Corsair has publicly apologised after a “member of staff” was found last week to have called sections of reviews of the latest RTX 4090 graphics card—made by both Gamers Nexus and Guru3D—”total bullshit”.
The drama arose last week when the hugely-popular hardware channel Gamers Nexus posted a review (and some benchmarks) of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition. In that video, they say plugging in only three of the card’s four cables (in case your PSU for whatever reason only had room for three 8-pin connections) would lock you to 100% performance, and that only by plugging in all four would you be allowed to overclock the card. Guru3D’s review says much the same thing.
Not long after, Discord comments left by a Corsair staffer went viral. They called both Gamers Nexus and Guru3D’s claims “total bullshit” and “misinformation”, while also saying both users and “the press” were both “confused” about the card’s power and overclocking claims. The full comments, as shared by Gamers Nexus, read:
QUESTION: Has anyone else seen the misinformation about the sense pins and the magical 600W unlock from anyone other than GamersNexus and Guru3D or is it just those two sites? I need to throw Nvidia a couple links showing them how confused user… and the press… are about their smart sense pins.
Total bullshit and they don’t even realize it. Yes. The adapter has two sense wires. Yes. The card works with only one sense wire attached. It’s because it’s a 450W card. It’s not because it has the ability to be ‘unlocked’ requiring the second sense wire.
The card simply doesn’t know. It’s not intelligent in that way. It only looks for one sense pin.
In a follow-up video, Gamers Nexus addresses those “bullshit” claims:
While the staffer’s comments weren’t exactly professional, a company rep talking shit in private about members of the media is, as we’d all wager, nothing new. What got Corsair to publicly have to walk this one back, however, was the fact that…Gamers Nexus and Guru3D were right. To a point—their claims only apply to Nvidia’s own 4090 cables, not those made by third parties like ASUS or Corsair, which may explain the confusion here—but technically correct is still correct.
Prompting Corsair to issue an official apology on the company’s social media, which goes so far as to call the staffer’s comments an “outburst”:
It has come to our attention that a member of Corsair staff recently made inflammatory and incorrect comments regarding Gamers Nexus and Guru3D’s understanding of the Nvidia RTX 4090 power connector.
These comments do not represent Corsair as a company, and we regret both the form and content of the individual’s outburst.
We’ve worked with both Gamers Nexus and Guru3D for many years and hold both in high regard in terms of their professional conduct and technical abilities.
We apologize unreservedly for the improper conduct of our employee and will be taking steps internally to remind our team of the high standards we have for them when interacting with the media and end-users.
For their part, Gamers Nexus have accepted the apology, and are ready to “move forward”:
While Guru3D’s EIC Hilbert Hagedoorn says “Guys, it’s the web; everybody has opinions. He was wrong, apologizes for that, and for me, that’s the end of this story.”
It’s very funny to me that these companies keep taking shots at Gamers Nexus when their videos keep turning out to be entirely accurate! If you’re more technically-minded and would like a more detailed explanation for what exactly led to all this—it really is a small detail in the grander scheme of things—the best run-down I’ve found is here.