© APPLE CORP, MICROSOFT, NVIDIA
NVIDIA’S MONSTROUS GeForce RTX 4090 introduced us to the equally monstrous 16-pin power connector. Things did not go smoothly. There were reports of cables melting, and even cards getting burnt. It soon became clear that you had to be careful that the plug was seated properly, and the cable wasn’t twisted. To make life easier, version 2 of Gigabyte’s RTX 4090 Windforce 24G has taken a chunk out of the card’s casing to make an inset rearward-facing socket. ASUS also has a prototype board that draws power from an extra slot on the motherboard. MSI uses a simpler solution with strategically colored cables that made it clear when they were fully pushed home. All this fuss could have been avoided if Nvidia’s reference design had allowed for a touch more human error.
–CL