NVIDIA working with AIBs 'around the clock' on GeForce RTX 4090s blowing up

NVIDIA is in some serious hot water over the 16-pin "12VHPWR" power adapter with its new flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, with multiple reports of cards catching fire and the "12VHPWR" power adapter melting, or worse.

The story gets juicier now with Igor's Lab reporting that NVIDIA reportedly notified all of its AIB partners that all damaged cards that they receive back from consumers, need to be sent directly to NVIDIA HQ for "failure analysis".

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The 16-pin "12VHPWR" power adapter, included with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

This news lines up with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang flying out to Taiwan to meet with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) to nail 3nm wafers for its next-gen Blackwell GPUs... but maybe Uncle Jensen was calming AIB partners down as they're about to get reamed with returns, bad reviews from customers, and more.

Igor reports that a recall and replacement of the faulty adapter would "actually be logical" and I agree with that, I also agree with Igor adding "because this problem can no longer be sat out". Igor adds that it's NOT because of the propagated 12VHPWR power adapter, but "because of the lousy implementation by NVIDIA's supplier".

• Read more: NVIDIA CEO flies to Taiwan, secures TSMC 3nm wafers for next-gen GPUs in 2024
• Read more: AMD is NOT using PCIe 5.0 '12VHPWR' connector on Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs
• Read more: Multiple GeForce RTX 4090 cards DEAD, melted 16-pin power connectors!

Igor explains: "NVIDIA just notified all AIC this morning... All damaged cards need to be sent directly to HQ for failure analysis, this is first time... Even a few years ago when 2080 Ti got issue with Micron, they didn't do this".

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The 16-pin "12VHPWR" power adapter, included with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

Igor wraps it up in some nice bullet points:

• The problem is not the 12VHPWR connection as such, nor the repeated plugging or unplugging.
• Standard-compliant power supply cables from brand manufacturers are NOT affected by this so far.
• The current trigger is NVIDIA's own adapter to 4x 8-pin in the accessories, whose inferior quality can lead to failures and has already caused damage in single cases.
• Splitting each of the four 14AWG leads onto each of the 6 pins in the 12VHPWR connector of the adapter by soldering them onto bridges that are much too thin is dangerous because the ends of the leads can break off at the solder joint (e.g., when kinked or bent several times).
• Bending or kinking the wires directly at the connector of the adapter puts too much pressure on the solder joints and bridges, so that they can break off.
• The inner bridge between the pins is too thin (resulting cross section) to compensate the current flow on two or three instead of four connected 12V lines.
• NVIDIA has already been informed in advance and the data and pictures were also provided by be quiet! directly to the R&D department.