So, we've seen a total of SIX confirmed issues (10 total suspicious/unconfirmed). While this is a problem, I'd say it isn't as rampant as some youtubers and forum members make it out to be........
10(6, really) out of THOUSANDS of cards in the wild. I'm more worried about Gigabyte's GPU gloop and my mount in a SUP01 than this, lol.
Be aware of a fact that Reddit threads regarding Nvidia are very strictly moderated. Many people posted issue there and in an hour link to post was not working.
So, they might be a bit selective on what to publish and what not. In other words, Nvidia-related things on Reddit get often redacted and censored.
Also, many users might not be aware of the melting.
We now know it can take years for symptoms to crop up.
www.tomshardware.com
See? Connector melted only partially and thus was not reported immediately. And imagine how many similar cases are out there.
Stop. Just stop with the insanity. The specification requires even flow. Uneven current distribution happens -only- if the cable is faulty or improperly mated.
Dude, even when users followed all speficic steps to properly seat the connector, a shit happenned. I agree, it happens when connector is improperly mated.
But how can you achieve such thing when this connector is specified to be living on the edge? You have no safety factor to compensate for potential mating difficulties.
Users have no feedback whether they reached proper connector mating level. They don't measure resistance between card and PSU. Users fully insert the connector. Yet shit happens.
How can you know that you not only fully inserted the damn connector, but you also achieved damn proper mating level? How? How can users know?
Only very few GPUs are equipped with per-pin current sensing. Let's take ROG Astral for example ... imagine user never installs ASUS GPU Tweak utility.
How would this user know there's a problem with mating? Because without that utility nothing will pop up and tell the user.
Connector is living on the edge, it requires specific precision and conjunction of starts (luck) to be seated properly.
With more robust connector (bigger safety factor) this precision won't be neccesary and larger mating surface would compensate for improperly mated connector.
Imroperly mated that users is not aware of.
And yet there hasn't been one single fire from it. Meanwhile, there are several million home fires a year worldwide (250K in the US alone) due to faulty 120v cables, and tens of thousands of deaths. Odd you don't seem outraged over that.
Look up video from Gamer's Nexus, when they totally melted the connector by normal use. There was a smoke and plastic was bubbling.
Now imagine they don't stop the GPU load, this happens while user is AFK, whole rest of PC case can catch fire.
Are we gonna wait until shit hits the fan when we already know there are issues and we're gonna put blind eye to them just because shit hasn't hit the fan yet?
Safety is about precautions. You're better safe than sorry. You try to predict what can happen and establish safety routines based on prediction outcome.
Lot of residential fires in USA are caused by overloads of circuits, especially overload of wall outlets.
Using multi-outlet extensions instead of wall outlest for appliances such as clothes dryer or stoves is also quite popular in USA.
Why I don't seem outraged over that is because I have my opinion on 120V standard in USA.
But in PC, there's just DC (rhymes, doesn't it) and is used in same way everywhere (global standard).
And what happens when the failure occurs before the GPU? As just one example, a crimp or damaged insulation can cause a ground short within the cable itself, causing extreme flow from one or more pins on the PSU. No amount of GPU-side sensing will detect that.
Sure, it would be great to have per pin sensing even on PSUs. I'd like to have it, for the sake of safety.
There's just per rail sensing. If such connectors as 12VHPWR or 12V2x6 will not cease to exist,
I'm pretty sure we'll see per pin sensing on PSUs in future. PSU will not cost $200 but $500 and more.
This is nothing new and yet this issue only exists with this connector. Pretty obvious what that tells us.
Exactly.