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NVIDIA gets it wrong, again

NVIDIA is the undisputed king of GPUs.

"Team Green" has pretty much taken over the graphics processor marketplace with their incredibly powerful GPUs and the latest generation, the 5000 series, is already sold out around the world.

Gamers seeking the maximum number of frames per second (FPS) so as to give them an edge in online gameplay think nothing of dropping thousands of dollars on the latest and greatest GPUs with the flagship RTX5090 now being in high demand.

Likewise, as video resolutions and bit-depths increase with ever-more complex codecs, video editing requires more and more graphics horsepower.

Then there are the demands of AI systems that consume massive amounts of GPU resource if you want to run them locally.

This all adds up to an insatiable demand for super-powerful GPUs that can make the difference between a system crawling like a snail or operating at light-speed.

Unfortunately for NVIDIA, even though they lead the market, they're still prone to stuff-ups of immense magnitude.

When the RTX4000 series was released, purchasers of the top-end cards began reporting issues with the 12V power connectors.

Due to the pretty significant amounts of power being drawn by these cards, they draw a lot of current and most of that is delivered through a separate power connector on the PCB. Only 75 watts of power can be delivered through the PCIE motherboard slot so hundreds of watts must flow through this 12V connector.

Sadly, there were many reports with the RTX4090, that this connector was melting under the demands of all that current so a not-insignificant number of users discovered that if the connector wasn't properly seated, bad things would happen.

After much investigation, changes were made to the power connector in an attempt to identify any situation where a faulty connector or incomplete insertion might cause a melt-down. Eventually the problem was resolved -- sort of.

But now we have the RTX5090 and guess what?

People buying the Founders Edition card from NVIDIA have discovered that, once again, they're having power-connector meltdown issues.

The RTX5090 is the most power-hungry consumer-grade graphics card the company has ever made so even more demands are being made on this connector with the latest version and some suggest that the connector's capacity remains inadequate for the demands being placed on it.

This Arstechnica story suggests that only a few units have been affected so far and that the cause, once again, has been primarily due to impropper socket insertion.

More worrying than this "towering inferno" situation however, could be reports that the cards are bricking themselves during power-up. This time it's being attributed to a driver issue rather than a fault in the silicon but the jury is still out.

I guess none of this would matter quite so much if we were talking a card that cost a few hundred dollars -- but the RTX5090 has an MSRP of between US$2K and US$3,500 -- depending on which partner model you purchase (when you can). That's more than most people spend on an entire PC system.

Also, with the product being in such short supply, if you were unlucky enough to set your new NZ$5K GPU on fire or turn it into a paperweight, the time you'd have to wait for a replacement could be measured in months rather than weeks or days.

Still, if you're not happy, what are you going to do? Where else can you go?

Probably nowhere.

AMD is falling out of contention and now seems to be focused on targeting the more middle-ground rather than the high-end and Intel is also only offering low to middle-end cards. NVIDIA has this market to itself and that means it can do whatever it wants and take all the time it needs to sort out any issues.

Carpe Diem folks!

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