Tinned copper epidemic in PSU + display cables

[r0ach]

I’ve noticed a giant amount of both display cables and PSU cables are now using material like “UL 1007” tinned copper from a Chinese junkyard somewhere. For people that don’t know, tin is 15% as conductive as copper and electricity travels over the ‘skin’ of the wire (i.e. the tin), not the center (i.e. the copper).

I’ve purchased some exotic HDMI cables before made entirely out of silver not expecting that much of a difference but was surprised that it made all mouse movements turn into overshoots, so I stopped using it and went back to 26AWG bare copper. If silver’s marginal conductivity increase can be noticeable like this, you can be sure that raising resistance to the moon with tinned copper everywhere will be noticeable in components.

When I go on a site like Amazon, EBay, or Aliexpress and look for 16AWG PCIE cables, every single one is using tinned copper. It’s not as big of a problem on things like HDMI cables where maybe half of them have it instead of ALL of them, but still a problem there too. What I’m wondering is how this trend affects things like the OEM cables from brands such as EVGA, Corsair, Superflower, FSP, or so-called high tier replacement brands like Cablemods. Are these companies all shipping tinned copper now too even though it’s worse for computer applications than say…marine applications, or do the OEM cables actually use bare copper still?

[Bobo]

what`s the cable that you said it has 26AWG bare copper?

[r0ach]

what`s the cable that you said it has 26AWG bare copper?

They don’t have the one I purchased on Amazon anymore. I currently see two 26AWG DisplayPort cables on Amazon that are presumably not tinned copper so you better get one before they go extinct. Some people don’t, but I personally do notice the difference in mouse movement between 26 vs 28 vs 30 AWG display cables.

[r0ach]

Just took apart a cable for a presumably high quality PSU (Superflower Leadex III Gold) and they’re tinned copper. Like I was saying earlier, those cables should only be 15% as conductive as pure copper (unless there’s some kind of physics I don’t understand here), so mouse movement with pure copper cables should be noticeable over these (preferably 16AWG for both PCIE and CPU cables). I wonder what brands are actually still using bare copper.