I Fixed the 5090’s Melting Power Connector...But YOU Shouldn't

[LMGcommunity]

It’s no wonder GeForce RTX 50-series Founder’s Edition power connectors are melting, what with nVidia insisting on using tiny little connectors, AND then making matters worse by wiring them up in a way sure to make an electronics engineer cringe. We joked on the WAN show that someone should just use an XT60 connector to solve the problem! 

 

 

[starsmine]

Linus nervousness seems way to unnecessary. So long as you didnt short anything, which they showed they had not with the continuity test, there was less risk then the standard connector. 

[Jaw709]

So tall! and great hair, unfortunately no one can see it. That is all, tech on-

[dogwitch]

not sure if anyone saw this.

bit odd he goes tangent off on the topic title.

 

[starsmine]

1 minute ago, dogwitch said:

not sure if anyone saw this.

bit odd he goes tangent off on the topic title.

 

Yea I do wonder how LTT could correct that part in the video. It was a pretty big mistake. I did notice that ASUS and MSI BOTH mislead LMG there, but im not that mad at LMG about it. 

[Martycrane]

The ending repsonses from MSI and Asus are mislelading at best. MSI still shunts everything into a single 12V rail, even on the high end Suprim models. ASUS does have per pin monitoring, only on the Astral cards, but they still go into a single 12V rail past those resistors. 

The issue was never the connectors. The 3090 used it without any issues. The issue comes down to current balancing between the wires. The 30 series had the extra circuitry for it as well as multiple 12V rails on the card. If there were too many broken wires, the cards would simply not function. It was stripped from the 40 and 50 series cards. At least on the 40 series there was a parallel connection prior to the 12V rail, for whatever reason, but even that's gone on the 50 series cards.

 

This issue will never go away until they bring back multiple rails, and the ability to current balance between them. This whole video is just a bandaid.

[LmnSour]

22 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Yea I do wonder how LTT could correct that part in the video. It was a pretty big mistake. I did notice that ASUS and MSI BOTH mislead LMG there, but im not that mad at LMG about it. 

Trusting manufacturers isn't quite a mistake; maybe a misjudgment.  Annoyance directed at LTT vs a manufacturer is a little misplaced, however, only a little.  

[Martycrane]

1 minute ago, LmnSour said:

Trusting manufacturers isn't quite a mistake; maybe a misjudgment.  Annoyance directed at LTT vs a manufacturer is a little misplaced, however, only a little.  

It's definitely not LMG's fault, other than maybe not grabbing a card and checking, assuming they had one from each manufacturer. 

[Streetguru]

@LinusTech Please invite Buildzoid onto the WAN show to talk about the 12V high power connector. He's on Twitter and Discord
 

[LmnSour]

4 minutes ago, Martycrane said:

It's definitely not LMG's fault, other than maybe not grabbing a card and checking, assuming they had one from each manufacturer. 

Its debatable.  If LTT wants to review and test hardware, that generally involves actual testing manufacturer claims, not echoing it...  Its a little grey but I think Buildzoid is a little too worked up and its a bit annoying that he's letting off MSI and making it an LTT mistake.  

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

12 minutes ago, LmnSour said:

Trusting manufacturers isn't quite a mistake; maybe a misjudgment.  Annoyance directed at LTT vs a manufacturer is a little misplaced, however, only a little.

I am more annoyed that they took the time to write an email and reach out to MSI and ASUS, but did not have the time/resoucres (apparently) to have someone in labs check it. Maybe they only got founders editions on hand, but at least a (more than just implied) disclaimer that they haven't verified this themselves would have been appropriate then.

 

I don't want to go all torches and pitchforks here, but I thought that was why labs existed: to not have to rely on manufacturers claims. Just a bit disappointing and sadly unhelpful to the situation.

 

Edit: I didn't realize that the joined pins are PCI SIG specs, so they could have just check with PCI SIG, either through press or by just buying a spec sheet (no clue what those cost, but I don't imagine they are thousands of dollars).

[Haswellx86]

[Martycrane]

2 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

I am more annoyed that they took the time to write an email and reach out to MSI and ASUS, but did not have the time/resoucres (apparently) to have someone in labs check it. Maybe they only got founders editions on hand, but at least a (more than just implied) disclaimer that they haven't verified this themselves would have been appropriate then.

 

I don't want to go all torches and pitchforks here, but I thought that was why labs existed: to not have to rely on manufacturers claims. Just a bit disappointing and sadly unhelpful to the situation.

I'm assuming it's because the cards are in such short supply they don't have either brands cards to verify. even pictures on techpower up show both going to a single rail. i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here.

[starsmine]

7 minutes ago, Martycrane said:

I'm assuming it's because the cards are in such short supply they don't have either brands cards to verify. even pictures on techpower up show both going to a single rail. i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here.

When they are multi layer PCBs, I dont personally fully trust visually checking that a plane is connected by the pictures on tech power up. Now Power planes generally shouldn't be on an internal layer, but they sometimes are. There often is internal ground planes. 

[x.suspect742]

I seriously wonder about LTT's processes when it comes to stuff like this. Please ask your self did you really think ASUS or MSI would have said yes here? Were you expecting them to reply "yes, some of our cards might melt" even if it were true?! Does anyone at LTT see how insane that would be? I have to presume this had to go through some checks and approvals before going out. How did no one catch this?

 

Guys I really hoped you wouldn't sink back into your old ways when you reformed but I'm honestly skeptical now. This is bonkers.

[GreenLeaf]

50 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Yea I do wonder how LTT could correct that part in the video. It was a pretty big mistake. I did notice that ASUS and MSI BOTH mislead LMG there, but im not that mad at LMG about it. 

i think LMG are smart enough to understand it themselves
 

it's clearly a marketing trick

[manikyath]

MSI is probably right.. in a very dishonest way...

 

the connector goes to the board with 12 pins.. that's what their E-mail said, that's what you can see on the board pictures...

but that's not the point.. the difference between the nvidia card and the MSI card is *where* the pins come together, they still come together, and that's the core issue.

[SaperPL]

Looking at these shenanigans be like: guys! hear me out:

 

 

 

[swimtome]

Based on the 9/11 joke my only question was if a bad connection can melt steel beams?

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

Apparently it was addressed in a comment, the video removed the segment about MSI and only references ASUS claims (and makes it reasonably clear that those are ASUS's claims and not theirs imho).

 

So, thanks Buildzoid for noticing and correcting this, kudos for whoever at LMG decided to just roll with a comment correction and modify the video accordingly with no fuss or drama, and let's just all get back to dunking on nVidia for their connector.

[CasualExtremist]

45 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Apparently it was addressed in a comment, the video removed the segment about MSI and only references ASUS claims (and makes it reasonably clear that those are ASUS's claims and not theirs imho).

Yup. Pinned comment that 80% of viewers won't notice lmao. Even on screen pop-ups are no longer noticeable since a significant amount of YT videos are listened to.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

1 minute ago, CasualExtremist said:

Yup. Pinned comment that 80% of viewers won't notice lmao. Even on screen pop-ups are no longer noticeable since a significant amount of YT videos are listened to.

Hence why they cut out the part with MSI as well.

[LinusTech]

The fastest way to get this correction issued for the good of the community was definitely to record a video, upload, wait for processing and then publish.
 

However inefficient the method of delivery, as always, we value any corrections to our content - be they from Buildzoid or any others - and we thank all members of the community who help us spread our love of technology in a fun and educational manner. 
 

Per our error handling process, we have now updated the video, which is something you can count on from us.

 

Now that evil LTT has been vanquished once again let’s go back to getting the best deals possible on our expensive GPUs from ASUS and MSI, courtesy of Honey, the browser extension that saves you money (or doesn’t) by hijacking affiliate revenue from the true bad guys who were having their revenue stolen.

[jordanbuilds1]

4 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

, courtesy of Honey, the browser extension that saves you money (or doesn’t) by hijacking affiliate revenue from the true bad guys who were having their revenue stolen.

Istg if I here the name honey again i will put my pc in the nearest swimming pool (plugged in)!

[LinusTech]

6 minutes ago, jordanbuilds1 said:

Istg if I here the name honey again i will put my pc in the nearest swimming pool (plugged in)!

Don’t ask what sweetener options are available for your afternoon tea, then!!!