Why it issues: Nvidia’s melting 12VHPWR energy connectors are nonetheless on the market, though a wave of media protection final yr has elevated consciousness of the risks posed by improper contact or bending the facility cables an excessive amount of to make them match inside compact PC circumstances. Fortunately, Team Green has been quietly changing the facility connector on newly-manufactured RTX 40 sequence graphics playing cards, so these of you who’ve but to improve may have a decrease probability of encountering the problematic 12VHPWR design.
Earlier this month, we discovered that the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) had developed a brand new and improved specification for the controversial 16-pin energy connector often called 12VHPWR, which has been a serious supply of complications for house owners of Nvidia’s higher-end RTX graphics playing cards. AMD has but to undertake the usual, so it has largely prevented criticism on this space, with reviewers principally lamenting concerning the excessive value of RDNA 3 playing cards and their comparatively low vitality effectivity in comparison with Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace counterparts.
If a latest submit from the Nvidia subreddit is any indication, the corporate is silently upgrading RTX 4090 Founders Edition playing cards with the up to date 16-pin energy connector. Notably, the corporate has additionally utilized the similar remedy to lately manufactured Founders Edition RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti playing cards, and companions like MSI have additionally built-in the brand new connector on upcoming PSU designs showcased at Computex.
That’s excellent news for RTX 40 sequence customers, a few of whom have seen their connectors soften from not making correct contact. Those who have been fortunate sufficient to keep away from that may typically discover their playing cards didn’t carry out at their greatest regardless that the facility plug seemed to be totally inserted into the cardboard’s connector.
If you lately bought an Nvidia RTX 40 sequence graphics card, you could possibly test if it has the up to date connector by wanting on the 4 sensing pins that ship information from the GPU to the PSU. Several individuals have in contrast them towards these on older RTX 40 sequence graphics playing cards and observed they’re shorter. Another technique to inform is to test for a marking on the highest of the connector – if it has the “H++” identifier, it’s the new 12V-2×6 connector.
If something, this seems like a affirmation that Nvidia noticed this as a big sufficient problem to warrant integrating what seems to be a prototype 12VHPWR connector on its Founders Edition playing cards as quickly because it was attainable to take action. We do not know if AIBs even have entry to this new connector, however we assume Team Green has been coordinating with them on shifting all newly manufactured playing cards to the up to date design.
