There have been numerous 16-pin power connector blow-ups recorded by customers over the past few years on both consumer gaming cards and prosumer cards — and now this badly-designed connector saga has also (sort of) hit datacenter GPUs. Resident repair technician northwestrepair recently published a YouTube video of themself fixing a dead $30,000 H200 Hopper datacenter GPU with a busted 12VHPWR connector.
Unlike most 16-pin disaster stories, the damage to the connector on this H200 GPU was thanks to user error, not faulty design. Northwestrepair discovered most of the pins were bent and damaged, suggesting whoever handled the GPU likely smashed the power cable into the power connector too aggressively.
