At this point, it’s unclear whether the issues are one-offs or systemic.
I can really recommend both Der 8auers video and Buildzoids video on this. Der 8auer has good thermal imaging of imbalanced current between the wires between two 12V HPWR plugs, and Buildzoid has the explanation why the current can’t be balanced with the current setup on 5090s.
And it burns, burns, burns
The gpu of fire The gpu of fire
Strange, a second nickel just appeared in my hand.
I got a dime. Also, the monkey’s paw just curled another finger, but that’s not important.
Are people improperly connecting them again?
The problem seems to be load balancing, or lack thereof. A German guy on YouTube noticed that his cable got up to 150°C at the PSU end, due to one wire delivering 20 or 22 amps, while the others were getting a lot less pumped through them. 22 Ampere is pretty much half the power draw of the card, through one wire instead of three if the load was properly balanced between them. That’s why it ran so hot and melted to shit.
If you’ve ever worked on your car’s 12 V electrics system, you’ll know how thick the wires (and corresponding connector sizes) are for things like window defrosters that will run through a 20 or 30 amp fuse.
The person on reddit used a third party cable instead of the one supplied with the device.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1ilhfk0/rtx_5090fe_molten_12vhpwr/
It melted on both sides (PSU and GPU), which indicates it was probably the cable being the issue.
12VHPWR is a fucking mess, so please don’t tempt fate with your expensive purchase.
That’s bad, but that aside - It might be time to consider alternate power delivery to these cards. The power they need should warrant having a standard c13 plug directly on em or something.
c13 plug
Who would’ve thought… 3DFX was apparently ahead of its time…
Is this the fabled Bitchin’ Fast 3d?
I love the IDE connector on the front of the card itself.
