That was a bogus story. The 12VHPWR plug is flawed and requires a recall. It's that simple.
The 12V-2x6 plug completely addressed it. It has been independently tested to work very well even when partly unseated.
That was not the primary fix. The high power contacts are hugely improved, and work perfectly when twisted on an angle.
The 12V-2x6 plug is one such better design.
The 12V-2x6 plug has been independently tested in a poorly seated position at above max current. It passed easily with room to spare. The thermals were excellent.
Please provide evidence that the pins and sockets have changed. If you look at the information
PCI-SIG shared with Igor's Lab, they showed the actual contacts are the same, they just repositioned the mating points by adjusting the depth. If the pins and sockets were different, they wouldn't be backwards compatible, which was required for the update.
They have not to my knowledge changed the 35mm guidance for not bending the wires as they exit the connector. They did the same tests you're referring to for the first revision and still said "ship it" lol. Lots of people tested the first connector and had no issues. That anecdotal evidence was clearly not good enough. The people who developed it didn't test it as it's actually used. It looks good in CAD, the math works on paper, and if it is manufactured perfectly and installed perfectly, no problem. The real world unfortunately doesn't work like that. The molding tolerances on these are terrible (otherwise the whole unseated issue would have never even happened), the gpu designs mostly don't accommodate the location of the connector for any non-huge case so most owners have to bend the wires immediately, the ones that recessed the connector made it so you can't see if it's seated properly, and if you pull it or put lateral strain on it, it's likely to not seat correctly.
But hey, who am I to say... Oh... Right... An electrical engineer that actually designs circuits, PCBs, power systems, and specifies connectors for my designs as a key part of my job... And thats the ~12 years of design engineering after I did safety testing on electronics (including over-current testing)... Yeah, I probably have no idea what I'm talking about. It's probably perfect. My bad.
Here are three examples of better options they could have gone with that aren't even custom without doing an exhaustive search:
1. Samtec
power blades with metal latches on the sides:
They could get these in 8-10 pin versions that are right-angle to the PCB (which is how the current connectors are), which use cables that default at 16AWG. I'd personally be fine with having a separate smaller connector that does the sense lines if we need to entertain adaptors and all that jazz. These are 18A per pin. If you split that across the 12V and GND pins, you can drive 72A at 12V = 864W on one connector. You need more for a HOF or KP style card? use two connectors. The side latches keep the connector from wiggling and twisting and the board connector has solder tabs that keep it from twisting on the board.
2.
Harwin 3mm pitch connectors.
These don't come in R/A connectors, but they're actually pretty small and come in 10-pin versions, 10A/pin. So if 5 12V and 5 GND gives you 50A, at 12V = 600W. They also have jack-screws so the cable connector actually screws to that one with captive screws (that don't fall out). So they could do budget cards with one connector and HOF/KP style boards with 2 connectors and still not take up much space. These are machined round pin connectors and they actually use 18AWG, so you don't even need the super cumbersome 16AWG wires.
3.
ITT Cannon Trident Slimline (pages 18-21)
These are a little bigger because they're single-row instead of dual-row. Wouldn't really be ideal for situations where you wanted dual connectors, but you could actually do two straight ones right next to each other fairly easily, it would just mean making a clearance around the BEEFY cooler lol. Part numbers 192991-0538 (right-angle) or 192991-0354 (straight). Both 10-pin connectors, rated 500 cycles, 10A pins, again 600W rated. These have side latches and can be screwed to the PCB.
