Nvidia’s 12VHPWR Converter Was A Hot Candidate In Contact Drama

In recent days, the new 12VHPWR standard has come under fire, after users with Nvidia’s new Geforce RTX 4090 graphics card experienced the new 16-pin connector smoking and melting. The exact reason for this is still being investigated, but it has been speculated that it is due to the fact that the transformers charged with it cannot withstand bending.

► Geforce RTX 4090 suffers from melted 12VHPWR adapters

brings now Igor Walusik from Igor’s Laboratory More clarity on the matter, by disassembling and examining one of the Nvidia-signed switches of the type that emitted smoke. Wallossek peels off the die-cast connector and notes that it’s not the 12VHPWR standard that is the culprit in the drama, but the substandard transformer design. The connector has twelve contact pins that provide up to 600 watts, with one row of six pins connected to 12 volts, and the other row to ground.

At the other end, the adapter switches to four PCI Express connectors in a classic 8-pin format. With a complete dissection of the solution, Wallossek notes that a thick 12-volt cable from each transformer–four in all–is soldered to the six plates belonging to the contact pins of the 12VHPWR connector. These are narrow surfaces to which to weld, and with minimal physical impact on the cable or pin, the molten metal joint succumbs. The latter is clearly feasible even with the molded connector housing in place.

However, it doesn’t end there, Walusick finds out by making more plastic digs. Namely, the six pins are joined together and the separate boards are just galleries games. The disadvantage of this is that the entire connector can supply power as long as one of the four cables on the back is still connected. If the contact is weak, the load can be unbalanced in a way that exceeds the 150 watt limit for 8-pin cables, with consequences such as unwanted fusing or waking the mains unit from overload.

So Wallossek believes that the problems that users have reported in recent days are, in short, the result of switches with really poor build quality — not the 16-pin connector design or the 12VHPWR standard itself. Nvidia should pay attention and remember the architecture of the adapter also something mentioned. Wallossek also takes the opportunity to hand the boot over to “Youtube celebrities”, who are believed to have cast negative tunes about the conductor without actually understanding where the problem lies.

To avoid the problem completely, it is suggested to replace the adapter with a new power supply that complies with the ATX 3.0 standard, and thus has cables tied to 16-pin connections of exactly 12 V/HP, without the risk of balancing problems between the various 8-pin variants. Currently, the corresponding quality defects have not appeared among any of the manufacturers whose power supplies are manufactured according to all the rules of Art.