[HN Gopher] Nvidia's hot adapter for the GeForce RTX 4090 with a...
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Nvidia's hot adapter for the GeForce RTX 4090 with a built-in
breaking point
Author : elorant
Score : 220 points
Date : 2022-10-28 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.igorslab.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.igorslab.de)
| badkitty99 wrote:
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I'm not sure people have been yelling that the spec or form
| factor are the problem, they've been yelling that NVIDIA is the
| problem, exactly for how they implemented and supply a 12V
| solution (which includes both the physical products they supply,
| and the messaging they've put out around it) which this article
| yet again underlines as being both real, and even worse than
| initially thought.
|
| No need to beat about the bush, the "certain celebrities" is
| folks like JayzTwoCents who are willing to destroy their
| relationship with NVIDIA over this by showing that a company
| intentionally sells products they know are fire hazards, lied
| about that to the public, doubled down on the lies when they got
| called out on it the more people staretd reporting on it, and
| kept doing so all the way up to when official paperwork showed
| they knew about the issue and went ahead with it all along. The
| initial reports were "this is dangerous", but escalated to
| "NVIDIA knew this would could catch fire and pushed for sales
| anyway, this cannot be okay".
|
| If this was a cable that just bricked cards, or even entire
| computers, that's a dick move but it's just a computer. No one
| died, just some hardware got destroyed. However, that's not what
| it does: it can literally start fires and people can die, and
| there is publicly available documentation that shows that NVIDIA
| is strictly liable (in the legal sense) for gross negligence
| (again in the legal sense). NVIDIA should be all kinds of sued
| and federally fined here.
| Sakos wrote:
| The last time I commented on a previous story about this
| debacle, people pointed out that molex melt all the time and
| that this wasn't a big deal. I saw that they were right that
| molex do melt sometimes, but these adapters have been on the
| market for what, a week? It felt like there was something wrong
| with the quality for it to happen so often with specifically
| these parts.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| Molex connectors do indeed melt but rarely catch on fire.
| Molex connectors are made of nylon which melts as low as
| 170C.
|
| The pictures of the internals of this adapter are absolutely
| horrifying. This is 737-MAX style gross negligence: Several
| consecutive worst practices/shortcuts that ensure
| catastrophic failure one way or another.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > people pointed out that molex melt all the time and that
| this wasn't a big deal.
|
| They're insane.
|
| I've been building my own PCs for over 20 years. I've NEVER
| had a connector melt.
|
| I've never HEARD of anyone having a connector melt outside of
| maybe a post to /r/WellThatSucks of a single melted
| connector.
| paulmd wrote:
| molex-to-SATA adapters melt all the time because the
| "molded" SATA connectors use thermoplastic that starts to
| soften well before it actually melts... and those plastic
| temperatures are low enough that you hit them in an average
| case. They are unsafe even for HDD usage let alone the
| (insane) people who use them for GPU mining rigs. Just get
| some custom 6-pin strings made, people, it's cheaper than
| burning your farm down lol
|
| that said it's the SATA side that's the problem, not molex.
|
| molex does have a reputation for scorching and arcing at
| higher current levels though. So does the Tamiya connector
| that is super common in the RC car world, terrible
| connector.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Melty Molices mostly affected the old 5 1/4" HDD connector
| and that was only really a problem because of extremely poor
| tolerances in third-party connectors leading to bent-open
| sockets. Mate-n-lok, which is the same type of connector
| (available in a gazillion variations), is used in huge
| numbers to this day and has zero reliability issues because
| the connector design is unproblematic if done correctly.
|
| What's sorta new here is that these are genuine connectors -
| not aftermarket dreck - and they're already having issues at,
| as I understand it, around 70-80 % of the specced load
| (specified for >600 W, while these GPUs are normally limited
| to 450 W or so).
| rrss wrote:
| How often does it happen? I cannot tell from the article.
| wnevets wrote:
| Too early to tell. Not only are the cards with these
| adapters just now getting into the hands of consumers but
| some people didn't realize there was melting taking place
| until they unplugged the adapter.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Fun fact: it doesn't even need to happen once for a company
| to be guilty of gross negligence when there's a public
| paper trail that shows they knew about the problem, then
| went ahead with selling products with that problem.
|
| But: it's happened more than once now, which is the exact
| bar required to clear to count as evidence of a pattern of
| real world damages in court.
| [deleted]
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I wish I was a fly on the wall when the conversation at EVGA
| went down. The timing is a little too perfect.
| [deleted]
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Having heard "fire hazard" from a nvidia fan as a justification
| for their user-hostile signed firmware (it blocks free drivers
| from using the cards at full speed), now I think we can put
| that excuse among the myths.
|
| I see no good will in blocking free Linux drivers, just the
| same crap that earned Torvald's salute.
|
| That they now opened a kernel driver is small improvement if
| the firmware remains signed.
| aftbit wrote:
| I was with you until: "and fined for half their annual profits
| by the FCC". Not only is that not the FCC's job, but that's an
| insane fine for a relatively small problem. If anything, NVIDIA
| should be required to recall the adapters and replace them with
| working ones at their cost, and maybe pre-fund a settlement
| fund to pay out in cases of damage due to this connector.
| sn0wf1re wrote:
| If they were aware of the risks/problem then I do not think
| it is unfair punishment. We as a society need to have a
| stronger response to companies choosing profits over safety.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| An honest mistake is different from an informed decision.
|
| The consequences are not small, and the action was apparently
| fully informed. Those two things combined constitute a very
| Big Deal deserving no forgiveness at all.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Corporations aren't going to adjust their behaviour until the
| punishments for their malfeasance start becoming a true
| existential threat
| xxpor wrote:
| They spend _lots and lots_ of money to make sure this doesn
| 't happen. It's more or less why the entire right wing
| legal movement (Federalist Society et al) exists.
| saltminer wrote:
| Sadly, this. "Tort reform" is the name of the game, and
| it's depressing how well it's worked. Much like the more
| recent efforts to rebrand estate taxes as a "death tax"
| to bolster public support for the wealthy giving up less
| of their inherited fortunes.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Agreed, and if this also seems like a valid case for
| holding individuals accountable if it can be shown they
| knowingly ignored or covered the situation. Perhaps
| criminally so if there were injuries.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Sorry, but that's nowhere close to being enough.
|
| This isn't an "insane fine" or a "relatively small problem."
|
| These things are dangerous and they had to know that they
| were dangerous when they shipped them. They deserve to get
| financially nuked for being so ridiculously irresponsible.
| Companies that put profits ahead of consumer safety shouldn't
| be allowed to have profits.
| karamanolev wrote:
| There's "they should've known, but it seems they didn't",
| which is bad engineering and should be punished somewhat.
|
| On the other hand, this seems to be "they knew about it and
| went ahead anyway" a la Boeing 737 MAX, which is many, many
| levels above and it should be the equivalent to a financial
| nuke, IMHO. Recoverable, but something that is talked about
| in the company for the next 15 years.
|
| Dare I say, if there's provably a person who was presented
| with this as a problem and overrode the decision so as not
| to delay the problem, there should be criminal liability
| for them?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Yes, there should be, in addition to financial penalties.
| Unfortunately, what is considered to be a "fair"
| punishment for a corporation rarely ever reaches the
| level of criminal prosecution and never forces the
| corporation to change its operating strategy. In an ideal
| world, corporations would be punished financially,
| criminally, and be forced to reorganize whenever they
| attempt to wipe obvious dangers under the rug for
| profit's sake.
| counttheforks wrote:
| > relatively small problem
|
| Setting the houses of their customers on fire is a small
| problem??
| kube-system wrote:
| Setting people's houses on fire is in fact a large problem.
| Potentially setting houses on fire is also a problem, but
| it is "relatively smaller" than the liability of actually
| injuring or killing someone, or hundreds of people.
|
| Melting connectors is not all that uncommon of an issue
| with shoddy electronics. Well designed hardware rarely has
| this problem, but if you buy enough no-name import junk,
| you'll probably run into this with other products. (I have)
| Most of the time it does not cause a fire.
|
| This isn't okay, but it also isn't Surfside condo collapse
| levels of bad.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This is a high amperage connector. It is significantly
| more prone to catching on fire that the majority of
| connectors in no name import junk in case of it melting.
| kube-system wrote:
| Fire is caused by heating something to its ignition
| temperature, and heat is a function of the conductor its
| flowing through just as much as it's a function of the
| current itself.
|
| The current provided from a base-spec USB charger is
| enough to start a fire, given the right (er... wrong)
| conductor. Plenty of us remember lighting Estes rocket
| motors with flashlight batteries (zinc carbon, no less)
| as a kid.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| When a junction melts, it is often the case that the
| connection itself will become much more resistive, which
| will make it heat up more and more. For an application
| where the PSU might be able to supply hundreds of Watts,
| it's much easier for things to get very hot and ignite.
|
| This is despite the use of a good conductor.
|
| And the issue is that when the power source is that much
| more powerful you're more likely to make whatever is
| nearby catch fire.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Fair enough, changed it to just federally fined. But maybe
| going "we know this can cause fires, we're going to sell it
| anyway" should come with an insane fine. If you're willing to
| burn down the place for sales, see if you can recover from
| the same being done to you. And if you can't, maybe that
| _should_ be the price for prioritising sales over human
| lives.
| mike_d wrote:
| It does come with an insane fine. You just need to report
| it to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
| [deleted]
| dtjb wrote:
| >a relatively small problem
|
| This is an overcorrection to OPs comment. If Nvidia knew
| about the very real risk of fire but continued to push unsafe
| products with misleading statements, that is a significant
| problem and hints at a fundamental rot within the company.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| This is the bigger issue that isn't addressed by what
| effectively is a minor tax on gross negligence.
| cmsj wrote:
| a nice juicy fine would certainly make sure they wouldn't
| knowingly release fire hazard GPUs again.
| t3estabc wrote:
| this is a testthis is a testthis is a testthis is a testthis is a
| testthis is a testthis is a test
| zepmck wrote:
| People pretending to do professional work with low budget/quality
| workstation. If you cannot afford to operate a 4090 according to
| specs, you cannot blame NVIDIA if things go wrong.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| What spec do you think users are violating?
| mceachen wrote:
| My understanding is that the failure is the included power
| adapter.
|
| If I spend both of $1600USD on a product, I assume the included
| adapter will work.
| gambiting wrote:
| Eh? What are you talking about? The part melting and damaging
| the card is the adapter that's literally provided by Nvidia.
| How is this "not according to spec"????
| dvdkon wrote:
| Here I am, crimping wires for a 3D printer that will draw at most
| a quarter of the current, and NVIDIA is just giving out
| connectors with shoddily _soldered_ connections? Shame! It also
| looks like they think strain relief is optional.
|
| EDIT: This is a crimped wire for ATX power connectors:
| https://modmymods.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/a8...
|
| Notice that the insulation is also crimped, making sure that the
| actual electrical connection doesn't flex.
| [deleted]
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Soldering is perfectly fine, if you do it correctly.
| jmole wrote:
| soldering is a terrible idea for cables that need to flex,
| which is why you'll typically only find them used in
| applications with major strain relief, or inside non-user-
| serviceable enclosures (e.g. inside an ATX PSU)
| snovv_crash wrote:
| You need strain relief either way, soldering or crimping. A
| well soldered joint will have lower resistance than a
| crimped one and be more resistant to vibrations.
| jmole wrote:
| In most applications crimping offers better vibration
| resistance and better conductance. Most solder is on the
| order of 10x as resistive as pure copper, or more.
|
| Welding can be better than solder or crimp, but it's
| uncommon except for applications like wire-bonding and
| battery cell termination.
|
| In general, any application where you have a fixed end on
| one side and a free end on another (wire to board, wire
| to panel, wire to X), a crimp termination is by far the
| better choice.
| programmer_dude wrote:
| It's not fine if it's going to melt.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It will only melt if it's either undersized or a bad joint
| to begin with. A properly-sized, well-made solder joint
| will have no reason to melt unless heated externally by
| something else failing.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Soldering is not the correct solution for high power/current
| applications. Car manufacturers openly instruct "do not
| solder, use included crimp connectors" for fuel injector
| wiring repairs for example.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is because soldered connections not suitable for
| applications subject to vibration or repeated motion. They
| will weaken and break. For stationary applications,
| soldered connections have superior electrical
| characteristics.
| jefftk wrote:
| I'd be wary about extrapolating from cars or other
| vehicles: they expose their components to far more
| vibration and shocks than is typical in a house or
| datacenter.
| bayindirh wrote:
| As an HPC system administrator who also works on
| hardware, I'd say that the servers' life are equally hard
| from power and temperature perspective. Their life is not
| easier because they are not vibrating.
|
| A server under max load 7/24/365 is really testing its
| design limits.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Sure, but vibration affects solder joints in a way that a
| server at max load doesn't.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Counterpoint: cars don't get their cables moved about so
| often, or bent at sharp angles for aesthetic reasons.
| Soldering without additional strain relief is a terrible
| idea - even for low currents.
| LegitShady wrote:
| car cables move all the time when cars are driving.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I never said they don't - rereading, I should have used
| the word "manipulated", because I meant "moved (by a
| person)": a PC[1] gets opened more frequently often than
| a car hood.
|
| 1. Especially a pc with an RTX 40X0 card - because only
| enthusiasts are buying them at this point.
| postalrat wrote:
| Then it might be a bit alarming to you that the connector
| itself is soldered to the board.
| ars wrote:
| That's because crimping is a more reliable connection,
| mechanically. It's less likely to fail.
|
| Solder has better electrical characteristics, but that
| benefit is outweighed in the field because the connections
| can break and fail.
| fatneckbeardz wrote:
| 600 watts is an extraordinary amount of power for these tiny
| cables/connectors, thats something id think would be something
| like an Anderson Powerpole , or XT 90, or some kind of high
| power connector if i was building a little robot or something.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| I'm really surprised they didn't do something like a XT90
| with some signal wires on it. I've seen IEC Cables with more
| girth than these things.
| gw99 wrote:
| Just a heads up. Powerpoles melt too. Nasty things.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Coming soon to the EU: graphics cards powered by three USB-C
| connectors.
| empiricus wrote:
| Actually graphics cards will be interdicted because they
| consume too much electric power. Just like high-end TVs next
| year.
| whatever1123 wrote:
| tester756 wrote:
| You just realized that the world runs on mediocrity?
|
| PS: think of it when visiting doc, mechanic, etc :)
| whatever1123 wrote:
| I don't know dude. Ironically if you are poor in a place like
| Boston, you can go to Man's Greatest Hospital.
|
| Programmers were definitely elite at one point. The gulf
| between them and the medicine kids has grown a lot.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| I guess you haven't used the medical system recently -
| despite monumental efforts by doctors, the standard of care
| is actually horrific when you take the whole system into
| account. It has turned into a system of keeping patients
| alive rather than delivering optimal outcomes, and much
| like the legal system, if you have someone knowledgeable
| who can put in considerable time on your case your outcomes
| will be a lot better.
| [deleted]
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| If a single PM can screw up this badly, that's a complete
| failure of the NVIDIA bureaucracy.
|
| The answer to the "5 whys" should never be that one individual
| made a bad decision, when the bad decision has consequences of
| this magnitude.
|
| It's a systems issue.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| malfist wrote:
| Nice of you to blame everyone.
|
| What's your proposal to fix it?
| whatever1123 wrote:
| You know why there isn't trash anywhere? Some people never
| litter.
|
| Not anti dumping laws. Not a particularly efficient or
| effective waste management system.
|
| This is the analogy. The plastic in the oceans comes from
| poor, shitty people in Southeast Asia. They litter! Accept
| it. It is a cultural problem! They just suck.
|
| If you don't believe that, then you don't believe in
| Enlightment, you don't believe in human progress. It doesn't
| have to be a law or even some kind of convergent system.
|
| > What's your proposal to fix it?
|
| The simple answer is, next time you login to Slack, just do a
| better fucking job.
| malfist wrote:
| [deleted]
| nomel wrote:
| And this is why hardware is hard; it requires good engineering
| _culture_. Unfortunately, being meticulous is directly opposed
| to profit.
|
| You have look at the likes of Apple to find good hardware
| culture, where "image" has a higher priority, allowing that
| engineering culture to flex a bit more than usual.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The thing that sucks is a culture turning bad does not
| immediately result in loss of sales or revenue. Once you get
| big enough, your culture can decline for years or even
| decades.
|
| Yet in the first, second, or even third year of terrible
| culture changes, a business will likely be patting themselves
| on the backs for how fast they got stuff out the door and how
| much money they saved by reducing head count.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's not individual contributors responsible for bad quality.
|
| It is corporate, investing, and all around culture that does
| not value quality and barely has a sense of it at all (Steve
| Jobs was an asshole, but he had a strong sense of quality, it
| doesn't matter if you agree with his choices, that's taste,
| it's hard to argue that things he drove apple to produce had
| _quality_ )
|
| People instead value deadlines, ever advancing middle manager
| careers, and tiny differences in margin percentages.
| btown wrote:
| The conundrum is: how do you build an organization that can
| simultaneously scale super-linearly and retain a commitment
| to quality? There are plenty of businesses that pursue stable
| profitability or linear growth and maintain quality. But the
| faster an organization grows, the more it becomes metrics-
| driven, and outside of a regulated industry where quality is
| a requirement, it's hard to balance the priorities.
|
| I'm reminded of Honeycomb's pointed experiment in setting up
| a rotating employee seat as a voting member of their board:
| https://www.protocol.com/workplace/board-of-directors-
| honeyc... - this type of thing can contribute towards
| striking the right balance at all levels of an organization.
| But it's definitely not a solved problem.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Apple did by having a quality dictator at the top. It would
| have lasted a lot longer but his unusual disposition led
| him to accidentally kill himself with a strange diet.
|
| In other words you can't have a company run by the MBA
| mindset, there must be a superseding set of values beyond
| business school values.
| [deleted]
| outworlder wrote:
| > It's not individual contributors responsible for bad
| quality.
|
| > It is corporate
|
| When dealing with corporations, that's _always_ the case.
|
| Even if it turns out that a single person was able to make a
| large mistake that went unnoticed, guess what, it's still a
| corporate failure.
|
| > People instead value deadlines, ever advancing middle
| manager careers, and tiny differences in margin percentages.
|
| Of these, the managers trying to advance are the most
| harmful. I've seen situations where actions of managers
| trying to advance their careers actually caused harm to the
| company, but they were able to place the blame elsewhere.
| Some are pretty good at that.
| whatever1123 wrote:
| > People instead value deadlines
|
| This is definitely true, and is a cultural thing, and
| deadlines are like, one of the most quintessentially big
| corpo dysfunctions ever.
|
| > It's not individual contributors
|
| When you have a surgical complication, do you blame the
| admins and the hospital bureaucracy? No.
|
| When you lose a court case, who's fault is it? Do you blame
| the clerks? Do you blame the Attorney General? No.
|
| > does not value quality and barely has a sense of it at all
|
| I haven't met an "individual contributor" who cares about
| that shit in my life. Among the ones who do a lot of work all
| day, the rare few, the guys with the greasy hair and the
| track pants who live alone in Sunnyvale for a year, they have
| consistently been the least interested in a holistic sense of
| quality.
|
| You will say, oh the managers gave them the goals. Dude the
| managers do fucking nothing. They say the same shit to
| everyone, the "IC" has all the agency. They can work, or not
| work as much as they want.
|
| In fact the hardest working ICs I know are relentlessly
| optimizing for meeting immediate, dull goals. The ICs are
| almost always working on consumer products that are
| tremendously shitty and buggy.
|
| Listen, who the fuck is responsible? Everyone! Why do you
| give the trackpants guys a pass? They're dicks!
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Seems like you have a chip on your shoulder that has nothing to
| do with the topic at hand.
| wruza wrote:
| The sentiment is agreeable though. You see smart people
| everywhere, but then turn to their products and these have
| obvious flaws. Not hidden ones, not triggered in particular
| situation. Ones you can't ignore, which greet you and tell
| they are your new neighbors happy to meet you everyday.
|
| MDN recently screwed up their search input. It stays
| collapsed until you click on it (some brightest mind decided
| it'd be so cool?), and also there is no I-cursor until you
| start typing. So confusing.
|
| CDNJS recently "updated" their site so you see a search
| prompt, (maybe) click on it, start typing aaand it loses all
| letters you've typed before 3-4 seconds passed since the page
| load. Who allowed to push that into production? That there
| _is_ some guy responsible for this may drive nuts.
|
| I could go on but am depressed enough atm.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > Why are third party amateurs solving this?
|
| They have a vested interest.
|
| The real issue is Moore's law is on its last legs and you can't
| squeeze blood from stone. So manufacturer resorted to
| increasing TDP and bringing us closer to voltage that are more
| likely to cause issues.
|
| As for general shittiness. That's been going since - forever.
| Not sure why you're complaining. It's both incorrect and
| offtopic. Race to the bottom is as old as human civilization.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| well, mine works fine (with multiple hours of heavy usage), the
| card itself is quite cold (48-65 C), but the news is worrying,
| for sure...
|
| Gigabyte promised 4 years warranty - I hope they'll keep their
| promise.
| fazfq wrote:
| Maybe I am running low on coffee because I felt like I was having
| a stroke while reading this post.
|
| >However, the "safe" is only valid if e.g. the used supply lines
| from the power supply with "native" 12VHPWR connector have a good
| quality and 16AWG lines or at least the used 12VHPWR to 4x 6+2
| pin adapter also offers what it promises.
|
| Like what is this? I know those words, but that sentence makes no
| sense.
| cmsj wrote:
| Igor is awesome, but his English has to be read with a generous
| spirit ;)
| ideamotor wrote:
| I didn't realize the author was non-native so now I feel bad,
| thank you.
| [deleted]
| WithinReason wrote:
| I think all (or at least some) of Igor's articles are machine
| translated to English
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| His English is way more comprehensible than my German.
| m12k wrote:
| >However, the "safe" is only valid if e.g. the used supply
| lines from the power supply with "native" 12VHPWR connector
| have a good quality and 16AWG lines or at least the used
| 12VHPWR to 4x 6+2 pin adapter also offers what it promises.
|
| However, the "safe" designation for the connector is only valid
| if e.g. the used cables from the power supply, with a "native"
| 12VHPWR connector, are of good quality, and the 16AWG cables or
| at least the used 12VHPWR-to-4x6+2-pin-adapter also live up to
| what they promise.
| kotlin2 wrote:
| I don't think it's valid to use "only" with "e.g". "e.g" means
| it's an example, which implies the existence of other cases
| that satisfy the criteria. "Only" implies some uniqueness of
| the subject.
| lelandfe wrote:
| It does appear the e.g may be dropped here but it's not hard
| to think of ways to use the two together:
|
| "It's only safe given certain conditions, e.g x"
| klodolph wrote:
| I would say that it's valid.
|
| "It's legal to drive only if e.g. you have a driver's
| license."
|
| It's not a great way to say things but it is meaningful. The
| meaning is "only if [unspecified list of things], and [x] is
| an example of an item in that list".
|
| > However, the "safe" is only valid if e.g. the used supply
| lines from the power supply with "native" 12VHPWR connector
| have a good quality and 16AWG lines or at least the used
| 12VHPWR to 4x 6+2 pin adapter also offers what it promises.
|
| Here's my interpretation:
|
| > However, the term "safe" is only valid if certain things
| are true, e.g., the used supply lines from the power supply
| with "native" 12VHPWR connector are of good quality...
|
| I can't interpret the rest of the sentence.
| treeman79 wrote:
| That's exactly what it feels like to have a mild stroke. I know
| these words individually.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Actually, that is NOT (as such), "how I feel" when I read
| articles like this - NOT written by professionals (But who is
| one anyways) - Confucius says, which I tend to agree, which if
| you, like me, concur.
| dheera wrote:
| I really don't understand why power connectors aren't just +
| and - anymore. There's no reason for more than 2 connectors.
|
| What is this 12-pin Molex bullshit? Why the hell would you need
| 12 pins? Use some Anderson PowerPole connectors, XT30/60/90, or
| some other connector designed to handle high currents.
| [deleted]
| numpad0 wrote:
| Totally agreed. I'm guessing they wanted to do it with
| minimal change in tools and materials.
| yaddaor wrote:
| The site is hosted on a .de domain, so there is a very chance
| that the author is German. It would have been nice if you had
| considered that before writing such angry and negative words
| about the author's work.
| fazfq wrote:
| Where do you see the anger in my message? I thought that the
| "stroke" part made it clear that my comment was facetious.
| programmer_dude wrote:
| You should feel bad he is also not a native speaker :)
| epolanski wrote:
| I love how this issue somehow is bigger than the cards costing
| 2000 euros and drawing 600 watt if not more.
| [deleted]
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Because either of those are chump change to an entire family
| dying in a blaze of fire, maybe?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Fire hazard has the potential to cost lives.
|
| Lives are more expensive than 2000 euros or 600 watts of
| electricity, even at current prices.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Users report Nvidia RTX 4090 GPUs with melted 16-pin power
| connectors_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33327515 - Oct
| 2022 (99 comments)
| bri3d wrote:
| I'm curious as to why no vendor has yet tried to push a 24V or
| 48V PSU rail standard to reduce the amperage pushed over these
| crappy pins. Of course then the board itself needs to be able to
| handle the higher voltage for down-conversion, but don't these
| systems usually use switching / Buck regulators as the first
| stage anyway, which could easily be tuned to handle the higher
| input voltage with minimal loss added?
| zbrozek wrote:
| I sort of wish that we used something more like this[0] for
| add-on module power connectors. And a better mechanical design.
| The perpendicular card form-factor is silly.
|
| [0] https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1716278.pdf
| allenrb wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
|
| Even before this issue, ATX 3.0 felt like a missed opportunity
| to start phasing in 48v DC power. Very disappointing.
| LarsAlereon wrote:
| The Power Stamp Alliance was working on 48v modular VRMs for
| HPC and servers, but I haven't seen any news in the past couple
| of years.
| paulmd wrote:
| > I'm curious as to why no vendor has yet tried to push a 24V
| or 48V PSU rail standard to reduce the amperage pushed over
| these crappy pins.
|
| people on another HN thread yesterday literally were bitching
| about the cost (not safety - cost) of a $1 adapter being
| "forced" on them by NVIDIA and now you want to tell them
| they're gonna have to buy a whole new PSU? that's gonna be
| quite the comment thread.
|
| but yeah you're right in general, gotta move to 48V to move
| forward, pushing infinite amps at low voltages is completely
| bass-ackwards. The pcie-add-in-card form-factor needs a rethink
| in general, the GPU is now the largest and most power-hungry
| part of the system by far, and power isn't the only problem
| imposed by that ancient AT standard. imo we should move to some
| standardized "module sizes" for GPUs so that we solve GPU sag
| and cooling at the same time.
|
| the "pcie card" of the future should be a 12x6x4" prismatic
| module that slides on rails into a socket that provides a PCIe
| edge connector as well as a XT90 jag (or similar) for power, at
| a defined physical location, with 48V. Airflow should happen in
| a defined direction and manner, whether that's axial flow or
| blower-style.
|
| also please for the love of god, _hot air rises_ , the AT
| standard means axial coolers are pushing against convection.
| But we couldn't even get BTX to take off, which is a trivial
| modification of ATX to reverse the orientation and fix this
| problem, the DIY market is deeply deeply rooted in the 1980s
| and will not abandon ATX without some nudging. Enterprise and
| OEM are fine, their volumes are big enough to do their own
| thing, but consumers are spinning their wheels fighting IBM's
| 1980 mistakes.
|
| It's gonna take government intervention, the EU is gonna have
| to step in and do it like with USB-C cables. The mess of
| arbitrary card dimensions slowly growing larger over time is
| the exact same problem that we had pre-standardization with USB
| too.
| codeflo wrote:
| I think at these sizes and weights, the GPU needs to become a
| board that you screw onto the case, like a second
| motherboard. Sagging solved. Now the noisy fan, replace it
| with a preinstalled water cooling block to be integrated with
| your overall cooling solution, voila: noise and weird airflow
| solved as well.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| All in one water loops aren't as great as they make them
| out to be. You still need fans on a radiator, they can be
| quieter because they're often larger. Pump failures are
| more common than fan failures and harder to repair.
| Traveling with a water loop is a nightmare unless you drain
| it first.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Who's traveling with an ATX tower?
|
| In any case, I've always used the standard water cooling
| kits and they never failed me (as opposed to constantly
| breaking fans and huge temperatures). Maybe it's my
| environment.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| people with apartments who move
| paulmd wrote:
| Exactly, that's what I mean by "on rails". Imagine sliding
| a server PSU into place and it latches as it seats... do
| that but with a "GPU module". The case itself needs to be
| part of the support to fix GPU sag, and that's only
| possible with dimensional and connectical standardization.
|
| Smaller stuff that still reflects the "add-in-card"
| intention of the original design is fine, you can still
| have a bunch of PCIe slots for network cards and USB
| controllers if you want. But the GPU is not really an "add-
| in-card" anymore and it's problematic in a design sense to
| keep acting like it is, let alone to have _every single
| product on the market_ doing something completely different
| dimensionally.
|
| That's the "pre-USB-micro" era problem that USB faced.
|
| There's no need for water though, that's a whole can of
| worms.
| flatiron wrote:
| AGP part deux
| xbar wrote:
| The inside of consumer-assembled PCs is a terrible place for
| government intervention.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| The workstation world sort of broadly standardises card
| length, allowing for support on 3 sides (PCI Bulkhead, PCI-E
| Slot, and a card extension with a blade to fit in a rail
| guide towards the front of the chassis). Even old cheese
| grater Apple Mac Pro's had this setup.
| 323 wrote:
| At 500W+ maybe the GPU should have it's own dedicated power
| supply with it's own power cable. And then the GPU
| manufacturer could optimize the voltages and amps since they
| control the whole power chain.
|
| You could have some standardization, a simple power
| negotiation protocol "I can supply 500W at 24V or 48V" and a
| standard (big) connector.
|
| A long time ago the display was powered from the main unit,
| but we moved passed that and now displays have their own
| power cable.
| yurymik wrote:
| Well, it didn't go that well [last time around](http://www.
| x86-secret.com/pics/divers/v56k/finalv5-6000.jpg).
| metadat wrote:
| > Forbidden
|
| > You don't have permission to access this resource.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Blocked based on referrer, if you go up to your URL bar
| and hit enter it should load directly
| metadat wrote:
| Cool, that fixes it- thanks!
| jandrese wrote:
| 500W is going to be one hell of a wall wart.
| NavinF wrote:
| Eh not really, you just need to get two of these and
| connect the sync pins together:
| https://hdplex.com/hdplex-fanless-250w-gan-aio-atx-
| psu.html
|
| Way smaller than SFX PSUs and "gaming" laptop power
| bricks.
| toast0 wrote:
| > A long time ago the display was powered from the main
| unit, but we moved passed that and now displays have their
| own power cable.
|
| That was just switched A/C, so you didn't need to turn off
| two switches when you were done.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Because we are still in the era of trying to move from 3V/5V to
| 12V!
|
| Power Supply Manufacturers and Board Manufactures can't still
| agree on this little step. 24V/48V is a bridge too far!
|
| Same issue has been plaguing the automobile industry, they
| can't wait to move from 12V to 48V for their low voltage works,
| but who will bell the cat?
| vhab wrote:
| Interestingly though, there's a slow but steady push towards
| 24V on boats. More electronics are available in 24V version
| or simply support both 12V and 24V. And new boats tend to
| have a 12V and 24V bank. Electric sailboats usually have a
| 48V bank as well.
|
| And in an entirely different area, 3D printing completed
| their transition from 12V to 24V some years ago, and
| currently there's an active push towards 48V.
|
| I'm personally just looking forward to not spend a fortune on
| cables due to low voltages. It's frustratingly expensive to
| carry 12V a decent distance with some higher current draws.
| jandrese wrote:
| > they can't wait to move from 12V to 48V for their low
| voltage works
|
| That would be a surprising move to be sure. I assume you mean
| low wattage?
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| Sorry, Yes.
| amelius wrote:
| Instead of introducing a new PSU standard, why not change the
| connector, or add a connector for power.
| masklinn wrote:
| Because you still have the issue that you need to push insane
| amperages if you're limited to 12V.
|
| 600W out of 12V require 50 amps. This means you need more
| connectors, thicker cables and you have more resistive losses
| (= heat).
|
| If you can get 48 V rails in, then you get down to a much
| comfier 12.5A, you can get that through comfortably on a pair
| of small-section wires.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I have a feeling this will make the DC-DC converters more bulky
| and hot on the card itself.
|
| Not entirely sure though as I've never built those.
|
| However in the longer term it's probably time to start
| optimizing for power efficiency just like Intel did after the
| pentium 4. Cards can't keep increasing requirements in this day
| of energy crisis. And the climate problem insures it'll be like
| that for a long time.
| postalrat wrote:
| Is a 12v to whatever voltages the chips on the card use
| smaller than a 48v to whatever voltages the chips use?
| scalablenotions wrote:
| As someone who tinkers with these things a lot, I'm happy for
| the voltage I'm playing with not to be increased. There's
| plenty of scope to improve the plug design without approaching
| anything near the fragility of this nVidia adapter. There's no
| pressing need to increase voltage.
| mmoskal wrote:
| I believe 48V would be used since 50V is the maximum voltage
| considered "safe" for humans. This is also why USB-C goes up
| to 48V.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It works the other way too. Low voltage is not really
| "safe", we can just tolerate the risk most of the time.
| Soak your hands in some saltwater & then grab 12 volt
| rails, it'll hurt like hell.
| flatiron wrote:
| "Lick a 9V" is usually how I phrase it. Not the best
| feeling in the world.
| pathartl wrote:
| The fragility I think is the main concern here, like you
| said. I hate when I have three 12v, 8 pin connectors on my
| GPU. I would be ecstatic between that and a small connector
| that catches fire if it's not perfectly 100% seated and
| strain relieved.
| mjsweet wrote:
| Please shoot me down in flames if needed, but maybe the CPU
| should be on a riser board and the GPU on the mainboard? Look, it
| seems to me that Nvidia needs to come up with its own x86
| reference platform that revolves around supplying enough
| resources to the GPU rather than relying on adding layer upon
| layer of bandaid solutions. Listen, I'm not an engineer, and I
| don't claim to understand voltage, amps and watts, but it seems
| plainly obvious that if Nvidia wants to keep pushing discreet
| components that need a lot of juice (as opposed to Apples SoC
| strategy), then they need to come up with their own robust
| reference platform.
|
| On another note, did EVGA see all this coming?
| some-guy wrote:
| I was looking at an old video card I have, the GeForce 4600ti,
| and remembering thinking it was _huge_ at the time compared to
| my Voodoo 3 3000 before it. Then the 8800gt seemed huge. Then
| the RX480. Then my current 3070.
|
| At a certain point it's just stupid. My work laptop (Macbook
| Pro M1 Max) can do some very impressive stuff in such a small
| quiet package, and it just makes sense to go with a single
| large APU in the future.
| [deleted]
| rob-olmos wrote:
| Was there a good reason why they switched from 3x8pin to 1x12pin
| for so much wattage?
| Latty wrote:
| I mean, firstly just that consumers hate having to plug in a
| ton of cables: it's bad for aesthetics, it's annoying to manage
| the cables, etc...
|
| The bigger reason is probably to save board space as nvidia
| have been shrinking the form factor of the actual boards so
| they can dedicate more room to flow-through cooling. Connectors
| take up a lot of board edge.
|
| The new spec does also have data pins so the devices can
| negotiate for power which could in theory reduce issues and
| inform the consumer better about limits with future PSUs and
| devices.
|
| So there are advantages to the new spec, both specifically with
| the form factor and more generally.
| cmsj wrote:
| They started this in the last generation where the founders
| cards had a different-but-similar connector.
|
| In this generation, they would actually need 4x8pin to reach
| the 600W maximum these cards are supposed to be able to draw in
| a fully overclocked state, so really this just comes down to
| PCB space, but with the draw getting this high, the cable also
| has some signalling wires so the card knows how many Watts it
| should limit itself to.
| rob-olmos wrote:
| Ah interesting, thanks. Looking more into it, 4x8pin would be
| 12x12v wires/pins, and the 12VHPWR only has 6x12v for the
| same max wattage.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| As someone ignorant to this space, considering the PCB is
| already shorter than the heatsink, I assume the problem is
| more of re-arranging other components on the PCB than the
| actual physical space the final product takes up.
| beebeepka wrote:
| This whole thing is cracking me up. I guess this is why the 600w
| card didn't show up. Maybe there was something to the pre launch
| reports about cards melting themselves.
|
| You know what would teach Nvidia? Buying more 4090 cards at crazy
| prices. Vote with your wallets. Wait on actual lines to give them
| more money for stupid products. Moar powah, more upscaling crap,
| more latency. Moar
| cmsj wrote:
| Buildzoid on YouTube has a very good response to this - he does
| not agree that the fault is the (still terrible) wires at the
| back of the connector.
|
| His reasoning is that the melting is happening down at the pin
| end of the connector, not at the back, and the pins that are
| melting the most are the edge ones, not the middle ones.
|
| There's about 10 minutes of critique of the various ways other
| people have been evaluating it, which is interesting for sure,
| but the meat starts here: https://youtu.be/yvSetyi9vj8?t=744
| impalallama wrote:
| Really seems like splitting hairs when your specifying which
| specific part of the cheap faulty component is "responsible".
| deng wrote:
| I agree, that does not make sense. There must be a problem with
| the connection to the pins, and I'd really like to see a close-
| up of the female connector on the problematic card, because if
| stuff gets bend there out of shape even slightly, you can
| quickly get high resistance.
|
| EDIT: Watched the video further, and actually the cable has the
| female side and they're using 2-split connectors. Yeah, that's
| asking for trouble when you push 50 amps through those...
| Sheesh, such shoddy stuff for a 1600$ card, just incredible.
| buildbot wrote:
| I think we would see more problems then with this connector -
| while it is new to the consumer space, all of Nvidia's SXM
| boards use molex micro-fit connectors for power. For example my
| Dell C4140 has four 10-pin and four 8-pin micro-fit connections
| to the SXM2 board, and they are bent at 90 degrees in the 1u
| chassis.
| Latty wrote:
| Buildzoid is great, but worth noting he has a very specific
| perspective which is that of a hardcore enthusiast (hence the
| name of the channel), and he often points that out, but here I
| think he ends up kinda just saying "why not just stick with the
| old ones", which is fine in comparison to something that sucks,
| but it doesn't hold up more generally for most people.
|
| I get he may not care, but plugging four individual power
| cables into a GPU is a pain for consumers, and having a single
| connector for everything is great from the normal consumer
| perspective.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| The failure doesn't necessarily have to happen at the junctions
| for the junctions to be a cause. It also makes sense that the
| edge pins would heat up more because they're both surrounded by
| less mass and a likelier conduit to distribute current and heat
| based on the resistivity of the shown wiring.
|
| Reminds me of the molded MOLEX to SATA adapters for HDDs that
| suffer from similarly shoddy wiring design and are prone to
| melting/fires. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyy_WOSdVc
| deng wrote:
| > The failure doesn't necessarily have to happen at the
| junctions for the junctions to be a cause.
|
| Indeed, it can also happen that because some connection is
| failing, too much current flows through the remaining ones,
| but this is clearly not what is happening here (because it's
| not the inner connectors that are melting, and also because
| Igor tried and couldn't replicate this). This really looks
| like heat from high resistance, and the outer connectors are
| simply those experiencing the most mechanical stress, and
| it's really easy for these 2-slit-connectors to get bend out
| of shape.
| Latty wrote:
| Ah yes, the classic "MOLEX to SATA? Lose your data!".
| tpmx wrote:
| My guess: The Taiwanese companies that build most of the GPU
| boards will supply a fix sooner than Nvidia.
|
| This is not exactly a hard thing to build in Taiwan.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Training cat detection melts cables.
| Varloom wrote:
| Why is the card has NOT been recalled already by now?
|
| Are they waiting for some major house fire news to break out
| before doing something.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The formula A x B x C = X, where A is the number of vehicles in
| the field, B is the probable rate of failure, and C is the cost
| of out-of-court settlement for that failure
|
| s/vehicles/GPUs/
| iwillbenice wrote:
| That line from Fight Club really needs a whole lotta
| asterisks and qualifications. There are plenty of forced-
| recall scenarios where the manufacturer would prefer to use
| the A _B_ C<=X approach but are not allowed or simply over-
| ruled by government. Safety of life being the primary over-
| riding concern, for good reason.
|
| I'm pretty surprised this issue has gotten as long in the
| tooth time wise as it has. I remember seeing a story about
| this ticking-timebomb power connector like 1.5 months ago and
| then heard nothing. I'm guessing there is scurrying behind
| the scenes between then and now, but you never know.
| lifehasavalue wrote:
| Safety of life is not a boundless good. All of the good
| things around us come at some risk to life. Of course, the
| government's liability to overvalue safety (or to be more
| neutral, to _inconsistently_ determine the value of safety)
| in a particular proceeding (be it before a court in a
| lawsuit or before a regulatory agency that might order a
| recall), is just another part of the calculation.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I'm pretty surprised this issue has gotten as long in the
| tooth time wise as it has.
|
| Just to remove ambiguity, are you saying that the ABC<=X is
| long in the tooth or that the Nvidia connector is?
|
| "Good" stories like ABC<=X, McDonald's coffee too hot, etc
| are infamous for a reason lest someone forget and repeat.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Nvidia would be wise to push a patch limiting the power
| consumption to safe levels, and offer a "hot-rod mode" as a
| kernel parameter or something.
| capableweb wrote:
| Benchmarks (and therefore profits) would probably take a hit
| if so, hence they are not doing it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Which cards are even competitive with the 3090, much less
| the 4080? It's perfectly acceptable for Nvidia to admit
| they were wrong about power scaling _if_ they offer an
| unlocked mode for idiots in fireproof houses.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I got a nice settlement check from AMD who had to admit
| that their 8 core CPUs were actually 4 core CPUs with
| dual parallel math units. I'm pretty sure a post-launch
| reduction in power and performance of these cards would
| qualify any current owners for a refund.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Nvidia are doing something like this now advertising
| their CUDA TOPS as double their actual value but with a
| footnote telling you this is for "sparse"
| multiplications. Here "sparse" means each dot-product can
| assume half of each input vector is zero.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| The RX 7900 XT should be fairly close and at a lower
| wattage.
| ploxiln wrote:
| The thing is, the 4090 is the pushed-past-the-limit supercar
| of the generation, these things always have issues. It's just
| due to market conditions that they didn't release all the
| somewhat reasonable cards (4070, 4080) yet. They don't want
| to cannibalize 30xx series sales, they don't want to delay
| 40xx series, they want the top of the charts. _shrug_
|
| Just don't buy a 4090. The technology is incredible, the
| model is stupid. Buy a 3080 Ti, or wait for a 4080. Like,
| don't buy a $1 million Bugatti, you could get a $250k
| supercar and it would probably be better for any real-world
| use. (But do people buying $50k BMWs complain about these
| things?)
| maxwell86 wrote:
| > xactly for how they implemented and supply a 12V solution
| (which includes both the physical products they supply, and the
| messaging they've put out around it) which this article yet again
| underlines as being both real, and even worse than initially
| thought.
|
| I'd recommend people gloating to read the article. EDIT: (see my
| edit below).
|
| The conclussions are clear:
|
| - The problem is NOT the new connection; that's fine. New PSUs
| come with a connection that does not need any adaptor and those
| are safe and work fine.
|
| - The problem is a poor quality adaptor shipped with 4090s for
| people that buy a 1600$ GFX but then skimp on a new PSU and want
| to pair it with an old one (EDIT: skimp is out of place and
| victim blaming, I'd guess it would be more appropiate to have
| said here that NVIDIA and partners decided to add an adapter to
| avoid suggesting that users need a new PSU).
|
| These adaptors are distributed by NVIDIA but build by a supplier.
| Igor's recommendation is, I quote: "NVIDIA has to take its own
| supplier to task here, and replacing the adapters in circulation
| would actually be the least they could do.".
|
| EDIT: This comment can be misunderstood as me speculating whether
| the OP read the article or not. I am not speculating: the OP did
| not read the article, which claims the opposite of what the OP
| claims. The OP claims that 12V solutions are the issue, while the
| article states that they are fine, and as proof shows that new
| PSUs implement them correctly. In fact the _goal_ of the article
| is to set the record straight about this, by precising that the
| only problem is the quality of the adapter, not 12 V per se. So
| this comment is not an speculation about whether the OP read the
| article or not, but a response to set the record straight for
| those who might read OPs comment only, but not the article (I
| often come to HN for the comments more than the articles, so I'd
| find such a comment helpful myself).
| dylan604 wrote:
| But does the inclusion of a shoddy adapter not just encourage
| the usage of the older PSU?
| cptskippy wrote:
| The problem isn't with older PSUs, they can work fine with a
| good adapter.
|
| The problem is with the adapter design, it is not just one
| bad choice but multiple layers of negligence that compound
| the issue.
|
| * The adapter has 6 pins all bridged together by thin
| connections that can break.
|
| * 4 heavy gauge wires are attached to those pins with a
| surface mount solder joint. They're not through hole soldered
| which would provide more contact AND far greater strength.
| They're not crimped which would provide the best contact and
| strength.
|
| * There's no strain relief. So if you hold the cables close
| to where they're soldered to the connector and flex it you
| can easily break those surface mount solder joints.
|
| * Because the 6 pins / 4 wires are all bridged
| asymmetrically, some bridges have more current passing
| through them and if they're fatigued or damaged they'll have
| higher resistance. Higher resistance means more heat.
|
| Overall it's just really poorly engineered on multiple
| levels. It's diarrhea poured over-top an open face shit
| sandwich.
| KIFulgore wrote:
| Same conclusion here. Pushing 500+ watts through surface-
| mount solder joints is pure negligence.
| maxwell86 wrote:
| Yes. They should not have included any adapter at all.
|
| Those with older PSUs should have had to make a decision
| about whether they want an adapter or not, and then pick an
| adapter of the appropiate quality.
| [deleted]
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Why would I waste a perfectly good PSU just because Nvidia
| can't make adapters that don't melt?
| maxwell86 wrote:
| TBH NVIDIA should just have not included any adapter at all.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| "Skim on a new PSU" sounds like people are cheaping out or
| something. Many people already have a more than sufficient PSU
| and replacing it just for another plug is a waste of natural
| resources.
|
| NVidia should just include an adaptor that's not a fire hazard.
| The consumers are not to blame here.
|
| Ps I think you mean "skimp"
| maxwell86 wrote:
| Agreed, not sure what other words to use instead.
|
| I think it would have been better for these cards to not have
| an adapter at all. I've added an EDIT to try to word this
| differently.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Other commenters are claiming that NVIDIA _KNEW_ the adapter
| had an issue with melting and /or catching fire. If that's
| true, I still think NVIDIA still has 100% liability.
|
| If it was late in the development cycle that this was
| discovered, then the proper thing to do would have been to
| delay the release, or just not include adapters and offer them
| later. It would have been a minor PR hit, but not nearly as bad
| as shipping adapters known to be faulty.
| maxwell86 wrote:
| > Other commenters are claiming that NVIDIA KNEW the adapter
| h
|
| Those refer to a PCI Express Forum issue that was opened
| about the connector drawing too much power, not the adapter.
| pvg wrote:
| _I 'd recommend people gloating to read the article._
|
| This is a neat way to parallelize and scale up this swipe but
| it's still the same swipe:
|
| _Please don 't comment on whether someone read an article.
| "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be
| shortened to "The article mentions that."_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| maxwell86 wrote:
| Thanks. I've added an EDIT to clarify that I am not
| speculating about whether the OP read the article, and that
| the only point of my comment is to set the record straight
| for those who often just come to HN for the comments (like
| myself).
| pvg wrote:
| Just take it out. You don't know who has and hasn't read
| the article, how much they are 'gloating' and it's one of
| the oldest known bad tropes of internet forums which is why
| it's in the guidelines. Your comment only gets better
| without it.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| These RTX4090 cards are absolutely gigantic, why would an
| engineer choose such a small power connector? There's plenty of
| room for largers connectors or multiple connectors.
| fooey wrote:
| the actual PCB is not overly big, it's the cooler that's
| massive
| Saris wrote:
| Or at least have current sensing and thermal sensing inside the
| card on each supply rail at the connector header, so it can
| fault if something goes wrong.
| dheera wrote:
| Why don't they put thermistors next to each connector and detect
| conditions like this early? $1 addition to a $10000 device.
| kube-system wrote:
| If you correctly predicted that your connector would overheat,
| the obvious solution is not to detect the issue but to fix the
| design.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Greed.
| dsign wrote:
| I'm going to be the dissenting voice here.
|
| The connector is shoddy, and it's good entertainment value for me
| personally who can't afford the card.
|
| But that beast of a card, despite all the amps and watts it
| swallows, is a very affordable tool for computational tinkerers--
| think people working in their garage in the next molecular
| simulation software or AI application--not to mention graphical
| artists and architects. True, you can get more computational
| power by paying for cloud services, but a cloud workstation with
| 32 Gigabytes of RAM _without_ any GPU will cost you 1700 USD /mo
| in AWS, and you will have to connect through a RDP interface that
| just hurts.
|
| So, back to the connector, I hope Nvidia and third party
| manufacturers solve it. I will wait to burn the bridges until the
| day when they decide they won't sell the cards anymore and
| instead rent them at the same price that Amazon does. We don't
| need another Adobe.
| Retric wrote:
| A fire hazard is a major concern no matter what the card can or
| can't do.
|
| Anyway, for home tinkering the 4090 is generally a minor
| improvement over a 4080 or even vastly cheaper cards. More is
| better, but not always by very much.
|
| That said, the real value of cloud services is you can
| sometimes get more done with 2TB of RAM for 4 hours than you
| can with 32GB of RAM for 4 months. All without the need to have
| that much computing power anywhere near you.
| dsign wrote:
| > That said, the real value of cloud services is you can
| sometimes get more done with 2TB of RAM for 4 hours than you
| can with 32GB of RAM for 4 months. All without the need to
| have that much computing power anywhere near you.
|
| I know that. Alas, I can't get more programming done with 2TB
| of RAM in 4 hours than I can get with 32GB in three years.
| Human limitations.
| bromuk wrote:
| EVGA breaking away from working with NVIDIA was a warning sign of
| things to come.
| MBCook wrote:
| Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem if the cards didn't need 1700W
| (estimated).
|
| Maybe this is not just a bad design, but physics trying to warn
| us this path isn't smart.
| TwoNineA wrote:
| > Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem if the cards didn't need
| 1700W (estimated).
|
| [citation needed]
| MBCook wrote:
| That was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, thus the
| "(estimated)" part.
|
| Hooray for the clarity of sarcasm in text. Sigh.
|
| I know it's not that bad. A standard wall circuit can't
| supply that much power. But I find the power levels graphics
| cards have gotten to crazy and think that's what we should be
| solving, not how to supply them more power without things
| melting.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It's ok, I'm sure your comment won't be sarcasm in a generation
| or two.
|
| I'm looking forward to the day my PC uses more electricity than
| my air conditioning. With the power of GeForce I might see that
| day.
| cmsj wrote:
| That's an interesting estimate ;)
|
| The 12VHPWR connector is actually rated for up to 600W.
| rjh29 wrote:
| 4090's TDP is 450W, and it demonstrably runs on 850W PSUs.
|
| If the cables are rated high enough and the PSU is large
| enough, there is no wattage that is "less valid" than any
| other. The 3090 TI from the previous generation runs at 450W
| too, it just uses 3x6+2 cables rather than nvidia's fancy
| adapter.
| riquito wrote:
| EVGA decision [1] to stop selling NVIDIA cards looks every day
| smarter
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32870677
| abracadaniel wrote:
| They reportedly made some prototype 4000 series cards, so I
| wonder if they saw a problem in the spec and that was the final
| straw.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's what I'm thinking, too. EVGA seems like a pretty
| reliable manufacturer in my experience, their bus-powered
| 1050 Ti lasted me 7 years and still runs in my brother's PC,
| to my knowledge. Wouldn't surprise me if Nvidia rejected some
| board revision EVGA suggested, which led to the ensuing
| fallout.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm still looking for a good replacement to my EVGA bus-
| powered 1050Ti. I just want a bus-powered GPU that can run
| desktop applications. I have a separate one with a power
| connector for ML stuff.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| GTX 1650 has 75 watt TDP and has low profile variant that
| can fit small form factor case.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Are the new Intel GPUs bus powered? If not, they could
| make a killing off of frugal Linux users by offering a
| chip designed around the ~70w TDP of a PCI bus.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I think the A380 is, but the only one I can find is
| ASRock and is too tall to fit in my case.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The Intel A380 is an absolute utter joke of a GPU and I
| question why it even exists.
|
| It's _barely_ an upgrade over your 1050 Ti.
|
| I urge you to check out the Gamers Nexus benchmarking of
| it before you consider buyinug it. https://youtu.be/La-
| dcK4h4ZU
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I could potentially use it with Wayland, which I can't
| reasonably do with the 1050 Ti.
| smoldesu wrote:
| If it uses the Intel GPU drivers, then it could bench
| worse and still be an upgrade over the Nvidia card (at
| least for Linux users).
| Queue29 wrote:
| I use a rx6400 to drive 2 4k displays, and it works
| great. Out of the box Linux support, too.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That was on my short-list to look at, good to have
| another data-point. How is the Linux support? My most
| recent video card experience with AMD is a HD 6350 and
| that has very mediocre linux support (as became obvious
| when KDE and Firefox both started using GPU assisted
| rendering by default)
| Queue29 wrote:
| AMD open sourced their drivers and maintains them
| directly in the kernel now, ever since 2017. No issues at
| all for me using Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04, which uses
| Wayland and GPU rendering by default.
| xeonmc wrote:
| On many levels, NVIDIA is the Riot Games of GPUs.
| bolt7469 wrote:
| I've played League of Legends for 10 years and have no idea
| why Riot Games would be a good analogue for NVIDIA. Can you
| elaborate?
| postalrat wrote:
| Maybe because so many people say the hate riot or nvidia
| but can't really tell you why and continue to use their
| products?
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