PCI-SIG, the body that governs the standards and specifications of the PCIe standards that we use today, recently issued a statement to all GPU makers regarding the manufacturing of the new 12VHPWR cables. The body’s statement was made in light of an ongoing lawsuit against NVIDIA regarding its new proprietary 16-pin cables.
The ongoing lawsuit, which goes by the title “Genova v. NVIDIA Corporation”, accuses the latter of having produced a 16-pin, 12VHPWR cable that poses a serious “electrical and fire hazard”. PCI-SIG’s statement is curt and straight to the point, and seems to address not only NVIDIA, but also its AIB partners that make Team Green’s new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs.
The statement is as below:
“PCI-SIG wishes to impress upon all Members that manufacture, market or sell PCI-SIG technologies (including 12VHPWR connections) of the need to take all appropriate and prudent measures to ensure end-user safety, including testing for the reported problem cases involving consumers as alleged in the above-referenced lawsuit.
Members are reminded that PCI-SIG specifications provide necessary technical information for interoperability and do not attempt to address proper design, manufacturing methods, materials, safety testing, safety tolerances, or workmanship. When implementing a PCI-SIG specification, Members are responsible for the design, manufacturing, and testing, including safety testing, of their products.”
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For the uninitiated, NVIDIA found itself in hot water after cases of consumers who had purchased their new GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, posted images of the card’s 12VHPWR adapter frying out and in the process, killing their cards. While these individuals faulted NVIDIA for their cards shorting out – Team Green still honoured the RMA period for the card – the brand later confirmed that the issue with melting cables was due to the customers not fully plugging in the cables into the ports.
To date, NVIDIA reports that the melting issue with its 16-pin 12VHPWR adapter totaled up to 50 cases so far and after the incidents, it issued a step-by-step guide on how to properly plug the adapter into the RTX 4090 cards, and avoid transforming the card into a fire hazard and really expensive paperweight.
Having said that, the German tech site, Igor’sLab, also indicated that RTX 4090 owner wouldn’t want to bend their 12VHPWR cable too far, given that the soldering at the connector points were held together by a very thin copper base.
(Source: Videocardz)
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