In general, poorly designed cables will use steel instead of tin plated copper conductors. The differences become more relevant at higher power levels, as energy losses within the connectors will be higher. Thus, the temperatures rise above the poorly specified unbranded plastic insulator limits, and a melted mess eventually trips the power supply to turn off.
I would assume a company like NVIDIA wouldn't make a power limit specification mistake, but cheap ATX power-supplies are cheap in every sense of the word.
derbauer did an analysis of the melted connector. It was nickel & gold, not steel.
buildzodes analysis showed Nvidia removed all ability to load balance the wires which they used to have with the 30xx connector that introduced it, and they had even fancier solutions for the multi 8/6 pin connectors before that.
The specification also has an incredibly low safety factor, much much lower than anything that came before.
They seem to be penny pinching on shunt resistors on a $2000 GPU. Their engineering seems suspect at this point, not worthy of a benefit of the doubt.
Nickel & gold plating is common, but if it were solid (rare because that would be expensive and stupid)... you would be looking at 3 to >5 times worse performance than the same sized plated copper plug with a beryllium copper leaf spring.
Have a gloriously wonderful day... I could be wrong, but it has been awhile =3
I would assume a company like NVIDIA wouldn't make a power limit specification mistake, but cheap ATX power-supplies are cheap in every sense of the word.
Have a great day =3