If you remember, NVIDIA had to deal with a serious reliability problem with its cards, the cause being linked to its power supply connectors. Indeed, the RTX 40s were the first models to abandon 8-pin PCIe, and it wasn’t all plain sailing, as the reliability of the new connector was not good and many cards simply turned to dust. For this generation, the brand is confident, announcing at a conference in (South)Korea that it has “more cast iron” thanks to the 12V-2×6!
12V-2×6: no more melting!
Following initial problems with the 12VHPWR, the connector has been overhauled, resulting in some changes to the pin dimensions. As a result, the four sensor pins have been shortened, preventing the PC from booting up if the plug is not sufficiently depressed. This was part of the initial cause of the problem: the connectors were not seated sufficiently, contact with the power pins was partial, causing them to heat up, and poof, the card went up in smoke.
By relying on revised power connectors, NVIDIA is confident that it has solved the problem, while maintaining that the initial problems were due to handling faults. In other words, the Chameleon had to revise its plug because users didn’t know how to plug it in.
Well, from now on it’s all supposition. However, by saying that, you might wonder if NVIDIA would simply stop supporting cards that burn out because of this connector. As they say: ” It is expected that such issues will not occur with the RTX 50 series ” and if it melts, “it’s your fault, we’ve done what’s necessary”.
What’s more, they say that in the two years that the RTX 40s have been on the market, the problem has been solved. That’s something we’ll have to check with Northridge Fix, but obviously the problems will continue in 2025. The technician titles his latest video ” the melting connector crisis continues in 2025 “. We’ll keep an eye on this, but the increase in power consumption of the RTX 5090 is not very reassuring. In the previous series, the RTX 4090 was already the most affected by this problem (it was also the one that consumed the most power). We’ll keep you posted.