In spite of its well publicized issues, the infamous 12pin GPU power connector
championed by companies that shall not be named is still out there and still
overheating, sometimes to the point of catastrophic failure. And while we could
leave it to gamers and influencers to fix it, CIC, who sponsored this video,
has a better idea. It's called Opiggard,
and we're expecting it to show up on their high-end Prime Series power
supplies sometime later this year. But how does a power supply, which is way
over here, fix a burned out connector on a GPU, which is way over here? To answer
that, we need a little bit of background. So bear with me here. Wires
that are carrying an electrical current heat up due to the collisions between
the electrons that are flowing through them and the aluminum or copper atoms
that make up the wire. More current means more collisions and therefore more
heat. But there's a simple solution to this. Ohm's law states that if we lower
the resistance of our wire, usually by using a big chunky one, we can carry
more current at a consistent voltage. And while a 5090 at full load will
result in a noticeably warm power cable,
9 amps is well below the generally accepted safe current capabilities of
the 16 gauge copper wire that you would find in a 12vt 2x6 power cable. So what
causes it to overheat? Well, as usual, it's that pesky real rain that always
seems to show up and ruin our theoretical parades. Whether it's due to
user error or manufacturing variance, sometimes the connection between your
cable and your power hungry GPU just plain isn't perfect. And when this
happens, that resulting poor connection acts like a much smaller gauge wire,
dramatically increasing resistance in that spot, which if you remember,
reduces the current that we can safely carry without overheating. And once one
of the pins in a connector fails, the situation can go from bad to worse as
the remaining ones try to pick up the slack, increasing their temperature,
increasing their chance of failure until finally. Now, there are ways for GPUs to
protect themselves. But for what we can only assume are cost and space-saving
reasons, many 50 series GPUs don't. That
is where CIC comes in. By implementing the current and temperature sensing that
GPU manufacturers have neglected directly into their power supply, CSIC
can constantly monitor to ensure that current draw is balanced across every
pin in a 12vt 2x6 connector and then
they can proactively power down the system in the event of a poor
connection. And this has the potential to become even more important as time
goes on. Mark from Overclock 3D illustrated this perfectly in an article
where he showed the difference in current balance between a well-used
cable from his test bench versus a brand new one. And you got to remember this is
on the exact same power supply and GPU.
Only the cable changed. And it kind of makes sense. I mean the 12vt 2x6
connector is only rated for about 30 mating cycles. Meaning that over the 12
years that your CS Sonic Prime power supply is going to be under warranty,
you could easily wear that cable out, especially if you're a frequent upgrader
or a tinkerer. I'd like to believe that by then the industry will have moved on
from this catastrophe of a connector or at least improved the safety on the GPU
side, but you know what they say, hope for success, plan for failure. Oh, this
is cool. CIC is iterating on their Opsync technology with Opticync 2.0, to
the original idea was to move more of the components away from manual assembly
and integrate more cooling into the PCB of the power supply. And now they're
taking that to another level by automating the placement of heat sinks
over MOSS components on the board, helping to improve both the consistency
of their manufacturing and cooling. Keeping with our theme of cool stuff,
there's a couple other cool things here in the booth that are worth checking out. After finding what they described
as a surprising amount of success with their 2200 watt prime power supply, CIC
is upping the ante with the beefiest ATX power supply that I have ever held in my
hands. A 3,200 W 80 Plus platinum efficiency unit
for AI applications that has a total of I kid you not, six 12vt 2x6 power
connectors. Unfortunately for me and my
120 volt friends, this unit will only operate at that output on 230 volt input
power. So that's a downer. But all I have to do to feel
better is take two steps right over here. This is so cool. Designed by the
king of wing, who bearded Linus collaborated with on the impossible
build back in 2021. This is a monitoring
solution for 12volt 2x6 connectors that includes much of the functionality of
CIX per pin current sensing, temperature
monitoring, and the ability to trigger your GPU's safety shutdown. It also does
more. It has a screen that you can position wherever you want for constant
monitoring. And the whole thing is built into a smart cable, meaning that it can
work on any power supply. And the best part, he's apparently making the design
open source. What an absolute Chad. I
can see this being incredibly useful for reviewers and hobbyists alike. Less
useful, per se, but definitely cool, is the new colors coming for CIC's Focus
series. I've been asking for years why this isn't a thing. So, it's nice to see
a major player noticing the trend towards themed builds and providing a
quality option. Speaking of quality, that brings us finally to this. Building
on the success of their collaboration on the Prime TX 1600 watt Noctua edition,
CIC is announcing that their Prime high power density series will now use Noctua
fans for their outstanding performance and acoustic profile. If you guys
enjoyed this video, why not check out the one we did last year where we talked
about that collaboration between Conic and Noctua and how I wanted to be the
one to do it. That's okay. They did a great job.