Another melted GeForce 4090

[MajGHOB]

Launched a game this morning on my day off only to be met with a system reboot. After the second random crash/reboot upon game launch, I decided to take the system apart starting with the GPU and well...ya melted GPU 12HPWR plug on the ASUS 4090 TUF. I had a CableMod adapter and cable connected to it, that was supposed to prevent this very thing from happening but I guess it didn't work.

 

I bought an extended 2 year warranty from my local retailer Memory Express which the sales guy told me at the time would cover this issue and it would be an over the counter exchange. I called them today and the manager told me, it was considered physical damage and basically the extended warranty was void.

 

Does anyone know if ASUS still replaces the GPUs when the connector melts?

 

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, MajGHOB said:

Does anyone know if ASUS still replaces the GPUs when the connector melts?

Cablemod supposedly does the last time I checked, not sure about ASUS but I'd contact Cablemod first.

 

This is user error though, if you look at the adapter you can see by the way it melted that it wasn't plugged in all the way, hence why you might struggle to get warranty replacements. 

[MajGHOB]

Been building PCs since 1993, trust me, it was about as plugged in as it could get. 

[WereCat]

That sucks man... It's s really sad that people easily dismiss this as an user error despite this happening even after knowing about it and doing some precautions. The whole design is just flawed.

Unfortunately I'm yet to have a positive experience with an ASUS support so I wish you best of luck with sorting this out. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

17 minutes ago, WereCat said:

That sucks man... It's s really sad that people easily dismiss this as an user error despite this happening even after knowing about it and doing some precautions. The whole design is just flawed.

Unfortunately I'm yet to have a positive experience with an ASUS support so I wish you best of luck with sorting this out. 

Problem is these kinds of adapter potentially make the problem worse as its even harder to tell if it IS plugged in all the way, it definitely looks like it wasn't.

You'd think given this is a common reason given, people would be taking pictures showing how it was plugged in BEFORE removing it to check their worst fears.  I know personally I took a photo of mine after installation, just in case, so I can prove it wasn't user error if anything happens.

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Cablemod supposedly does the last time I checked, not sure about ASUS but I'd contact Cablemod first.

 

This is user error though, if you look at the adapter you can see by the way it melted that it wasn't plugged in all the way, hence why you might struggle to get warranty replacements. 

A design  failure  =/= user error  >.>

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

A design  failure  =/= user error  >.>

but it is user error tho...

 

There's a solid 1-2mm of plastic left on the male side of the connector. 

 

On the female end, it's flush. 

 

That means the connection was not connected by 1-2mm, not fully seated, which GN has shown is plenty for it to melt. 

 

I'll give it to you, this is a terribly designed connector that's easy to not hook up properly and should be redesigned/eliminated from modern GPUs. That doesn't change the fact that this connector wasn't seated correctly, and by definition that is user error. 

[MajGHOB]

8 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

but it is user error tho...

 

There's a solid 1-2mm of plastic left on the male side of the connector. 

 

On the female end, it's flush. 

 

That means the connection was not connected by 1-2mm, not fully seated, which GN has shown is plenty for it to melt. 

 

I'll give it to you, this is a terribly designed connector that's easy to not hook up properly and should be redesigned/eliminated from modern GPUs. That doesn't change the fact that this connector wasn't seated correctly, and by definition that is user error. 

One of the connectors, 3rd from the top is almost fully intact with only 2-3 millimetres from the top having melted, by your logic the connector was only plugged in 2-3 millimetres. I think if you are going to make an argument here, you should at least try using some common sense.

 

Frankly I should've taken some pictures of the connector fully seated in the socket before I pulled it out, so people such as yourself wouldn't have any ammunition to pass the blame to the user. At the time however I was more focused on why the PC was randomly rebooting. Thankfully there have been others who have taken pictures of the adapter fully seated in the GPU that were still melted.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

7 minutes ago, MajGHOB said:

Thankfully there have been others who have taken pictures of the adapter fully seated in the GPU that were still melted.

Love to see these, as I've not seen a single one.  Though it wouldn't surprise me, I think some of the plugs are plain defective and not making good contact with the pins.  This is where its problematic as I don't think its the GPU side that is the problem.

 

It just baffles me why they didn't stick to the same physical size as PCIe power connectors though, leaving so little overhead was really dumb and the connector inherently is flimsy at this size.  But I think CableMod also really jumped the gun thinking they can solve this, adapters almost always just create more problems as you're adding more points of failure.

[MajGHOB]

Ya it was a reddit post a while back. The guy took his GPU and adapter to Micro Center and the Micro Center technicians verified that the adapter was fully inserted and then separated the two for him. Thankfully Micro Center helped him with the replacement and he bought extended warranty on the new replacement. He also had pictures of it before he took it into the store. I tried looking for the post, but I can't find it at the moment.

[r00tb33r]

And this is why I treat my things as if they have no warranty.  Because really, they don't.

 

Cablemod is supposedly handling this though.

[MajGHOB]

 

[r00tb33r]

12 minutes ago, MajGHOB said:

 

That guy annoys me, always emotionally shouting or complaining about customers.

 

That connector is a bad design, I don't want it in my computer.  Period.

[Mark Kaine]

9 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

but it is user error tho...

"We designed this connector so its almost guaranteed to fail, therefore if a user uses it, its clearly user error"

 

This will go swimmingly at any court! 

[Sarra]

This connector is a fucking nightmare.

[XNOR]

12 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

A design  failure  =/= user error  >.>

With hardware intended to be handled by the public, designing it in what apparently is an accident prone manner is a design failure, even if all these people supposedly plugged it in the wrong way. Blaming it on the public is a cop out, unless they can prove gross negligence in every case.