With theGeForce RTX 3000 Founders Edition, NVIDIA has tried to bring a breath of fresh air on the front of the power supply of video cards by proposing a 12-pin connector capable of carrying up to 300W even with smaller dimensions than the traditional 150W 8-pin Molex. In this way, NVIDIA’s Founders Editions feature a single power connector which, when paired with the right cable, facilitates the so-called “cable management” of the system.
Although the company has stated that the connector design is open and usable by partners, even by AMD, the new connector remains for now Founders Edition exclusive, so high-end GPUs from ASUS, MSI, and so on continue to have 2-3 8-pin power connectors.
This state of affairs is about to change and not thanks to NVIDIA’s connector but thanks to a “standard” solution called 12VHPWR. The new connector, according to what emerged, capable of carry 600W to the video card, practically come quattro Molex a 8 pin. Part of the PCI Express 5.0 standard, this connector could make its way onto next generation video cards. As can be guessed from the name, also in this case we find 12 pins, while below you can see 4 pins for carrying signals whose use is not clear whether it will be mandatory or optional.
The new connector should allow video card manufacturers to greatly simplify the printed circuit of your solutions and perhaps offer shorter and / or compact video cards. Each of these 12 pins, according to what discovered by Igor’s Lab, can handle up to 9.2A, which means a total of 55.22A, or 662.4W. The 600W ceiling would be linked to a redundancy of about 10% useful not to create problems. The connector will require cables made of thicker, high quality materials to avoid overheating and other inconveniences.
There are currently no video cards that require 600W, but rumors to be taken with the pliers report that the first to take advantage of it could be NVIDIA with the alleged GeForce RTX 3090 Ti / SUPER (the name changes continuously in the rumors) which should take up to 450W and arrive on the market at the beginning of 2022.
It is also plausible that the connector will find space in the datacenter sector with the AMD and NVIDIA next-generation proposals which, according to rumors, will see the presence of multiple GPUs on a single package.