the_Scarlet_one
I am super curious why NVidia wouldn’t put more power usage on the pci slot to reduce the power pulled on the 12 pin as a way to slightly reduce heat for those experiencing issues.

I would assume that if they did that, it would be seen as admitting there is a problem, which is why they likely won’t do anything.

CraptacularOne
The whole thing is getting blown WAY WAY out of proportion. There have now been numerous tests by people intentionally trying to compromise these cables and get them to melt yet no matter what they do they haven't been able to recreate it.

kougar
The slot is maxed at 75w so in the total scheme of things leaving 40w on the table isn't much. A tiny bump in clocks and putting the power target to 120% will cause the card to consume more than that easily. As AMD cards have demonstrated in the past, it's very easy to overdraw the PCIe slot and that's a very bad thing to do. There's only so many ways to use or interface the slot power, so GPUs often only use the slot power for separate circuitry that doesn't tie into the main rails because of this.

CraptacularOne

the_Scarlet_one

CraptacularOne

The whole thing is getting blown WAY WAY out of proportion. There have now been numerous tests by people intentionally trying to compromise these cables and get them to melt yet no matter what they do they haven't been able to recreate it. I'm not saying it doesn't or can't happen because clearly it did but It's not because of a poor design of the cable and more than likely user error and them not fully inserting the plug into the socket that's causing the small number of issues. 

https://overclock3d.net/news/power_supply/psu_guru_chimes_in_on_12vhpwr_cable_controversy_-_insert_your_cables_fully/1

These people that have the damaged cables are not going to outright say "yeah maybe I didn't fully insert the cable" and potentially void their warranty even though the issue is more than likely user error. They of course don't want to be on the hook and admit user error and be out $1600.

This whole thing is just another "POScap" overreaction just like when 30 series first launched and it ended up being a driver bug and nothing actually wrong with the GPUs. These cases of burned cables are user error I'm almost certain at this point. What will be interesting is how the various GPU vendors handle these warranty claims. I've had my card for about a month now and no issue. My card is run at a daily overclock of 2850Mhz core and 22Ghz memory from basically day one for many a long gaming session. 

Nvidia didn't pull more power from the PCIe slot because they really don't need to and regardless the 66w that they could have got from the PCIe slot wouldn't have made really any difference at all in terms of heat or power draw from the card. .

Funny you quote JonnyGuru as the source of blaming end users… Real stand up guy to follow through his lies after he keeps sticking his foot further down his own throat. Keep in mind, he said that the quad 8 pin didn’t have any way to tell there was four cables connected because he didn’t actually look into, just shoved that foot in his mouth and then got defense because he got caught. He was a great reviewer, but now that his name rides on the manufacturing of the product, he is vehemently defending it while deflecting blame. He has walked back too many topic for me to care what he says at this point.

Most of these reviewers testing these scenarios have all been doing it for 1 to 2 hours, some more than that, but they haven’t been using most of the cards as much or as long as most end users would run them. More of them are looking at the probability now, but it doesn’t stop the fact that end users have received 12+4 with plastic molded directly into the actual pin. While there isn't a lot of cards experiencing the issue currently, how many people are not even paying attention to this topic right now? JayzTwoCentsless and JonnyGuru are not my two go to people at this point, because one knee jerk reacts to everything on reddit and the other is seemingly defending his own manufacturing at this point.

And why is it with the cables that have melted, why is it only the outside pins melting, typically on both sides at once, not the center pins? If all of the pins are loose because the end user didn’t fully seat them, then all pins should be generating heat and melting more area that just the outside edges.

You seem very angry about something you don’t own yet. Opinions of JonnyGuru aside the fact remains that no one has been able to recreate the melting issue in a controlled setting. They have nearly destroyed these cables trying to get them to fail and overheat and they can’t make it happen. So the only other logical assumption is user error. And that seems plausible at this point as we don’t really have any other reasonable conclusion. At last estimate there have been 100K RTX 4090s sold and only a minuscule amount of people (roughly 30 or so cases) have had their cable melt. While I agree that is not acceptable you also must agree that failure rate is very very low. I’m not trying to make excuses but look at the bigger picture here.

They can’t recreate the melting in a lab and have no way to verify in what condition the users are installing their cards. If this was a massive issue there would be a lot more reports than the handful we have considering there are 100K cards out in the wild. I’m speaking from a perspective of experience here with this and my card is fine, no signs of melting or other damage and I’ve gamed heavily on it quite regularly with an increased power target and a flashed BIOS.

Like I said, you don’t have to like the guy that’s not the point. The point is we don’t have any other more plausible cause for these isolated issues.

the_Scarlet_one
Why does someone have to own something to have an opinion? Why does someone have to own something to wonder what the root cause of an issue is?

Why do people feel the need to say “my works fine”? Great. Thumbs up and congratulations. People loved saying that as users were having issues with their 3090FTW3’s, as if it somehow negates the fact something is happening. My brain can’t comprehend that thought process.

When I bought my car, there was a consumer report that showed the tires used on an SUV were meant for a much lighter car, so the rubber would be destroyed at an unreasonably low usage. I contacted ford and they said “it’s only a few instances, you have nothing to worry about” until I was paying $1300 for new tires at 30,000 miles, when they were rated for 70,000. But hey, other peoples were fine, so why worry?

When I spend the money on a new GPU, I prefer to know for a fact it isnt going to have a strange issue that more than a couple of people are reporting. The bigger thing to remember is 1: not everyone is checking their connector. 2: not everyone is reporting on Reddit that they have had an issue.

It is entirely reasonable for people to be curious before making a purchase. It should be expected, rather than being shrugged off or condemned.

As for JonnyGuru, I’ve only formed an opinion based on his public conduct. When he wasn’t making claims like he has recently, I didn’t have any issues with him, and actually enjoyed his website. Just not a fan right now.

the_Scarlet_one
How many times, in the past, has NVidia told AIB’s to send their own cards back to NVidia for investigation when something comes up with a product?

You think users wouldn’t admit to having the cable loose, yet we have people come onto the very forums complaining that their Hydrocopper cards were hit 100-105c and shutting down and they couldn’t figure out why, when they had never even realized that the card required external cooling. Yeah, people admit things, usually inadvertently. It’s a little strange that every user reporting the issue swears it wasn’t them, when someone typically would admit their fault even if it was just a slip up, because not everyone is a terrible person.

Crap, I’m not sure why you are so severely offended by me posting. You seem absolutely hell bent to prove me wrong about something or shut me down for some reason. You do you. Have fun, pour your heart all over the keyboard. Get it all out. Just know that it doesn’t change my curiosity even .01%. It also won’t change my opinion that NVidia could be leveraging the power at the PCI connection either. So far your card is an outlier when looking at 4090 GPU-Z sensor tabs that i can find through google, and you are pulling 2 to 3 times more wattage than most users that have posted screen shots. Most sensor tab screenshots I can find seem to hover between 7w and 17w.

arestavo

CraptacularOne
 
Sure, that's fair but we can assume it's a very large number of cards out in the wild. Even if it were only half of the estimated 100k GPUs that were sold through to users that would only make the 30 cases a 0.06% failure rate. Hell, even if it were only a quarter of the 100k units sold through to user that would make it a 0.12% failure rate. 

Hey now, assuming the "30" that were posted about are all the failures is a bit of a stretch, isn't it? That's just the people who bothered to post on reddit about it. Apparently Gamer's Nexus's email opened for this issue had hundreds of submissions, and even then that wouldn't be all of them. Quite a few folks with this issue, maybe even the majority, would just return the card for a refund or RMA and we'd not hear about it. There's even a good chance there are quite a few folks out there with melted adapters that aren't even aware of it.
 
Too many unknowns to be certain.
 
And it's very interesting that these 4090s have such a low PCIE slot power draw - coming from someone who had a 3090 FTW3 Ultra that drew over 93W on the PCIE slot.