ASUS introduces ROG Equalizer 12V-2x6 cable, ASUS to offer discounted upgrade for existing ROG PSU users - VideoCardz.com
Posted by rstune@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 59 comments
dfv157@reddit
I really don't see how this works. I went through every detail on the ASUS site on the cable, and nowhere does it mention how this supposed load balance is supposed to work on the cable itself.
DracoMagnusRufus@reddit
Exactly what I was wondering... Best thing I could find is this quote from TechPowerUp:
crystalchuck@reddit
Why would they speak of impedance when it's DC at work here?
StarbeamII@reddit
Possibly because GPU loads aren’t steady state, but quite spiky.
Psyclist80@reddit
3 x 8pin FTW! Nvidia should be held accountable for this ClusterFu...
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
well anything else was also an option.
nvidia could have gone to 8 pin eps, which would have increased power per 8 pin a lot and perfectly safely to 235 watts. 8 pin pci-e is just 150 watts. if you don't know the 8 pin pci-e only uses 6 for power and has 2 extra grounds, while 8 pin eps uses all 8 for power.
and it would have meant, that psus could just replace pci-e with more eps cables, if their psu could accept both and then that would have been it. we'd have a better higher power standard, that is just as safe as pci-e 8 pin. (eps 8 pin is what your cpu uses)
and more flexibility psu wise, when all uses the same eps 8 pin, instead of eps + pcie cables.
and that was apparently also the plan, before nvidia went 12 pin insane.
so instead of 3 pci-e 8 pin power connectors getting you 450 watts, it could have been
2 eps 8 pins to get you 470 watts PERFECTLY SAFELY.
___
and that would have been just one option.
the other option would have been to go with xt90 or xt120 connectors, which would have been an overall upgrade, because instead of smaller pins of the 8 pin pci-e/eps connectors, those connectors use 2 giant contacts, which are extremely reliable of course, which makes it better than the eps or pci-e 8 pins and also smaller/denser. at 720 watts for the xt120 connector and the xt120 connector is about the size of an nvidia 12 pin fire hazard.
and as the xt120 connector would use 2 thicker cables, it would also be cleaner and easier to cable manage as a bonus.
___
and option 3: nvidia designs their own proper power connector based on common sense, which means a design similar to xt90/xt120 connectors, but i guess slightly different to their liking, but still perfectly safe.
__
so nvidia had all of those options available. they went with NONE of them and instead went with a 0 safety margin, 12 tiny extremely fragile pins fire hazard connector instead.
just important to remember all of that, because i know some people might think "but but 12 pin nvidia fire hazard is so much smaller and cleaner" or whatever other bs.
which again is bullshit, because xt120 connectors exist and are cleaner and the same size.
pythonic_dude@reddit
They are anything but clean with the fucking tiny cables for sense pins there to ruin the party. The only thing Nvidia got right was the amount of wattage to aim for to have room for growth and to not need two cables for anything but OC monsters. Everything else, they got wrong.
bhop_monsterjam@reddit
hehe amps go brrr
Delicious-Window-277@reddit
Cool. Now they're gifting them to the 5090 owners and those that already bought their psu's? Because to charge for a problem they should've solved on day 1 isn't reasonable. It's the least they could offer for the inconveniences suffered.
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
you are operating on the possibly completely wrong assumption, that this would reduce the fires and melting at all.
WE DON'T KNOW.
it could very much increase the melting and fires as well.
as der8auer pointed out talking about such products, we have no idea what could happen.
forcing the same power through each pin at the card no matter their connection may be very bad.
if one of the contacts is a completely terrible connection, it could cause lots of issues forcing the same power through them then none the less.
so again we don't know if it will reduce melting and fire, increase melting + fires, or stay about the same.
___
what you should demand and what is reasonable to assume is the ONLY proper solution after YEARS Of claimed "fixes" to the endless nvidia fire hazard, is a FULL RECALL and refund for EVERYONE with an nvidia 12 pin fire hazard product.
and nvidia pays for it of course.
222505974@reddit
I mean, it’s a solution to a problem that shouldn’t have existed, but that doesn’t mean I’m not buying one asap. I already have the thermal grizzly wireview pro 2, but is too much redundancy a bad thing? Also I have the ROG STRIX 1200 W PSU and an Astral 5090. I saw on the website if you have either the strix or the Thor (I believe any of the ROG platinum psus) already they have an upgrade option so I’m excited to see what that means whether it’s a free upgrade or, what I’m assuming, a discounted shiny new cable.
rstune@reddit (OP)
You know what's better than safe? Double safe!! And I think now it's supposed to come with the new Strix & Thor PSUs you will probably be able to get it for free.
222505974@reddit
I did just see something saying it’ll likely be a free upgrade
222505974@reddit
Free would be nice but I’d be happy with like 30% or more off, I can’t see it being too expensive on its own anyway.
GTRagnarok@reddit
Load balancing really should have been in the standard design from the get-go.
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
NO.
the nvidia 12 pin fire hazard should have NEVER EVER EVER been released.
it is broken by design. it should NOT exist.
every engineer should have slapped the insane person, who suggested it for trying to risk people's lives and hardware on mass.
it SHOULD NOT EXIST.
we KNOW how to make high power small safe power connectors. we already have them...
we got xt120 and xt90 power connectors. xt120 carries 720 watts at 12 volts perfectly safely. it already exist and it is about the same size as the nvidia 12 pin fire hazard.
so STOP IT. no there isn't an issue with the implementation of the nvidia 12 pin fire hazard.
IT SHOULD NOT EXIST. it is broken by design. it needs to be recalled.
TenshiBR@reddit
I am unsure. Should it exist or not?
reddit_equals_censor@reddit
that's the nvidia "engineering" spirit right there! :D
Stilgar314@reddit
This hardware has already been posted in other subs. Many people claim this thing doesn't do any active load balance rather than trusting in thicker higher quality cables for the load to end up distributing more even. I guess we'll have to wait until proper hands on testing is done.
rstune@reddit (OP)
Right. I still don't understand why they removed it from the PCB after the 30 series, and didn't put it back in the 50 series after seeing the melting on the 40 series. Read is just to make the PCB smaller for the founders edition but that seems like a silly reason.
Joezev98@reddit
What other benefit does 12vhpwr provide compared to 8-pins, be it PCIe or EPS?
ButtPlugForPM@reddit
i mean i can get it..
the design for the 50 series would have been fully taped out and done by the time they got to knowing about the burning 40 series card..by then it is 2 late and they prob did the math
have to refund a few hundred gpus or redesign the board for tens of million and miss a launch window
doneandtired2014@reddit
Because it would have led to an increase in PCB surface area about half the size of a dime and that was affront to the NVIDIA engineers who were designing the FE boards to be as compact as possible. There's also the fact that the less than $.02 worth of additional components would have lowered their already high margin but a non-perceptible amount and the company is run by a control freak who has a "My way or you don't get GPU dies!" approach even when "Muh way!" proves to be a pretty glaring, entirely avoidable mistake.
As u/Solaihs also points out, melting connectors hasn't exactly stopped people from by NVIDIA's products.
rstune@reddit (OP)
Yeah exactly haha. That damned leather man! The credit part is, apparently they even disallow AIBs from putting load balancing on their cards! Just smh at this nonsense!!
doneandtired2014@reddit
Yup.
That's something the downvoters of my original comment really don't seem to want to admit: the 16pin connector is flawed, the standard behind it has had to be revised no less than 3 times, the latest revision is *still* leading to burn connectors on both ends, and the lack of load balancing circuitry in an effort to save PCB space and margin on super low volume products available through only a handful of channels that aren't even really meant to be profitable in the first place (FEs literally only exist now to say, "Yes, you can buy our product at MSRP!") is really, really fucking stupid.
Solaihs@reddit
That would have made the oem design look inferior, and they can't have that.
Nvidia doesn't really give a shit about their partners tbh
rstune@reddit (OP)
True. Makes me respect EVGA more for how they wouldn't take their BS!
Solaihs@reddit
Nvidia is bad but their products are good, AMD is less bad and their products are ok, the choices are limited and poor.
Intel is, well its Intel
Solaihs@reddit
Because it hasn't made any difference at all to their bottom line. What are you gonna do, not buy their card?
Loose_Skill6641@reddit
lol having to buy expensive psu and cables just ao NVIDIA could save 5 cents from the cost of building RTX PCBs
bluesatin@reddit
Am I missing something, but haven't all the major issues with the connector ended up causing the actual connector/socket itself to massively overheat and start melting?
I don't think I've seen any examples of the actual wires melting, and that's the only thing that this helps with, it only balances the load over the cables up until the little 'equalizer' block near the connector.
After that 'equalizer' block, it's still going to be shunting all that power over the reduced number of pins properly connected in the actual socket (meaning the fewer overloaded pins in the connector/socket itself will still be getting incredibly hot).
Surely if some of the pins aren't properly making contact, you'd want to just stop providing power until the connection is fixed; rather than help continue shunting power through and overloading the few pins actually making a good connection in the socket.
Homerlncognito@reddit
The connector is redesigned as well. Without an independent test it still doesn't mean much though.
bluesatin@reddit
Oh the other bits do seem like they might be useful (like the monitoring stuff as well), it's just that the whole major selling point about the 'equalizer' seems kind of useless/redundant and a bit misleading.
I guarantee lots of people will see it having some sort of load balancing, and thinking it will help prevent the issues with the whole connector overheating/melting due to a bad connection issue, when I don't see how it would.
And the whole monitoring thing seems like a weird workaround fix of allowing you to setup some sort of alarm in your OS, so if there is an imbalance, you can shut things off manually before it develops into a serious problem.
When it seems like a better solution for that would be to have some sort of inbuilt alarm, or even better with some some sort of fuse-like functionality that would handle it automatically, rather than having to route it through some convoluted monitoring system and then into software in your OS.
Sylanthra@reddit
Can someone explain how a cable can do load balancing? Especially if you physically disconnect 4 cables as they claim they have done!
qgshadow@reddit
There’s no load balancing lol , it’s just marketing. They use a wire capable of handling 14amps instead of 9amps.
Ambifacient@reddit
As far as I can tell they apply a 600W load to only two of the pins at the connector.
Every other 12v-2x6 cable are individually wired, so you send 600W down two wires, 300W/12V = 25A per cable.
Now you apply the same load to this cable. Because the load-per cable is advertised as around 8.5A I can only assume they do something similar like on the GPU side itself. Just bridge all the 12V and ground pins together. Presumably you also reduce the variation of the amperage from having higher rated wires.
I don't think their advertising makes any sense if there are any disconnects in the cable itself. They also advertise wide compatibility with PSUs so definitely no active management. Would love to see a teardown of this.
QuadraKev_@reddit
Were the cables ever the problem? My understanding is the contacts were the failure points.
kittymoo67@reddit
yes but if you made a chonk ass cable that would also remove that point of failure too
pythonic_dude@reddit
Yes, but "normal" cables were rated for ~9.5A while being capable of working with 13A indefinitely, so it's not clear exactly how much of extra headroom this one provides. It's a dogshit solution to a nvidia-borne problem, probably "good enough" for 300-350W cards, but for top tier stuff you'll still want either PSU or GPU monitoring the current and shutting off (working around nvidia's restrictions on what can and cannot be present on the PCB).
delpy1971@reddit
Hopefully these will be available soon, I'm sure it will be £99+ as it says Asus on it lol
DeepJudgment@reddit
I still don't understand why the fuck Nvidia decided to reinvent the wheel all those years ago.
rstune@reddit (OP)
The more you wheel the more you spin.. -Jensen
atomicaj24@reddit
Will it be compatible with other power supplies? Will it replace the psu cable or act as an extension?
rstune@reddit (OP)
Thought about the same thing. Although I don't need it now as I'm still on an Asus tuf 3080 12gb. Would be nice to get one later when I upgrade. Although it's usually a big no no to use different cables on different PSUs, even from the same brand, unless you carefully check the pinouts. Hopefully other brands follow ASUS' lead as this looks very well built. Also didn't see a price there yet, but I expect this will not be cheap.
Freaky_Freddy@reddit
This is 12V-2x6 on both ends, so there's no issues there
From their website:
rstune@reddit (OP)
Oh wow you're right. That's great news. Thanks for catching that!
atomicaj24@reddit
I literally just bought the super flower leadex v2 1300w like a month ago. I wish I would've waited now, I would've just got the new Asus psu with this wire.
VanitasDarkOne@reddit
I've been thinking about getting this same psu. I've been on a g.skill MB850G since 2021. Used it on a 3080ti, 4090, and now my 5090. Better safe than sorry.
rstune@reddit (OP)
It's a great PSU, A tier on the SPL list and reasonably priced. But if I had a 5090, I'd go with a 1200 W to have some margin. I dunno how you're even running it with an 850W! You like to live dangerously 😁
rstune@reddit (OP)
Same. Got an FSP HYDRO G Pro 1000W ATX3.1 and was specifically looking for the somewhat better 12x6 cable for future proofing. Could have waited but my EVGA g2 750w was 8 years old at that point.
Can't you return yours? I was able to return things past the window many times in the past by asking nicely.
atomicaj24@reddit
I got it from newegg and have been using it so idk if they'd let me return. I do have a 5090 lol but ive been using it on a 90% power limit
rstune@reddit (OP)
Haha nice. But hey give it a shot., I recently got a month case from Newegg Canada and it had a few minor defects, just asked nicely and they gave me a 30% refund
THTGuy789@reddit
Looks like it will be based on their website, if so that's pretty cool!
https://rog.asus.com/power-supply-units/rog-equalizer/rog-equalizer/
Down that site a little bit they have this note:
Compatible With PSUs from Leading Manufacturers
ROG Equalizer is compatible with power supplies from all leading manufacturers. For users looking to add an extra layer of protection, it can be seamlessly integrated into existing power setups without altering the current system configuration, offering a flexible and easy upgrade path.
Also in their FAQ:
zezoza@reddit
Nah, it must be user fault
kikimaru024@reddit
Always believe the Steve! ^^/s
tanvirh5@reddit
I have the ROG Loki SFX-L, I'm guessing this isn't supported?
spacerays86@reddit
SplitBoots99@reddit
Should be interesting.
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