Nvidia won, we all lost

I wonder if the 12VHPWR connector is intentionally defective to prevent large-scale use of those consumer cards in server/datacenter contexts?

The failure rate is just barely acceptable in a consumer use-case with a single card, but with multiple cards the probability of failure (which takes down the whole machine, as there's no way to hot-swap the card) makes it unusable.

I can't otherwise see why they'd persevere on that stupid connector when better alternatives exist.

Sunk cost fallacy and a burning (literal) desire to have small artistic things. That's probably also the reason the connector was densified so much, and clearly, released with so VERY little tolerance for error human and otherwise.

IANAL, but knowingly leaving a serious defect in your product at scale for that purpose would be very bad behavior and juries tend not like that sort of thing.

It boggles my mind that an army of the most talented electrical engineers on earth somehow fumble a power connector and then don’t catch it before shipping.

However, as we’ve learned from the Epic vs Apple case, corporations don’t really care about bad behavior — as long as their ulterior motives don’t get caught.

They use the 12VHPWR on some datacenter cards too.