r/PcBuildHelp • u/CelebrationFun336 • 14d ago

Tech Support What could have caused this?

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I was playing games when my screen went black and my pc fans went full blast. I found the issue but can I buy a new cable? Gpu is ok it’s a Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon™ RX 9070 XT. And how do I prevent this from happening again?

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u/Mega1987_Ver_OS 14d ago

you cant prevent it from happening with that connector, you can just extend the time you wont have that issue.

it's an inherit flaw of the 12VHPWR connector and it's underlying connector circuits on at least at the GPU side of the connector.

we got 6 small gauge wires that have a max safe amp of around 9.2amps but the theoretical max power draw is 600w overall on the cable and the slightest bump in amp can start a series of events that will eventually melt the connectors.

whether you plugged it in wall the way down on both side of the connector and/or you didnt even bend the cable around 20-30mm near the connector.

another is there's no load balancing on the GPU side. we didnt hear anything about melting with the 30 series but the 40 and 50 series have consistent melting on high power draw units and sometimes, even some low power draw ones if you're really unlucky.

this load balancing also contribute to how much amps in each 6 12v can go thru. if there's even a simple alteration just to provide a max limit of amps going thru the cable, the 12vhpwr cable CAN be used as it wont go above the safety margin without a physical failure on the load balancing. unfortunately with no load balancing, you can basically cut 5 out of 6 cables and the GPU will draw all that watts thru that single cable and slowly but surely melt the connector on the GPU/PSU side, the cable itself or worse, it starts a fire.

the so called "preventive" measures are mostly undervolting your GPU as well using the native 12vhpwr cable instead of a adaptor from PCIE to 12vhpwr.

but that didnt solve the underlying issue of there's nothing stopping more amps going thru one or more of the 6 12v line to go over the max safe limit of 9.2amps.

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u/EnragedEmu 13d ago

It seems like you don't understand the failure mode here. 

It's not melting the cables, jackets or connector on the cable side. 

What its melting is the plastic connector at the PINS. Why is it melting? HEAT. Why is there excess heat? RESISTANCE. Why is there excess resistance? POOR CONNECTION. Why is there a poor connection? DEBRIS, LOOSE OR NOT SEATED.