Sunday, August 23rd 2020
Picture Proof of NVIDIA 12-pin Power Connector: Seasonic Ships Modular Adapters
Leading PSU manufacturer Seasonic is shipping a modular cable that confirms NVIDIA's proprietary 12-pin graphics card power connector for its upcoming GeForce "Ampere" graphics cards. Back in July we did an in-depth analysis of the connector, backed by confirmation from various industry sources about the connector being real, being a proprietary design by NVIDIA (and not a PCI-SIG or ATX standard), and its possible power output limit being 600 W. Seasonic's adapter converts two versatile 12 V 8-pin PSU-side connectors into one 12-pin connector, which tends to back the power output information. On typical Seasonic modular PSUs, cables are included to convert one PSU-side 8-pin 12 V connector into two 6+2 pin PCIe power connectors along a single cable. HardwareLuxxx.de reports that it's already received the Seasonic adapter in preparation for its "Ampere" Founders Edition reviews.
NVIDIA leaker with an extremely high hit-rate, kopite7kimi, however predicts that the 12-pin connector was designed by NVIDIA exclusively for its Founders Edition (reference design) graphics cards, and that custom-design cards may stick to industry-standard PCIe power connectors. We recently spied a custom-design RTX 3090 PCB, and it's shown featuring three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. This seems to be additional proof that a single 12-pin connector is a really fat straw for 12 V juice. The label on the box for the Seasonic cable reads that it's recommended to use the cable with PSUs with at least 850 W output (which could very well be a system requirement for the RTX 3090). Earlier this weekend, pictures of the RTX 3090 Founders Edition surfaced, and it is huge.
Source:
VideoCardz
NVIDIA leaker with an extremely high hit-rate, kopite7kimi, however predicts that the 12-pin connector was designed by NVIDIA exclusively for its Founders Edition (reference design) graphics cards, and that custom-design cards may stick to industry-standard PCIe power connectors. We recently spied a custom-design RTX 3090 PCB, and it's shown featuring three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. This seems to be additional proof that a single 12-pin connector is a really fat straw for 12 V juice. The label on the box for the Seasonic cable reads that it's recommended to use the cable with PSUs with at least 850 W output (which could very well be a system requirement for the RTX 3090). Earlier this weekend, pictures of the RTX 3090 Founders Edition surfaced, and it is huge.
119 Comments on Picture Proof of NVIDIA 12-pin Power Connector: Seasonic Ships Modular Adapters
Only thing I've noticed that really "turns off" buyers is gpu price not a power adapter or new cable that's chicklets compared.
I'm still going with 4800x and Big Navi on their respective release dates. I love my current all AMD system. as long as I don't oc the gpu I have no issues. and fair enough, I'm to old and tired to care about that crap anymore.
The 3090 imo is basically Nvidias 'doomsday weapon', an all out effort to ensure it maintains the top spot in all review sites benchmark charts, to basically solidify its 'mind share' in case big Navi is better than expected. And I believe Nvidia is taking a no holds barred approach with it, and price, power, heat be damned.
I believe there was supposed to be a 3080ti, but they temporarily may have set that aside to focus on something that will virtually guarantee beats big Navi. But that leaves too big of a gap between the 3090 and 3080, so pretty sure they will come out with a 3080ti at some later point after big Navi is released.
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What this means for me is that I will swap my Focus PX-850 power supply into the new PC that I'm building to house a yet-to-be-released graphics card and I'll put the spare SS-660XP2 Platinum in the old PC since it "only" has to power a Vega64. :D I'm willing to pay for the extra electricity for the graphics card and the air conditioning while gaming. I am much more concerned about getting adequate case ventilation to handle that much heat from a graphics card without resorting to dustbuster noise levels.
Going forward, I will also revise my current usual PSU recommendation of a Prime PX-750, which has the same compact 140 mm depth as the entire Focus series. The Prime PX-850 and 1000 take up an additional 30 mm.
www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-r9-290x/25.html
Things went truly mental on the rebranded 390X cards:
www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-r9-390x-gaming/28.html
But hey, Hawaii was a good name because it's hot there too.
You mean the "crap cheapo reference cooler" of Hawaii vs the "crap cheapo reference cooler" of Fermi? Got it.
Bottom line, AMD has been more associated with hot, loud and power hungry over last 10 years than Nvidia has in terms of ref coolers.
www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf
So it's probably not smart to run such a connector on a 600w power supply.
...unless those that required the fastest performing gaming PCs, suddenly don't.