Here’s why Nintendo Switch consoles keep frying

Enlarge / The "overcooked" game listing in this shot is a little on-the-nose, for a lot of Switch owners who tried using third-party cables, chargers, or docks with the portable console. (credit: Pixabay)

For over a year, Nintendo Switch owners have wondered about-and outright feared-plugging their "hybrid" portable console into unofficial docks. And for good reason: scary, anecdotal reports about third-party Switch docks "bricking" the machine popped up soon after the console received its version 5.0 update in early 2018. What gives?

Many people suspected that the Nintendo Switch is not properly USB-C PD (power delivery) compliant. Thanks to a recent deeper dive from an engineer's research, we have more insights as to the real cause-and reason to believe that users' initial suspicions weren't quite accurate. As Redditor "VECTORDRIVER" explained on Thursday, the Switch uses an M92T36 Power Delivery chip-and that's the part that most frequently burns out after use of third-party charging equipment.

There doesn't appear to be a datasheet available for the M92T36, but there is an available datasheet for a very similar chipset, Rohm Semiconductor's M92T30. The literal smoking gun here is the maximum voltage rating on the Configuration Channel pin (used for negotiating power delivery rates), listed at 6V.

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