Let's begin with a story. Once upon a time, NVIDIA sunk a ton of time, money,
and industry goodwill into adopting not one but three new variants of GPU power
connectors over their last three generations of GPUs. Why so many
changes? Well, as we saw with the RTX
4090, when you adopt a brand new standard like 12volt high power and slam
37 amps through it, sometimes things get a little melty.
That's why the RTX5090 was upgraded to a new and
improved 12volt 2x6 connector
that What the heck? NVIDIA, people are
paying thousands of dollars for these cards and they're still melting. Why is
this happening? Actually, you know what? No, it doesn't matter right now. What
matters is that Lionus Electrical Engineering Tips is here to fix it for
you.
All I need is a couple of these RC car battery connectors, a sacrificial
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out using our links in the description to give ourselves our best shot at
success. I've brought in some help from our fabrication team and from the lab.
So, let's talk through the plan really quick. Exactly what you said on Law.
Super Whisk says, "Why not just have a connector with two giant spades if it's
going to be that way on the inside?" Jab Five says, "The XT60 connector can do 30
amps at 500 volts." Yeah, why don't we just use that?
That was a joke. Well, you should have said /s. Great. In a nutshell, then we
are going to be removing NVIDIA's 12volt
2x6 power connector, and we are going to be replacing it with a commodity XT
series power connector, specifically the XT120.
Now, on the WAN Show, I had actually proposed using a smaller XT60 or XT90,
but as I learned from talking to Lucas, those amp rating numbers are actually
instantaneous rather than continuous. And uh, as we've seen, the 5090 can very
much draw its 50 amps in a continuous
manner, which is why we need to make sure that whatever we're doing actually
makes the situation better rather than being another inadequate fix. And as I
learned already, I can't just trust this number on the side of the connector. So, is this good enough? Yeah. 60 amps
continuous or 120 uh instantaneous. Okay. So, total of
720 W. Y but that's not even the part
that's most important to me though. What I like about this is it has a really
robust feeling mating feel. Like once
that thing's in there, it's not going to get bumped by your side panel and just
wreck the whole thing, you know? Like that's on there. Certainly more
confidence inspiring than this. It even sounds
cheaper. Now the question is, how are we
going to attach this to this? Anyone torn one of these down yet? Uh, no. But
we did chuck it in the CT scanner, though. Ah, excellent. That is not only
a good way for us to do a feasibility analysis, but also a way for us to see
the underlying design issue that seems to be causing the stock connector to
overheat. If you look right here, while
there are 12 pins, okay, six for 12vt
and six for ground, they don't actually
connect to the board separately. They all go into this one strip of metal and
connect to the board at a single point. That means that the card has no way of
knowing if one or more of the pins has a
poor connection, which will force the others to pick up the slack. To
demonstrate why this is such a problem, their power even went as far as to cut
some of the wires on his power supply, which obviously caused the remaining
ones to heat up. Let's take it apart, shall we? This is the easy part. They
trust me to do this part. Oh, look at that. So many more
screws. And of course, it's a different head size because why wouldn't it be?
Oh, that comes off next. Oh, look at
that. Look at her
go. Wow. We might not even need to go
that deep. Feasibly. See? Go right
there. There it is. The little blades. Feasibly we could attach our freaking
wire to that right now. It's just that uh the clearances might be a little
tough. Before we go too far though, I need to make one thing clear. NVIDIA
didn't design these problematic connectors. 12vt high power, which was
found on the 4090, was adopted as part of the ATX 3.0 spec back back in early
2022. And the replacement 12vt 2x6
connector, the one that shows up on the 5090, is part of ATX 3.1. It looks just
like the old one, but it actually tweaks the length of the prongs in an attempt
to prevent power from flowing through an improperly inserted cable. A uh
mitigation that clearly isn't working. So, if NVIDIA didn't invent these
connectors, then why are they taking so much heat over them? Well, it's because
they're the only GPU brand that's going all in on them. Not only were they so
excited about these new connectors that they raced ahead of the rest of the
class, using a proprietary version on the 30 series before the spec was even
published, but they've also forced their board partners to go along with their
shenanigans instead of allowing them to use old school 8 pin PCIe power
connectors if they like. But Lionus, you
might say, I've got a 4090 and it's been totally fine. And you're right, lots of
people do. The 12volt high power connectors are fine in ideal conditions,
but what if you're using a poorly made extension or adapter or jamming your
card into a narrow case which puts pressure on the power connector? Well,
now your ideal conditions have gone out the window. And as you can see in our CT
scans, the card has no way of knowing if
some of your wires booked a one-way ticket to Melt Town. How you guys doing?
Uh, so far so good. No. All right, buddy. We just solder
straight to these and then we're G to G. I mean, yeah, we could.
Hm. That size of wire on there looks like it could be a bit of a challenge.
Yeah. Yeah. It's not great if you want the pads to stay in one spot. My
question for you then is why do we need such a big one? This seems like massive
overkill for a GPU, especially when you look at the wimpy little size of the 16
gauge wires that are running it already. Well, we have to make up for not having
six of them. They have about a similar surface area when you really get down to it. So, similar. Is it Is this actually
enough? It's maybe a little bit on the light side. We could go with a six
gauge, but, you know, fit the connectors. Our wire might actually get
a little bit on the warmer side, but at least our connector will meet properly.
Should be good. Here's my other question.
If NVIDIA feels that a single 12volt and
a single ground connection to the board is fine, why did they reinvent the wheel
instead of just using one of the numerous high amperage power connectors
that already exist that could have just gone to two thickle wires. We'll get to
that later. First, let's rip that connector
off. Wow. I mean, they're definitely stronger together. Ape wire strong
together. Woo! See you later, buddy. That looks a lot thicker. Oh, maybe not.
And they're copper. Oh, hey, there it goes. Oh, wow. There's all that liquid
metal. Yeah, there it is. Wow, that's a lot of liquid metal. That is Well, they
didn't cheap out on that. The board is so tiny. Yeah, I know. All right, let's
rub our connector off. Super cool. I can't believe we're doing this.
What do you think motivated them to just combine everything into just these
two bar bus? I mean, I would almost call it like a bus bar. Like, what would you
call these? I have rail or bus bar. Yeah, bus. Uh, sure. Why would they
combine it into just two instead of, you know, grouping three pins and then the
next three or something like that? They did do like groups of three and some
smaller groups on previous ones, but I think they just needed the whole all the
surface area they could get cuz even on the bottom you can see there's not much doesn't take much surface area of the
board and like the bottom of the rails. That's true. That is a really really
small contact point for freaking like 50 amps, isn't it? If you ever try to split
that into two and then run both those at 25, then they'd be smaller. Do you think
this came down to them trying to make this board super small for the pass
through cooler? I imagine so. Yeah.
Now it's time to start hacking off the connector. I'm going to do it also
carefully with uh a pair of snips here. You know we're going to hell for this,
right? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Wait, what happened? How'd you knock off this pogo
pin? I'll be honest with you. I don't know. I just noticed it wasn't there.
Oh, balls. Where's it come from? Right there. Oh, luckily for you, I feel
pretty confident about putting it back. Hey, I soldered one of the CPU pins on
the broken CPUs. I got it back on. Okay. So glad this isn't like a for realies
thing cuz that would have been fired. Didn't fix the CPU mind you. Uh it
turned back on so I'd say I did. Okay.
Yeah, I think she's going here. Here. Here. Maybe pliers. You're using a
cutting tool to pull. Oh, she's clean, bud. Yeah, I think that should give us
plenty of room. Right. Should be plenty of room to solder to. Okay. Do we uh
Well, we know which one's ground, right?
Yes. It's the one furthest away from the sense spin. Beautiful.
So this bad boy. Yeah. Ow. Damn it. I
stabbed myself. Okay. So without stabbing ourselves, I propose fins out
like that and then goes on there. How the
hell are we going to do that? I think that's basically impossible. Okay, new
plan. That was my plan. We bend it. That That was my plan.
Use a pair of pliers towards the base gently. She'll be fine. So now we got
some room in there. It's not much, is it? Oh, it depends which way you look at
it. I'm going to solder to that side probably and then that side. That way
they have no chance of meeting in the middle. So we've taken the Henry Ford
approach to wire colors. You can have any you want as long as it's the one.
Exactly. We're using red wires for both. Oh,
good. How could we possibly get it mixed up? Okay. Is that the one that you're
planning to solder to the board or is that the other one? This is the one going to the board. Okay. I said six
inches long, though. It's a little uh I'm feeling a little inadequate looking
at it. I bet you if you grab a ruler right now, that is six inches. I don't I
don't use rulers. I use emotions to measure certain things. Ah, yes.
We're not going to get the polarity mixed up with our two red wires, right?
No. One says positive, one says negative. Brilliant. As long as he
sticks to that, I'm positive that nothing negative will happen.
Yeah, you got the right idea. I can't believe we're doing this to this thing.
Just so you guys know, our plan is not to like never use this again or
whatever. Like, this will still be in service. Just whenever we use it, we're
going to have to use a bit of a special power supply. Hey, we should maybe start
working on that power cable. Wait, what is this? I told you guys I don't want to
do that with the thing, guys. Come on. I mean, it's nicer
than soldering it.
It's so janky. This is so much worse than just
soldering it all to the W. Anything I'll recommend crimps over
just soldering to another connector. The crimps are not the problem. The giant
connectors here are the problem. This is what they want to do. They want to just
put a bolt through all of this. So, why
is crimping it better than soldering it? I've always wondered that too because
far more structurally sound and not as brittle as solder. Basically, we have to
plug into our modular power supply somehow. So, we took the modular cable
that of course has a 12vt 2x6 on it, right? And then on the other end, we're
going to adapt that to just like two big chunks of 12vt and ground. But these
sense pins are needed for the power supply and the GPU to communicate their
capabilities to each other. So, we were hoping to just use the original block of
sense pins and just plug them on. Um,
but I have to reattach them now because I cut them off earlier. Okay. I've got
the sense pins reassembled. Oh, nice. Is there anything that would prevent us
from putting the card back together? In theory, no. But just for as a last
sanity check here, let's just do a continuity check and make sure that those two ain't shortened before we send
a whole bunch of power through it. All right. All right. Beep equals bad.
Um, only a singular beep. Not two beeps. No beeps. We're good.
Okay. Good luck, everybody. Good luck, everybody. Doesn't look janky at all.
Yeah. Are we even going to have enough clearance for all of this crap? Oh, boy.
Yep. Not enough clearance. Um, why not?
Well, because we might have bent things a lot. A little. I added like six inches
of wire to the back end. Well, look, I'd like to see you do better. No, it
wouldn't happen. I think with the way I've bent it a little bit, lightly bent
it, I think she goes. Oh, she's a goer, dude. She's a
goer. Beautiful. Oh my god. Not
beautiful, but something. Oh my god. Okay. Well, uh, that's a thing that
exists now. This might be the worst thing we've ever done. Oh, come on. I
feel like for how often I say that, I'm going to need like a shirt. Glenn, are
you getting this? Which one? This. Okay.
What the what? I didn't do this. I'm making it
safer. I blame Lucas 100%. He insisted
that we not solder the eight wires to the one wire. He That would have looked
way worse. What? No way. I thought you
people are supposed to be the adults in the room. What? You people? No, I don't
I obviously I don't mean it like that. I
mean you people, the people who work here and are supposed to supervise me.
Just don't touch it anymore. It'll be fine. Anyone else getting like
a BDSM vibe from this?
Clap it on there. Yeah. Sorry. This is
so stupid. Okay. What am I checking? Sorry. Uh oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got
you. Okay. This is a lot of negatives. This
is the worst thing we've ever done. Not yet. I mean, it hasn't died yet. Oh my
god. As far as we're aware. Oh my god.
Good call. Now we take our sense pins
and Oh boy. Can I get in there? Oh yeah, I can get in there. Okay, sense pins are
connected. Now we just need to do our power connector and Oh wow, that's a
that's a connection and a half. At least a connection and a third. I mean, she's
locked on there pretty good, right? Oh man, I'm not going to lie. I'm a little
stressed right now. Do you guys imagine for a second
that after what we did to this, NVIDIA is going to replace this for us if you
know we need one? It's not like we could buy one easily.
The fans are spinning. The lights are on. The lights are on. These are very
good signs. Yes.
Oh, dude. It's fine. Okay, but we're not really drawing any power yet. So, I
guess we never explained the sense pins. Uh, these tell the G Oh, wait. Did I
explain that? I think I did. Well, whatever. The plan was to ground sense
zero and one, which will tell everything 600 W is fine, but we didn't do that cuz
our sense pins ended up working. Uh, blah blah blah blah blah. Test. Let's do
it. Benchmark
2160. What could go
wrong? Uh oh, that was a little scary. Oh, I mean,
wasn't it when the screen went blank? I wasn't watching that screen. I thought it was a little scary. Okay, she's
squealing a little, but from my understanding, that's kind of normal for these Founders Editions. Wires are at
like 40 to 50. I mean, that's well
within safe, right? Yep. Hold on. What What are these wires rated for? Come on,
people. It should be good for 80 or 90. 85. There we go. Huh. GPU temp 73. GPU
clock 2.33 GHz. That's what we would
expect. Fans are working. GPU power 575
watts. How's the rest of the cable temp here?
30 there. Line his hand in the way there.
Well, I'm I'm checking. I'm checking. I'm using
Looks like a great connection to me.
There you go. So, does this go in your personal rig now? I mean, I don't see
how anyone else could use it. So, yeah. Uh, no. I think the lab wants it back,
actually, which is kind of hilarious. I don't know if they want this one back. You sure? Why not? It's perfectly fine.
Perfectly good. If anything, I would say it's safer than before. That's true. I
wouldn't say it with a lot of confidence, but I would say it. Yeah.
So, it works. And sure, it's not standard, but NVIDIA has clearly
demonstrated that when they throw their weight behind something, it quickly
becomes a standard. So, after being stung once by these little piddly little
connectors, why didn't they just do this? Well, there are a few reasons we
can think of, but the most important one probably is cost. It's always cost,
isn't it? Looking at some common bulk sources, the difference in price between
the two connectors is realistically going to be pennies. So, what it seems
to come down to is the wire. Now
technically NVIDIA doesn't need any wire to build their cards but anytime you
create an industry standard you have to consider everyone's perspective. And
when we looked at the difference in cost between 12 16 gauge conductors like we
have now versus two big fat 8 gauge
conductors of the same length. It was a bigger difference than we thought. And
when you multiply that across all the thousands, millions of systems that are
being built worldwide, you start to understand why they want to go with
whatever the cheapest connector is. Not to mention that thinner conductors are
also more flexible for cable management and easier to work with in
manufacturing, etc., etc., etc. So, I
understand why they did it, but that doesn't mean that what we're dealing
with now is okay. So, what do we do? Are
all 5090s just as dangerous? Well, as it
turns out, the answer is no. ASUS then
went as far as to assure us that their implementation allows per pin monitoring
and even went as far as to create an in-game overlay to show that everything
is working fine. As for what to do if you already
bought a Founders Edition,
uh, that I don't know, but I suspect that NVIDIA is going to have to do
something about this given the potential for a user safety problem.
Maybe they recommend people do this. Probably not. But you know what they
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