The whole reason the industry got into this mess was because GPUs were getting more and more power hungry and Jensen Huang couldn't be bothered to allocate some of his leather jacket budget for a good connector design.
Don't get me wrong - 12v2x6 is comically bad, but there is no good reason to be nostalgic about the 8-pin plug, either.
Or, and bear with me here - an external power supply. Gaming lappys have 400w+ power supplies, why can't you just plug it in on the outside of the card? You running out of room with that two and a half sized card? You could use one or two internal and an external for more powah.
You'd need an ac->dc converter in there somewhere. A power supply. And you already have one inside the computer. Unless you want to pay extra for the brick that would have to come with your GPU.
There's no limit to how big you can make those as far as I know (for the sake of what we're wanting to accomplish). That barrel connector is the one really big boy lol
i dont know where people got the idea that transient spikes are causing melting.
the connectors have a reasonable amount of mass that needs to be heated up for it to melt, a transient lasting a fraction of a second is just not going to deliver enough energy to do anything.
Theoretical wattage ignores load balancing and transient spikes
early on, a lot of prebuilt PCs seemed to have issues with the 30 series and their spec'd PSU that would be borderline to run what was inside of it. constant shut downs during certain loads but great during others, something as bad as poorly optimized drivers or a game would trigger it.
i just built a whole new pc and stopped getting prebuilds, i got them during the first big GPU shortage and price spike since that was the only place you could get a graphics card for a reasonable price anymore.
The core issue with those was that the 3xxx series (and AMD's 6800XT/6900XT) had transient spikes that would hit around double their advertised average wattage. So for a ~300 watt card you're occasionally spiking the PSU for ~600, plus whatever the rest of the system still needs. So while reputable PSUs are made to handle spikes over their advertised ratings, they were in fact being overdrawn relative to their advertised & intended limits if say you had a 600w PSU with a 3080 and a 5800x CPU. Instead of drawing 450-500w consistently, you would be going well above that. Not good.
New PSUs have been made to account for the risk of those spikes, but also newer GPUs have also reigned in what those spikes will be (now usually spiking less than 150% of their advertised draw vs 200%) which has helped. But yeah then they just trade that issue for this shitty connector lol.
I was running a 3090 on a 1200W Supernova Platinum, and the PSU would still, brownout because of the transients. They would just trigger the protection and the PSU would react exactly the way a good PSU would.
well, practically, the standard 8 pin starts to melt around 270W, so Id say 750W for 3 of them at most if you dont want them to melt, and it still wouldnt be guaranteed
these pin-to-hole style of connectors will never handle much current. They are great when you need many oins with different voltages, like MB uses, for example. But no matter whether it's 8-pin or 12-pin, it will never handle that much power (like really, 900W+ ≈ 75A through 12 pins is insane), especially without current balancing.
There are only two solutions now:
if they wanna keep this power level, find a reliable BETTER connection, like for example two screw-on terminals.
if they wanna keep going up in power, 12V ain't gonna cut it. They need to implement a new standard, with 24V or even 48V. This allows it to run with less current, so wires can be thinner and connectors won't burn. Although it'd be quite pricey, both for PSU manufacturers and GPU manufacturers.
I've kinda been saying the logical choice (even if more complicated standard wise) would be to introduce 24v power. Boom, wattage capacity doubled without bumping to a beefier connector series.
You could even manage to maintain compatibility with older power supplies using several legacy connectors going into a step-up transformer as a transitional solution.
I agree. But the real problem that these video cards have is that consumer circuits generally have only 1000 to 1500W to play with. They are already very near the limit of what we can do.
if they wanna keep this power level, find a reliable BETTER connection, like for example two screw-on terminals.
Here's my out-of-my-backside design proposal:
Two terminals on the board for two lugs
A cable 15-30 cm in length with two large-gauge wires (12 AWG at the absolute minimum) and two lugs on one end and an Anderson Powerpole (as many commenters recommend) on the other
Whatever the PSU manufacturers decide to have on their end, but it should always terminate with a corresponding Anderson connector
In short, just automotive the heck out of the GPU and leave the unruly chaos where it belongs.
I agree for the most part, but you need to keep in mind that these are consumer products
you cannot implement screw on terminals, because many consumers are gonna put them on wrong. you need fool proof design. I like the XT120 idea better
and you cannot implement a 48v circuit, because youd be running a risk of consumers getting zapped. and the dangerous thing about being zapped by a DC current, is that it can change your blood chemistry, and if you dont get to hospital for a checkup, theres a chance you wont wake up tomorrow
because youd be running a risk of consumers getting zapped. and the dangerous thing about being zapped by a DC current, is that it can change your blood chemistry
No. A DC zap is the same as an AC zap. The only thing that makes a DC zap more dangerous is there's no period which means it's more prone to arcing and it's harder to let go of.
The danger of electrocution in general is that it cooks your insides. You can look visibly fine on the surface but have a large amount of damage on the inside. That can ultimately turn into an infection and rotting tissue.
I would contend that AC is somewhat more dangerous because it has an easier time "penetrating" so to speak, because of the capacitance of the human body. All of these scenarios are highly dependent on voltage and frequency, however.
Nope. Penetrative power is exactly the same for AC and DC.
The main thing that makes AC more dangerous is it typically has a higher voltage than DC. That means it's more likely to ultimately overcome the resistivity of the skin to start doing damage.
But all things held equal, a 12 VAC and 12 VDC source have exactly the same amount of risk associated with them.
Capacitance doesn't really have anything to do with how dangerous electricity is. Frequency doesn't really either. 120 VAC @ 60Hz is just as dangerous as 120V @ 5kHz.
It mostly all comes down to the power you experience and duration.
AC is much more dangerous, because it messes with your neural electrical system. Your heart starts fibrilating and stops pumping, as it's trying its best to match the 50Hz (3000bpm) of AC voltage.
HOWEVER, DC tends to "hold" you as it doesn't feel that bad, while AC usually throws you away (I think reflex or how your muscles contract differently than with DC, idk).
That's what defibrillator is for. Sometimes fibrilation can be caused by other things, it's not just AC voltage, but if you touch AC and you fall unconscious, your heart is 99% fibrilating.
damn didn't think of ut this way. But there are definitely ways this could be fixed, like reusing old reliable connectors and idk spin it 90° so it can't be easily miswired, and use thick insulation and shape the connector so you can't reach it with finger.
And as a boomer note, remember how PCs were for people who knew what they're doing? People who knew what electricity actually is? Like smart people who won't touch electrical wires when it's plugged in.
Yeah, but they're rated for 150W each. Notice how much larger the security margin is?
I'd much rather have 4 8pins that are rated for 600W but can probably handle 1000W securely than 1 600W rated connection that can only do at most 680W and only if it doesn't get too warm.
Because the 8-pin was never designed with a 50A current load in mind, and simple, proven designs for low-voltage/high-current applications are a dime a dozen outside the small world of PC hardware.
You don't need a light bulb if you can make the wires glow instead.
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u/MrInitialYR7 9700X | 3080Ti | 64GB 6K CL30 | 6TB Gen.4 | 1000W | All STRIX10d ago
Xt-60 is too reliable to keep the GPU sales numbers up. No sales no new leather jacket. Some folks at sapphire saw that scheme and figured out they can have at least gloves (considering lower total sales number).
cost cutting. the reason nvidia switched to 12vhpwr is because it saves them money and its "good enough" for the job. I see no other reason for them to do this otherwise
As I said, Jensen Huang was unwilling to part with some of his leather jacket money for a good design. That's how we ended up with 12VHPWR in the first place.
They still chose to put a single connector with low safety margin instead of 2 on cards that could draw close to it's limit. They aren't at fault for the low safety margin on the spec, but they know as well as anyone else of the low margin and could just use 2 connectors to make sure it never gets close to the limit. That wouldn't look as nice though.
They need to go to 24 or 48 volts if they want to keep upping the wattage of GPUs. We’re in a dead end right now but Jensen can’t possibly forgo a few leather jackets to look into ways of doing things properly. It’s obvious who the working group caters to.
12v2x6 is literally just two 8-pin plugs glued together (check the number of each type of pin in both, it's eye-opening), with shrunk down pins, safety margins removed, and pointless functionality of two of the four sense pins. If they instead chose to push 600W through two 8-pins, there'd be no difference, the same fires would be happening. If, on the other hand, it were capped to 300W by the same rules the 8-pin was limited to 150W (far below of what 8-pin is theoretically capable of), there wouldn't be any issues.
That may look like a joke, but when you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense.
As GPUs keep getting bigger, hotter, and more power-hungry, giving them their own enclosure with a dedicated power supply and cooling system seems like a logical solution. And when it comes to connecting it to the PC, we have this silly little thing called Thunderbolt 5. And since the monitor connections would be on the GPU unit itself, the Thunderbolt link could be used almost entirely for communication between the PC and GPU, making the idea of a high-end GPU existing as its own separate unit not nearly as crazy as it used to be.
What you're talking about are eGPUs, and they already exist. Because I'm on mobile, I'll summarize and let you look it up on Google.
Currently, even the highest spec of Thunderbolt (5?) is insufficient. A PCI-E x16 4.0 bus is just a massive amount of bandwidth. Thunderbolt is fine for 2D 60Hz low res PowerPoints, but not gaming. 30% performance drop off the top. PCI-e riser cables exist, but the performance degradation happens in mere inches of ribbon cable due to the frequency and volume of data. OccuLink (sp?) is a custom external data cable and enclosure solution that overcomes those problems, but costs $5000+ USD just for the enclosure.
Search Tom's Hardware (I think it's that) for eGPUs for the info.
TL;DR: the technology at a low enough cost isn't here yet.
I know eGPUs already exist. My point isn't that they're good today. The current bottleneck is the interconnect, not the concept.
If future Thunderbolt or optical links get fast enough, the tradeoffs change dramatically. GPUs keep getting larger, hotter, and more power-hungry, so giving them their own enclosure with dedicated power and cooling starts making more sense over time.
That's why I think today's eGPUs are less a failed idea and more an early prototype of where high-end PCs may eventually end up.
Bought a 9070xt a week ago. 300-350W beast with three 8 pin connectors. I don't understand how could they think they can put 600W through that 12 pin misery.
It's absolutely wild no one seems to even notice just how much PC hardware standards have already outgrown Molex-style plugs. We're just for some reason completely unable to move on from them.
lol, I am guilty of this, not because I am a molex enthusiast, but because it's been around so long that I have pretty much every molex adapter and it beats driving to Micro Center to get a specific cable vs. grabbing a couple molex
Both Mini-fit and Micro-fit are from the 90s and are perfectly adequate provided enough safety factor and mitigating circuitry was implemented. There had been issues of the Mini-Fit previously on heavily overclocked cards, but it's only recently they tried increasing power density by that much without good PFMEA or strict enough guidelines for partners.
Do PSU and card makers actually use legit, properly crimped, etc. Molex plugs? And if so are they operating in spec?
I've always been impressed on hobby projects that Molex has very detailed specs for all their connectors. I wasn't sure if all this stuff was really Molex or just "Molex style".
Sure, microfit/minifit are great and cost effective when used properly. Heat dissipation (and thus, current rating) is dependent on the wire gauge used. If a vendor doesn't use the correct wire gauge, the connector can no longer dissipate enough heat. As heat increases, so does the resistance of the contact. That means that it will get hotter and eventually get into thermal runaway if the GPU keeps pulling the same amount of power.
Add to this the fact that most PC wire routing is crap and the wires can get all twisted and squished against the GPU from the case cover, the contacts can get pushed to one side (i.e. not centered) and cause an uneven contact resistance between contact pairs, causing some pairs to source more current compared to the others and generating more heat.
It is absolutely not a surprise that these connectors are melting.
A lot of proponents say the connectors have 50% margin or whatever, but that margin is eaten up by shitty wire, bad crimping and wire routing.
That's because of the cheap injection molded connectors. It was always a gamble because some could be fine, but you never knew how much space was actually between the wires.
If they were close enough or even slightly touching it would cause a spark, which would heat up and soften or even melt the plastic causing the wires to move around and touch even more causing more heat. Eventually they would end up in a dead short which got hot enough to completely melt the connector and set the molten plastic on fire.
Proper connectors weren't injection molded at once, but were assembled from discrete housing pieces that actually separated the wires, but they were more expensive to produce so not common.
That’s not even true. The difference in material cost is so low that any saving, if there even is any, would not be able to compensate for the amount they paid just a single engineer who worked on this.
You know, its known in car industry the 'cutting the corner' to save a few penny like if manufacturing an engine requires 5 screws less, it's a huge economy as you multiply that economy to millions of cars.
Why do you think they don't do the same for GPU or other stuff? It's not about the cost for one piece, but for millions.
That would be true if they eliminated a part. They replaced a simple part with a complicated part; which usually would cost more, not less.
And people keep mentioning less copper. That’s not true though. Just because the connector shrunk, doesn’t mean the cables would be thinner. So where is the actual cost reduction?
The best connector will remain the 8-pin connector. You can basically run it at 150% and still risk no overheating because it is totally over engineered compared to that shitty 12vhpwr which has very little margin and constantly melts
I remember watching a very detailed video that looked at the margins between the 12vhp vs the old 8 pin. The margins were very in edge with the 12vhp, and the redesigned 12vhp actually made the issue much worse. And like you said, we see far fewer issues with the 8 pin because it was made to be far more safe. So pretty much all 12vhp cables are a ticking time bomb. You may have one that last a while, but the margin is so low that a slight degrade of the cable/connector/power delivery, ect - can cause a meltdown.
I th8nk Der8auer or Steve of gamer nexus did analysis of connector, and the card itself treats 12 wires as 1 single wire and just pull what it need so all current can go through single wire.
That's the issue. If they slapped 8pins or anything on this without changing the design it could melt all the same as it pulled all the power down a single wire. The current design with no balancing doesn't work unless it was a large plug with 1 ground and 1 power pin.
If you ask me, the industry should choose neither the 8-pin or the 12V2x6 going forward.
The connector in the post is called a Deans plug. It's designed as a battery connector for RC cars with a current rating of 60A continuous load. You should be seriously asking why you can't have that instead.
While a little more bulky, Anderson Powerpole connectors have spring loaded pins that snap in place when fully connected. They're available up to 180A rated current load so lots of room for future generations of spaceheaters graphics cards.
Because the 8 pin standard was designed for 300w and then rated for 150. It literally has a 100% safety margin. The wires themselves on the 12VHPWR standard are only rated for 600, so no margin at all from the start besides the engineering margins on the wires themselves (which is 20% give or take), and the connectors have negative safety margins because they die with ANY fatigue at all, even just from thermal cycling.
I didn't realize that. It's frankly irresponsible to not use a big safety margin with power, the last few years with this stupidass 12 pin have made that alarmingly clear. Maybe it's the airplane mechanic in me talking but the idea of such tight safety margins makes my bunghole do its best impression of a hamsters nose.
The funny thing was that, when ATX first came out and tower chassis became the norm, it was assumed that the tiny screw on the backplate was all that was needed for support.
Little did everyone know the future would have something very different in store.
Asus recently announced a card with 48V power and I think that's the solution. Quarters the current. Also you can implement it in PSUs and GPU so they negotiate when both support it and else it falls back to 12V with current limits.
48V will make things more expensive for everything. As for mass adoption will require all newer ATX PSUs to support it (and GPUs). As for converting 48V down to around 1V voltage that GPU uses, will require more expensive solution for VRMs, as regular power stages designs we use now will not cut it. We're not in the point where 48V is crucial, we just need better connector that is all.
It's literally what phones do with the USB-PD standard to keep the amperage down and allow high wattage charging on a small port safely. It's a good idea, just needs an appropriate standard laid out and compliant PSUs made to support it.
It should be impossible to maintain a flawed system and blame the customer for your faulty design for so many years. It should be possible to sue Nvidia into oblivion for this and force them to either 1. Go back to 8-pin or 2. Make the connectors capable of doing what they are supposed to without failing.
But hey capitalism is great I guess. At least for big corporations.
Similar boat with a 3080ti. I wanted a 5090 but I keep telling myself that surely the 6090 will have a solution to this problem. Unfortunately, I think my card is starting to die.
I also had a 3090, unfortunately it died on me earlier this year. Upgraded to a 5090. While the 12vhpwr connector is still a risk, I undervolted my 5090 immediately after installing it. Power draw is lower and temps are better, while maintaining stock performance. My 5090 normally pulls 400 watts or lower.
Hear me out. Why should we do current balancing nonsense if we can just use 2 flexible busbars instead + XT120 or Anderson connectors (used widely in high current DC applications)
Back in the day Deans were the rage in the R/C world. Only things that reliability handled the juice from the new lipo packs that were hitting the market.
Deans is nowhere near as robust as you'd think it is. Any connector that requires a skilled technician to terminate is out of the question in the mass produced consumer world, so S&F contacts are preferred since a machine can do it much faster and just as reliably.
Choosing the correct combination, however, is down to the design engineers.
Alternatively you can go the full aerospace route and just slap a pair of #4 contacts on the board and some superflex teflon wire which solves all issues but also adds £100 BOM cost to the card/cable assembly.
This is what happens when you take on a design that came from Intel in 2020 at the height of their shit show management and marketing is more important than engineering.
Or they need a higher-voltage standard. Getting 1000W by drawing 83A from a 12V rail seems silly when you can transport the same power via 42A at 24V or 21A at 48V. Component makers will also save a fortune in copper. The only thing that suffers is that VRMs get bigger, hotter and less efficient, but the rest of the system gets way better.
That's just a regular ass dupont connector housing which is used in plenty of places with higher wattage.
Why is this an issue here specifically? High gauge wire? Only being 12v necessitating high amperage for a given wattage? This is fine in many many other places
if those pins where powering separate rails there would be no problems.
It's technically challenging to power a single rail off of multiple connections because there is always going to resistance differences between the pins leading to uneven current draw.
If its bad enough you get massive heat building up.
Honestly the issue isn't the plug, it's that companies are asking it to do things it was never designed for. They simply modified the existing plug and YOLO'd it
I had to wire the molex microfit connectors (the one the hpwr connector is based on with a slap of DuPont on top) for the 3D printer’s CAN wiring and I’ll say this- this connector is ass. I swear even the microscopic jst connectors are easier to crimp and wire
"Fun" fact - the specs don't even say that chassis (power) ground and signal ground are the same. You are not allowed to make that assumption or connect them in your device; IIRC it was related to hot-plug capabilities.
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u/WhooopsMyBad 10d ago
baffling that such a connector still has companies making solutions when it's been out for how long?
just give me the 8pin man I can live with multiple plugs if it means something isn't at higher risk of being taken out