Molex 16 Pin Wire Connector, Harley BLACK Waterproof, Sealed Kit, MX150

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The PCI-SIG (Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group), which is in charge of the spec for the 12VHPWR connection, sent a brief statement to the press on Dec. 1, that in short tells companies making graphics cards to conduct better safety testing. This came after a class-action lawsuit was filed in California.

The guidance to not bend the cable too close to the connector still stands with the 12V-2x6 power connector. With the previous 12VHPWR power connector, the recommended spacing was at least 35mm from the connector before bending, although some power supply vendors suggested up to 40mm for good measure. However, the distance for the 12V-2x6 power connector is unknown as Igor's Lab didn't provide the specific measurement in the report. The 12V-2x6 document also delves into more technical aspects, such as testing methodologies.Interestingly, Nvidia has used a 12-pin precursor to the PCI-SIG 16-pin connector on the Founders Edition RTX 30-series cards. To our knowledge, no one reported any melting 12-pin adapters over the past two years. RTX 3090 Ti cards also use a 16-pin connector, but they still come with a 12-pin adapter cable. The chipmaker does warn against using third-party adapters, such as the Cablemod and the upcoming Seasonic one, which will void your warranty — though note that all the cases of melted connectors so far have been with the official Nvidia adapter. Can someone build a better right-angle connector than Nvidia's official adapter? Almost certainly, and it will still technically void your warranty.

Nvidia has suggested that the issue is caused because 16-pin adapters are not being plugged completely into the graphics card. Updated 10/26/2022 9:00 pm PT: Added the relevant information about the usage of third-party adapters from Nvidia documentation included with the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition. Nov 24th 2023 Special Chinese Factories are Dismantling NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Graphics Cards and Turning Them into AI-Friendly GPU Shape (47) Ironically, unlike almost all the other internal ATX power connectors, the Peripheral Power Connector was actually a Mate-n-Lok connector designed by Amphenol.

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We at Tom's Hardware haven't tried any third-party cables. ATX 3.0 PSUs should work, as those cables don't require adapters for the 16-pin connector. However, there are still at least a couple of reports of direct PSU connections melting. The 16-pin connector is largely the same, but it adds four extra "sense pins" that can communicate with the power supply. In our experience, the 16-pin connector does require a bit more force to fully insert. Multiple theories suggest the root cause may be improperly inserted connectors, perhaps pulled out after doing some cable management. But there is no hard proof as yet that this is the only possible cause. Bottom Line The company said that in testing cables returned from customers, a "wear line" can be seen, suggesting that the cable wasn't fully inserted into the connector on the card. What has the PCI-SIG said about this? Having said that, some custom GeForce RTX 3090 Ti cards like the EVGA Kingpin Hybrid Gaming even come with two PCIe 5.0 power connectors, which means up to a ridiculous 1,200W of power delivery. Use only the included PCIe Gen 5 compliant power connector adapter for your GeForce RTX 40-series Founders Edition graphics card. Use of non-compliant or third-party power connector adapters may cause technical issues, and may void your manufacturer warranty."

The specifications for the 12V-2x6 power connector aren't final; however, Igor's Lab believes they're unlikely to change. For example, MSI has already launched new ATX 3.0 power supplies with the 12V2x6 connector. The fact that the vendors can spec the 12V-2x6 power connector for 150W or 300W might mean that we could potentially find the new power connector on lower-end graphics cards as well.Another interesting bit of information from the draft concerns temperatures on the 12V-2x6 power connector's pins. The temperature life is 168 hours at 105 degrees Celsius, while the expectancy is 92 hours at 105 degrees Celsius with preconditioning. Therefore, manufacturers must consider temperature limits when designing their graphics cards to ensure that other components, such as the shunts, VRM, or coils, don't add unnecessary heat to the header. Our findings to date suggest that a common issue is that connectors are not fully plugged into the graphics card. To help ensure the connector is secure we recommend plugging the power dongle into the graphics card first to ensure it's firmly and evenly plugged in, before plugging the graphics card into the motherboard.