40 Series cards and melted connectors

[GimmeGaming]

Hey, was wondering what everyone things of the likes of NorthridgeFix's video on the 4090 FE melting even with the cablemod adapter which would suggest the melting is not use error unlike what others have said?

Hopefully I'm allowed post the video here:

I was looking into buying a new GPU today so just did some research and found this which is now pushing me towards a 7900xtx as I don't want the hassle of having to get it repaired.

[thekingofmonks]

It's just the cable's build quality. Six 18awg paths should normally be safe enough for up to 600W at 12V.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Warranties exist and the media doesnt seem to have reported on this so might just be a one off, so even if you get that unlucky you still got a warranty to fallback on

 

I assume you wanna upgrade the 3080ti on your gaming rig? you might aswell ditch that asus board with the cpu burning shenanigans if you are already this concerned about a likely one off failiure, gamesnexus made a vid about asus handling the burning cpus situation and yea theyve really gone to shit as a brand

[Alvin853]

I don't think the cableMOD adapter is certified by NVidia... So if you use it you lose your warranty on the card. Hopefully CableMOD has warranty that covers replacement of the card if their adapter breaks the card, if they don't then users are just at fault for using stupid cheap adapters that break their cards.

 

11 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Warranties exist and the media doesnt seem to have reported on this so might just be a one off, so even if you get that unlucky you still got a warranty to fallback on

I disagree with this view, the procedure should not be "use it until it eventually breaks, then we'll fix it", it should be "we'll fix it so it never breaks in the first place". Connectors are still burning up, because the issue was not resolved. By identifying the cause as "user error" NVidia seemed to have denied all responsibility for the issue. And any user that now posts "my 12VHPWR connector burned up" doesn't get media coverage, they get shut down and told "well you didn't plug it in correctly, your own fault". In a pro-consumer problem resolution, this should not happen!

[porina]

35 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

I don't think the cableMOD adapter is certified by NVidia... So if you use it you lose your warranty on the card.

Don't think it works like that. The connector is an industry standard, so you can mix and match providing it has the correct power delivery.

[GimmeGaming]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Warranties exist and the media doesnt seem to have reported on this so might just be a one off, so even if you get that unlucky you still got a warranty to fallback on

 

I assume you wanna upgrade the 3080ti on your gaming rig? you might aswell ditch that asus board with the cpu burning shenanigans if you are already this concerned about a likely one off failiure, gamesnexus made a vid about asus handling the burning cpus situation and yea theyve really gone to shit as a brand

I'm concerned with the hassle of having to warranty replace it. Especially with putting a waterblock on it can affect warranty.

With the Asus board, I'm still on the original bios that doesn't have any of these issues. I'm avoiding updating my bios until these issues are solved to 100% avoid this risk.

[Slizzo]

Without seeing the users' cable, I'm still going to assume user error.  You gotta make sure those connectors are "balls deep" in the socket on the card.

 

 

In all instances I've seen on Reddit, Cablemod has covered the users' cables and video cards when one or the other burned.

[GimmeGaming]

Just now, Slizzo said:

Without seeing the users' cable, I'm still going to assume user error.  You gotta make sure those connectors are "balls deep" in the socket on the card.

 

 

In all instances I've seen on Reddit, Cablemod has covered the users' cables and video cards when one or the other burned.

If it was the user cables, would it not stand to reason that it would melt on the cable end of the cablemod connector and not between the GPU and cablemod connector.

[Slizzo]

If the cable isn't seated properly it melts both the cable end and the socket on the graphics card.

[GimmeGaming]

3 minutes ago, Slizzo said:

If the cable isn't seated properly it melts both the cable end and the socket on the graphics card.

It would melt the connection point were its not fitted together so in this case it would be the connector end and the connector of the cable mod.

[Alvin853]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Don't think it works like that. The connector is an industry standard, so you can mix and match providing it has the correct power delivery.

Yes the connector is an industry standard, but warranty is an optional offering from the manufacturer. They can totally void your warranty if you use an adapter that isn't certified. If the adapter breaks the card, then the card manufacturer can decline repairing the card under warranty. For years everyone in their right mind knew not to use any aftermarket adapters, adapters are always your own risk (unless the adapter manufacturer provides warranty, not sure if CableMOD does)

[porina]

5 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

Yes the connector is an industry standard, but warranty is an optional offering from the manufacturer. They can totally void your warranty if you use an adapter that isn't certified. If the adapter breaks the card, then the card manufacturer can decline repairing the card under warranty. For years everyone in their right mind knew not to use any aftermarket adapters, adapters are always your own risk (unless the adapter manufacturer provides warranty, not sure if CableMOD does)

The included adapter cable is a convenience for those on older PSUs. There is no requirement to use it at all. If you have a newer PSU with a native connector, you're not going to use a bundled adapter. I'll give that warranty usually only covers defects in the product covered, so damage caused by external factors would not be covered by that warranty. Using another cable is not reason alone to deny warranty. 

[Alvin853]

1 minute ago, porina said:

The included adapter cable is a convenience for those on older PSUs. There is no requirement to use it at all. If you have a newer PSU with a native connector, you're not going to use a bundled adapter. I'll give that warranty usually only covers defects in the product covered, so damage caused by external factors would not be covered by that warranty. Using another cable is not reason alone to deny warranty. 

AFAIK PSU manufacturers do cover damages to other components caused by their PSUs. So if you use a PSU with a native connector, and the plug burns up on your 4090, you have it repaired/replaced under the PSU warranty. Not sure if the GPU warranty would cover that case. Obviously I don't have a legal department so I don't know what obligations the manufacturer has.

[GimmeGaming]

19 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

Yes the connector is an industry standard, but warranty is an optional offering from the manufacturer. They can totally void your warranty if you use an adapter that isn't certified. If the adapter breaks the card, then the card manufacturer can decline repairing the card under warranty. For years everyone in their right mind knew not to use any aftermarket adapters, adapters are always your own risk (unless the adapter manufacturer provides warranty, not sure if CableMOD does)

What about the second 4090 in the same video with a melted connector with not using the cable mod adapter.

[Alvin853]

8 minutes ago, GimmeGaming said:

What about the second 4090 in the same video with a melted connector with not using the cable mod adapter.

If they used the adapter provided with the card then it should be covered under warranty, and then the question is why is the card even at a 3rd party repair shop to begin with. This comes down to:

 

2 hours ago, Alvin853 said:

I disagree with this view, the procedure should not be "use it until it eventually breaks, then we'll fix it", it should be "we'll fix it so it never breaks in the first place". Connectors are still burning up, because the issue was not resolved. By identifying the cause as "user error" NVidia seemed to have denied all responsibility for the issue. And any user that now posts "my 12VHPWR connector burned up" doesn't get media coverage, they get shut down and told "well you didn't plug it in correctly, your own fault". In a pro-consumer problem resolution, this should not happen!

People get told it is their own fault, so they think the repair is not covered under warranty.

[Godlygamer23]

2 hours ago, Alvin853 said:

Yes the connector is an industry standard, but warranty is an optional offering from the manufacturer. They can totally void your warranty if you use an adapter that isn't certified. If the adapter breaks the card, then the card manufacturer can decline repairing the card under warranty. For years everyone in their right mind knew not to use any aftermarket adapters, adapters are always your own risk (unless the adapter manufacturer provides warranty, not sure if CableMOD does)

If manufacturers get into that nonsense, I think they would have to prove the adapter caused the issue in the first place. 

 

Why is this any different than cables used with a power supply, regardless if they're native to the power supply or aftermarkets from CableMod or some other company? Same situation IMO. Prove the adapter or cable caused the issue. If they cannot, then they should be honoring the warranty. 

[Slizzo]

These cards that Northridge are going through currently are cards that were covered under Cablemod's own warranty. So they are cards that have been laying around for a bit.

 

I'm willing to wager that these cards are indeed cards that did not have the cable fully seated into the socket on the card, thus burning it up.

[GimmeGaming]

8 hours ago, Slizzo said:

These cards that Northridge are going through currently are cards that were covered under Cablemod's own warranty. So they are cards that have been laying around for a bit.

 

I'm willing to wager that these cards are indeed cards that did not have the cable fully seated into the socket on the card, thus burning it up.

Did you watch the video? the connector was melted to the cablemod adapter and it looked perfected fitted. The other end of the cablemod adapter looked undamaged so your theory gets thrown out the window.

[starsmine]

It was literally a batch of cards sent in FROM cable mod that have been sitting around for a while (multiple months).
These are not customers cards.

Northridge fix got hit with a selection bias and drew the wrong conclusions from that due to not knowing the data he had was skewed.

 

[GimmeGaming]

I watched that video when released, the point GN missed is the cable mod adapter was clearly connected in the video so it wouldn't have occurred in the way he previous talked about. You can pause the video and see clearly its connected 100% before he destroys it taking it off.

[Alvin853]

2 hours ago, GimmeGaming said:

I watched that video when released, the point GN missed is the cable mod adapter was clearly connected in the video so it wouldn't have occurred in the way he previous talked about. You can pause the video and see clearly its connected 100% before he destroys it taking it off.

Yeah sadly GN is defending NVidia this time... independent media is supposed to be on the consumer side, not on the corporate side, I don't understand why GN is insisting it is user error. 

[starsmine]

8 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

Yeah sadly GN is defending NVidia this time... independent media is supposed to be on the consumer side, not on the corporate side, I don't understand why GN is insisting it is user error. 

because it is user error for the vast majority of these. I dont understand why some people are insisting it is not user error, other then that would be convenient. 

When you have a failure rate of sub .1% and the majority of those failures ARE user errors, It's user error, not a manufacturing issue. 
because that means a manufacturing issue of sub .05% which is... way better than normal failure rates. 

[Alvin853]

1 minute ago, starsmine said:

because it is user error for the vast majority of these. I dont understand why some people are insiting it is not user error. 

When you have a failure rate of sub .1% and the majority of those failures ARE user errors, It's user error, not a manufacturing issue. 
because that means a manufacturing issue of sub .05% which is... way better than normal failure rates. 

Just because something is rare doesn't mean it is user error. And the failure rates of previous 6 and 8 pin PCIe connectors were much lower.

Also there were no widespread issues reported on 3090Ti cards that used the same connector. There clearly is something wrong with RTX 4000 series cards, and maybe user error can make it worse, but the problem is not user error.

[Alvin853]

Jay had a good discussion about this on the RTFM show this week:
 

 

[GimmeGaming]

Northridge just posted a reply video and shows a close up of the connector connected properly. This proves its not user error. This is what I was pointing at from his first video.