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In spite of its well publicized issues, the infamous 12pin GPU power connector

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championed by companies that shall not be named is still out there and still

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overheating, sometimes to the point of catastrophic failure. And while we could

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leave it to gamers and influencers to fix it, CIC, who sponsored this video,

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has a better idea. It's called Opiggard,

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and we're expecting it to show up on their high-end Prime Series power

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supplies sometime later this year. But how does a power supply, which is way

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over here, fix a burned out connector on a GPU, which is way over here? To answer

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that, we need a little bit of background. So bear with me here. Wires

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that are carrying an electrical current heat up due to the collisions between

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the electrons that are flowing through them and the aluminum or copper atoms

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that make up the wire. More current means more collisions and therefore more

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heat. But there's a simple solution to this. Ohm's law states that if we lower

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the resistance of our wire, usually by using a big chunky one, we can carry

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more current at a consistent voltage. And while a 5090 at full load will

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result in a noticeably warm power cable,

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9 amps is well below the generally accepted safe current capabilities of

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the 16 gauge copper wire that you would find in a 12vt 2x6 power cable. So what

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causes it to overheat? Well, as usual, it's that pesky real rain that always

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seems to show up and ruin our theoretical parades. Whether it's due to

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user error or manufacturing variance, sometimes the connection between your

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cable and your power hungry GPU just plain isn't perfect. And when this

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happens, that resulting poor connection acts like a much smaller gauge wire,

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dramatically increasing resistance in that spot, which if you remember,

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reduces the current that we can safely carry without overheating. And once one

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of the pins in a connector fails, the situation can go from bad to worse as

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the remaining ones try to pick up the slack, increasing their temperature,

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increasing their chance of failure until finally. Now, there are ways for GPUs to

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protect themselves. But for what we can only assume are cost and space-saving

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reasons, many 50 series GPUs don't. That

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is where CIC comes in. By implementing the current and temperature sensing that

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GPU manufacturers have neglected directly into their power supply, CSIC

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can constantly monitor to ensure that current draw is balanced across every

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pin in a 12vt 2x6 connector and then

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they can proactively power down the system in the event of a poor

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connection. And this has the potential to become even more important as time

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goes on. Mark from Overclock 3D illustrated this perfectly in an article

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where he showed the difference in current balance between a well-used

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cable from his test bench versus a brand new one. And you got to remember this is

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on the exact same power supply and GPU.

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Only the cable changed. And it kind of makes sense. I mean the 12vt 2x6

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connector is only rated for about 30 mating cycles. Meaning that over the 12

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years that your CS Sonic Prime power supply is going to be under warranty,

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you could easily wear that cable out, especially if you're a frequent upgrader

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or a tinkerer. I'd like to believe that by then the industry will have moved on

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from this catastrophe of a connector or at least improved the safety on the GPU

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side, but you know what they say, hope for success, plan for failure. Oh, this

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is cool. CIC is iterating on their Opsync technology with Opticync 2.0, to

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the original idea was to move more of the components away from manual assembly

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and integrate more cooling into the PCB of the power supply. And now they're

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taking that to another level by automating the placement of heat sinks

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over MOSS components on the board, helping to improve both the consistency

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of their manufacturing and cooling. Keeping with our theme of cool stuff,

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there's a couple other cool things here in the booth that are worth checking out. After finding what they described

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as a surprising amount of success with their 2200 watt prime power supply, CIC

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is upping the ante with the beefiest ATX power supply that I have ever held in my

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hands. A 3,200 W 80 Plus platinum efficiency unit

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for AI applications that has a total of I kid you not, six 12vt 2x6 power

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connectors. Unfortunately for me and my

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120 volt friends, this unit will only operate at that output on 230 volt input

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power. So that's a downer. But all I have to do to feel

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better is take two steps right over here. This is so cool. Designed by the

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king of wing, who bearded Linus collaborated with on the impossible

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build back in 2021. This is a monitoring

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solution for 12volt 2x6 connectors that includes much of the functionality of

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CIX per pin current sensing, temperature

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monitoring, and the ability to trigger your GPU's safety shutdown. It also does

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more. It has a screen that you can position wherever you want for constant

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monitoring. And the whole thing is built into a smart cable, meaning that it can

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work on any power supply. And the best part, he's apparently making the design

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open source. What an absolute Chad. I

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can see this being incredibly useful for reviewers and hobbyists alike. Less

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useful, per se, but definitely cool, is the new colors coming for CIC's Focus

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series. I've been asking for years why this isn't a thing. So, it's nice to see

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a major player noticing the trend towards themed builds and providing a

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quality option. Speaking of quality, that brings us finally to this. Building

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on the success of their collaboration on the Prime TX 1600 watt Noctua edition,

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CIC is announcing that their Prime high power density series will now use Noctua

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fans for their outstanding performance and acoustic profile. If you guys

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enjoyed this video, why not check out the one we did last year where we talked

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about that collaboration between Conic and Noctua and how I wanted to be the

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one to do it. That's okay. They did a great job.