As days go by, more mystery surrounding the melting NVIDIA 16-Pin '12VHPWR' cable unfolds and it looks like the company has made its first official statement on the matter besides just saying that they are still investigating the issues.
NVIDIA 16-Pin '12VHPWR' Cable For GeForce RTX 4090 & RTX 4080 Have Two Manufacturers With Vastly Different Designs
There have been various solutions and plausible explanations made by various tech outlets and experts including Igor Wallossek of Igor's Lab. The latest details have brought us a step closer to where the issues stem from and we also get a confirmation from NVIDIA itself on the supplier of these cables.
“We continue to investigate the reports, however, we don’t have further details to share yet. NVIDIA and our partners are committed to supporting our customers and ensuring an expedited RMA process for them”.
We know that the NVIDIA 16-Pin '12VHPWR' adapter cables come in two flavors, one rated at 150V and one rated at 300V. Despite the higher voltage support and better soldering quality of the 300V cable, we have seen instances where that adapter has melted too. We have also seen ATX 3.0 PSUs melt and even fully-inserted cables melt. In our previous article, we also stated that despite the 16-pin connector being fully plugged in, resistance can cause the cable to come loose, and well, there's more to that.
NVIDIA 16-Pin 12VHPWR Cable From Astron and NTK (Image Credits: Igor's Lab):
It seems like NVIDIA is relying on two different manufacturers with two vastly different latching mechanisms for the 16-Pin '12VHPWR' cable. According to the Director of Engineering at NVIDIA, Gabriele Gorla, it has been revealed that these two manufacturers are Astron and NTK. Both are situated in Taiwan and have their cables conform with the PCI-SIG standards but there's just one tiny little difference that may not be visible to most consumers at first but this could be a big deal based on the resistance and cable-pull issues that we mentioned above.
The NVIDIA 16-Pin '12VHPWR' cable from ASRon comes with a dual-slot spring contact while the NTK cable comes with a single-slot spring contact. Now you must think higher means better right? Well, not here. You see the single-slot spring design allows for lower resistance. AIBs such as Zotac and Gigabyte are using NTK cables and have stated that they are easier to detach & more reliable for longer life cycles whereas Astron's soldering quality is slightly poor and has a higher resistance.
Meanwhile, both the Astron and NTK cable will have to be pushed in with force with NTK requiring a bit more for proper latching. Based on the findings by Igor, the 16-Pin '12VHPWR' cable shouldn't exceed a resistance of over 2 Ohms. Now there's no way to conclude that this is the primary issue as there have been multiple reports before that didn't turn out right. The problem could be a mix of various issues and there are also design revisions underway. It is likely that NVIDIA is waiting for the next revision to drop before providing a final statement on the matter.
Furthermore, Igor says that NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 will rely on the two different 16-Pin '12VHPWR' cable manufacturers while the RTX 4070 Ti will utilize cables from NTK only. The full breakdown of the issues is listed below:
| Problem | Cause | Solution |
| Poorly fitting plug, straight plugging impossible |
Injection molding, Protruding casting residues |
Light chamfering with cutter knife, do not use contact grease! |
| Poor fitting connector, no snap in at the end |
Injection molding, Protruding casting residues, Poor locking mechanism |
Visual control by user |
| Hot contacts, Melting of the connector (1) |
Bent up Tulip contact by angled insertion or moving the connector afterwards |
Replacing the cable or adapter |
| Hot contacts, Melting of the connector (2) |
Bending the adapter or power supply cable |
Replacing the cable or adapter |
| Hot contacts, Melting of the connector (3) |
All relevant causes | Use ATX3 power supplies with native 12VHPWR connector or spare PSU cables (crimped in each case) |
| Insufficient gripping surface for the correct insertion to the end stop |
Cooler design | None |
| Insufficient gripping surface for the correct loosening of the Connection without bending |
Cooler design | None |
| Hot leads between adapter and PSU |
Adapter with broken solder joints or broken cable |
Exchange adapter |
| Hot plugs/sockets on the PSU side |
PSU design too weak | Replace PSU |
News Sources: Videocardz, Tomshardware
