Nobody thought that they could push 50A at 12V through half the connector. It's management wanting to push industrial design as opposed to safety. They made a new connector borrowing from an already existing design, pushed up the on paper amperage by 3A, never changed the contact resistance, and made the parent connector push current near it's limit (10.5A max vs 8.3A). And oh, the insertion force is so, so much higher than ever before. Previous PCIe connectors push about 4A through a connector designed for about 13A.
Worth also mentioning that the same time the 12VHPWR connector was being market tested was during Ampere, the same generation where Nvidia doubled down on the industrial design of their 1st party cards.
Also there's zero devices out there that actually deliver or take 240W over USB-C. Texas Instruments literally only released the datasheets for a pivotal supporting IC within the last 6 months.
> Also there's zero devices out there that actually deliver or take 240W over USB-C. Texas Instruments literally only released the datasheets for a pivotal supporting IC within the last 6 months.
The 16-inch Framework laptop can take 240W power. For chargers, the Delta Electronics ADP-240KB is an option. Some Framework users have already tried the combination.
> Nobody thought that they could push 50A at 12V through half the connector.
If you're saying that the connector doesn't have a 2x safety factor then I'd agree, sure.
But I can see how the connector passed through the design reviews, for the 40x0 era cards. The cables are thick enough. The pins seem adequate, especially assuming any GPU that's drawing maximum power will have its fans producing lots of airflow; plenty of connectors get a little warm. There's no risk of partial insertion, because the connector is keyed, and there's a plastic latch that engages with a click, and there's four extra sense pins. I can see how that would have seemed like a belt-and-braces approach.
Obviously after the first round of melted connectors they should have fixed things properly.
I'm just saying to me this seems like regular negligence, rather than gross negligence.
Worth also mentioning that the same time the 12VHPWR connector was being market tested was during Ampere, the same generation where Nvidia doubled down on the industrial design of their 1st party cards.
Also there's zero devices out there that actually deliver or take 240W over USB-C. Texas Instruments literally only released the datasheets for a pivotal supporting IC within the last 6 months.