Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Intel may have found the solution to Nvidia’s melting GPUs

By

The 12VHPWR connector found in Nvidia’s best graphics cards has had its fair share of issues. After dozens of cases of the connector melting during regular usage, the most common cause may have been found, but a permanent solution to the problem has been elusive. Up until now, that is.

Surprisingly, the possible fix comes from Intel, not Nvidia. The company issued a recommendation regarding the design of the connector.

Intel's recommendation for the 12VHPWR power connector.
Intel

According to Intel’s recent recommendation, there might be a way to avoid the issue of melting cables and GPUs. Intel suggests that if the 12VHPWR connector uses a 4-spring design instead of a 3-dimple design, the connector should be more durable and less prone to melting.

Recommended Videos

“Crimp Contacts inside of the cable plug are recommended to use the 4-spring design instead of 3-dimple design, which will increase the contact area for electrical current flow inside the 12VHWPR connector and reduce the temperature rise of each contact,” said Intel.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

Intel itself doesn’t have any graphics cards that use this connector yet — it really doesn’t need a 12+4-pin connector that can supply up to 600 watts of power to the graphics card. With only Arc Alchemist cards out, it will be a long while before Intel has to worry about this, but it will eventually need to prepare. For now, this recommendation could prove to be useful to Nvidia.

It’s been a while since we’ve last had any new reports about Nvidia’s RTX 4090 power connectors melting, but the issue hasn’t exactly been addressed. It was determined that the connectors are melting due to user error. The cable is notoriously difficult to insert properly, and when it’s not fully seated, melting seems to occur. The graphics card itself is also massive and most chassis don’t have enough space to accommodate the cable. Bending it only adds to the problem.

Although the 12VHPWR connector gets the blame for this, even the custom connector made by CableMod suffered from the same issue. It seemed that the 12+4-pin design just wasn’t doing the GPUs any favors.

As Igor’s Lab found a while ago, the 12VHPWR connector from Nvidia comes in two different flavors, each made by a different supplier and sporting a different design. Igor favored one of those designs, and it appears that Intel is now in agreement.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Monica J. White
Monica J. White
Computing Writer
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
It’s finally time to stop buying Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs
RTX 3080 Ti in front of a window.

If you're looking for a budget GPU, the general advice is usually to buy from the previous generation of graphics cards. After all, as the new cards take over the market, the older ones are still waiting to be sold -- and while they're no longer among the best graphics cards, they're still perfectly acceptable alternatives.

We've now reached the point in the current generation of Nvidia GPUs where that advice no longer applies. If you want to get the best bang for your buck, it's time to stop buying Nvidia's RTX 30-series and look for other options.
The RTX 30-series arrived at the worst possible time

Read more
Not this again: Intel Arrow Lake may have instability issues
A render for an Intel Arrow Lake CPU.

Intel's Arrow Lake is just a couple of days from hitting the market, and we've been inundated with various reports and leaked benchmarks. Today's news doesn't sound good, though. YouTuber Moore's Law Is Dead reports that Arrow Lake, also referred to as Core Ultra 200-S, may have some instability issues -- much like what we've seen Intel battle for months on end with Raptor Lake.

Before we dive in, keep in mind that all of this is yet to be confirmed, and we're mere days away from finding out whether it's true or not. However, it could give some buyers a reason to hold off and read the reviews before preordering the CPUs. Moore's Law Is Dead talked about various reviewers and tech YouTubers who had something bad to say about Arrow Lake's stability. The issues are twofold: A wild discrepancy between benchmarks, and running into crashes.

Read more
Intel’s next laptop chips may have a secret weapon
Intel Core Ultra Series 2 Lunar Lake chipset.

An upcoming Intel graphics solution, namely the Intel Arc 140T, has recently been spotted on GFXBench. The most interesting bit is that it offers a noticeable performance advantage over the Xe2-based Arc 140V iGPU that recently made its appearance on Intel’s latest Lunar Lake mobile CPUs.

A post by X (formerly Twitter) user Michael (@miktdt) compares GFXbench scores of the Arc 140T with two Arc 140V SKUs—one with 16GB memory and the other with 8GB. The 8GB Arc 140V reached 6,613 frames with an average of 106.7 framers per second (fps), while the 16GB version achieved 6,839 frames at 110.3 fps. However, the Intel Arc 140T, equipped with 16GB of memory, excelled with 11,056 frames at an average of 178.3 fps, surpassing the 16GB Arc 140V by 62%, despite both GPUs sharing eight Xe cores.

Read more