Pictures on the power connector for PCI Express 5.0 are looking out

The PCI Express x16 connection found on the system board can generally not power most graphics cards and some other plug-in boards on its own. These are thus connected with one or more 8- and 6-pin PCI Express connections to the power supply. The PCI Express 5.0 standard introduces a new power connector that now also appears in pictures.

► The graphics card of the future will have up to 600 watts over 16 pins

The pictures are published by Eteknix (via Videocardz) and are alleged to be a cable belonging to the power supply Asus ROG Thor Platinum II with a 12-pin connector at one end and double 8-pin connectors at the other. On the Asus product page, the power supply is specified to support “PCI-E 5.0 12-pin” and cabling to deliver power up to 600 watts.

Previous information specifies that the new connector has 16 contact pins, of which 12 are for current and 4 for some other type of signal. The extra pins are apparently not included on the connector to the image. One possible reason for this may be that they are simply not intended for products aimed at the consumer market. Another option is that they just do not have any direct use when it comes to specific graphics cards.

It is worth noting that the connection in the picture appears to be identical to Nvidia’s 12-pin connector that was developed for the Geforce RTX 3000 cards in the Founders Edition version. The contact has not had a major impact among third-party manufacturers and it is not necessarily the case that they are compatible with each other. However, this may explain why Nvidia chose that particular design.