The problem seems to be load balancing, or lack thereof. A German guy on YouTube noticed that his cable got up to 150°C at the PSU end, due to one wire delivering 20 or 22 amps, while the others were getting a lot less pumped through them. 22 Ampere is pretty much half the power draw of the card, through one wire instead of three if the load was properly balanced between them. That’s why it ran so hot and melted to shit.
If you’ve ever worked on your car’s 12 V electrics system, you’ll know how thick the wires (and corresponding connector sizes) are for things like window defrosters that will run through a 20 or 30 amp fuse.
Every picture I’ve seen has been an outside pin. So my theory is it’s the cable getting tugged for cable management and even though it’s clipped in, it’s not making as good of contact.
That or just a bad cable design. I’ve bought a few cables from cablemod and I’m not happy with the wiring they used. Their website says “Crafted with 16AWG wiring” but they also brag about the flexibility of their cables so I assume they’re using stranded wires instead of a solid core so you lose a decent chunk of ampacity (and heat sinking).
Are people improperly connecting them again?
The problem seems to be load balancing, or lack thereof. A German guy on YouTube noticed that his cable got up to 150°C at the PSU end, due to one wire delivering 20 or 22 amps, while the others were getting a lot less pumped through them. 22 Ampere is pretty much half the power draw of the card, through one wire instead of three if the load was properly balanced between them. That’s why it ran so hot and melted to shit.
If you’ve ever worked on your car’s 12 V electrics system, you’ll know how thick the wires (and corresponding connector sizes) are for things like window defrosters that will run through a 20 or 30 amp fuse.
Apparently the reference design only has one current shunt, so they can’t even measure the imbalance. Madness.
Well, of course. What can you expect from a Chinese PCB that costs only 2500 USD, right?
You probably mean der8auer?
Right.
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Every picture I’ve seen has been an outside pin. So my theory is it’s the cable getting tugged for cable management and even though it’s clipped in, it’s not making as good of contact.
That or just a bad cable design. I’ve bought a few cables from cablemod and I’m not happy with the wiring they used. Their website says “Crafted with 16AWG wiring” but they also brag about the flexibility of their cables so I assume they’re using stranded wires instead of a solid core so you lose a decent chunk of ampacity (and heat sinking).