice to go through such a tiny package. Each pin carries 6.5 amps of current. That's well within the design rating of the cables and
connectors. The problem is that if one of those pins can't keep up
that current (maybe it's broken, or corroded, or whatever), the load
gets transferred to the other 5 pins... and that pushes them over the
design limits. Shortly thereafter, the magic smoke is released.
PSU and cable manufacturers have tried to work around the problem, but ultimately a better solution needs come from nvidia. They need to
ensure that no single pin can overdraw current. This would probably
require a redesign of the entire connector. Even better, they need to
start making GPUs that don't demand 450W of power. These solutions
would solve the melting issue far better than pushing it onto
PSU/cable manufacturers.
Because let's face it: with computer prices skyrocketing, and margins
on PC sales so razor thin already, the first thing that OEMs are going
to start cutting back on is quality of the PSUs and cabling. Which
means we're going to be seeing even more stories about nvidia cards
catching fire... and while it's the cables that are at fault, it's the
nvidia cards that are causing them to fail so spectacularly. And
nvidia has had years to rectify this issue. There's already a
class-action suit acting nvidia from 2022; nvidia may or may not
escape blame in that one. But any future suits will have ample history
of nvidia ignoring the problem and probably have a lot more success.
Meanwhile, ARM is really starting to amp up its own GPU capabilities.
Sure, it's not anywhere near the capabilities of a fully powered
5090RTX yet... but if ARM knows anything, it's getting a lot of
processing done with a lot less power draw, and that's becoming
increasingly important in the market.
* story https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/possibly-the-first-instance-of-asus-anti-melting-12v-2-6-power-cable-err-melting-shows-up-adding-more-fuel-to-the-fire-that-is-nvidias-connector/
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