From 12VHPWR to 12V-2×6, reports of melting cables have remained a concerning constant among GeForce graphics cards. While this seemed like a problem exclusive to Nvidia, one owner of an AMD Radeon GPU claims to have fallen afoul of the same problems. However, the circumstances of their plight are perhaps less an indication that others are at risk and more a warning against ignoring specs sheets.
On July 16, Reddit user Savings_Opportunity3 asked the r/Radeon subreddit whether they should be concerned about their 12V-2×6 connector melting. While conducting a motherboard swap, they noticed some discolouration on the PSU-side header, prompting the question.
Now, just over a month later, the user reports their 12V-2×6 cable has indeed melted. In new pictures they’ve shared, scorch marks are clearly visible on at least two pins. Thankfully, their ASRock Radeon RX 9070 XT Taichi OC doesn’t appear to have suffered any damage.
So, 12V-2×6 claims another victim, case closed? Not exactly. In further communications with the subreddit, the user highlights a few problematic behaviours on their part that certainly didn’t help their situation.
For instance, the user was driving their Radeon with a 700W power supply. ASRock explicitly recommends an 850W PSU for this card, meaning they’re short 150W. Normally, this should only result in random shutdowns but it seems an odd coincidence.
Most crucially, however, the user supplies no evidence that they connected the 12V-2×6 cable correctly. Proper marriage of the pins is essential to avoiding incidents like this, albeit no absolute guarantee that problem won’t arise.
Whatever the case, I’m glad to see they’ve invested in a higher-wattage power supply complete with ATX 3.1 certification. This should make their problems disappear but I’m sure we’ll find out sooner rather than later if further issues occur.
I wonder if Gamers Nexus will reach out to formally investigate how this problem came to be. The YouTuber has previously reached out to users with burnt out GeForce cards as well as Ryzen 9000X3D CPUs, the latter resulting in a formal statement from ASRock. I don’t see any sign of Steve reaching out on Reddit just yet, but there’s still time.
I’ve personally experience no issues with the 12V-2×6 connector, including time with this ASRock card as well as other Radeon cards using the same connector. The same goes for GeForce.
12V-2×6 is clearly a superior connector to 12VHPWR (even if Nvidia was confident enough in the cable to create a monstrous 1,200W dual-header). However, there are clearly still issues that I’d argue require addressing as part of a further redesign. Your move, PCI-SIG.
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