Hey all, I’ve got a 4090 that I’d like to keep around as long as possible given the current gpu market. My current setup of (3) 8-pin to a recalled cable mod 180 isn’t giving me the warmest feeling.
There is nothing wrong with my current psu but it does not have a 12vhpwr connector. As stupid as it sounds spending $200 on an equivalent wattage psu with an atx 3.1 connection seems like an acceptable insurance plan.
Am I crazy? I know that everything is seated correctly as is and I’ve had no issues. When I got my gpu the 12vhpwr melting debacle was already in full swing so I was focused on triple checking to make sure the psu connections were solid.
Just an opinion, mind you - though having done some research as I’ve been looking for one myself (new build) - I decided that ATM it doesn’t seem to matter.
The proprietary 12VHPWR aren’t necessary “better”, as the issue seems (as indicated, among others, by DerBauer and Buildzoid) to lie in the way Nvidia has designed the power connection on the board:
At this moment, you can either go with what DerBauer made (WireView, or something like that?) - as a mean of alerting you that something is off, and manually shutting down your PC - or wait for next gen PSUs, as some seem to be working on ways of balancing the load on individual pins of the 12VHPWR connector on the PSU side.
12V-2x6 headers and 12VHPWR plugs (usually relabeled 12V-2x6 H++ for marketing reasons) aren’t proprietary as they’re standardized in PCIe 5.1. Nvidia’s cost reduced current balancing doesn’t help but the PCIe specification is both internally contradictory and fails to allow for real world circuit behavior. As a result, even in the spec’s idealized case a 12+4 connection goes to zero safety margin 500 W and, in real world use, measurements show zero margin can be reached by 400 W even without defects or aging.
If 12+4 were margined like 8-pin or EPS to provide some allowance for imperfect manufacturing and long term use it wouldn’t be rated for more 275-300 W. Realistically that’s probably optimistic due to 12+4’s finer pitch and shorter wear life.
There’s no advantage to using two broken by design 12+4 connections instead of one. The fix is to ditch the 4090 for an 8-pin GPU. But if you’re not going to do that the least bad option’s a 12+4 → 2x8 cable. Corsair makes those in type 4 and type 5 and there’s a few other PSU manufacturers which also use the approach.
ASRock Phantom Gaming and Taichi include remote OTP in their GPU end 12+4s but apparently it doesn’t trip in time to prevent melting. So probably don’t count on that. Seasonic’s announced at Computex they’re doing per pin 12+4 OCP so probably other PSU manufacturers have models with the same thing coming. Whether it’s implemented well enough to be useful remains to be tested.
Thermal Grizzly’s WireView Pro II is apparently going to patch into the power switch so it can implement OCP by turning the build off. Probably there’ll be others as well.
Sorry if I used the wrong term - what I meant was that using the 12VHPWR cables supplied with the PSU (instead of that PCI-E 8-pin xN-to-12VHPWR adapter supplied by Nvidia) was mentioned by some tech channels (I think Gamers Nexus, among others…?) as a “safer solution” - precisely because of the very small safety margin of the design itself, and the possible differentiation in “manufacturing accuracy” on the part of the PSU maker.
Yeah, apparently one issue with Nvidia’s adapters is inadequate pin flex that’s favorable to hotspotting. Makes the insertion force high, too. That may well also apply to the CableMod 180 and similar adapters (including maybe the WireViews) but I don’t know of any robust investigation.
With Corsair’s 90° cables I believe what’s done to retain pin flex is the wires are prebent and then put into the 90° fitting. But I haven’t seen a teardown of one.
Not sure where other PSUs’ 12+4 cables are for engineering and quality control. Been building RMx and Radeon lately.
I agree, I’d much prefer 3 or 4 eight-pin connectors any day. It’s frustrating to be in a situation where you are occasionally anxious of using your pc.
