Wednesday, January 8th 2025
ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 9070 XT Comes with Three 8-pin Power Connectors
At the 2025 International CES, ASUS showed off its Radeon RX 9070 XT TUF Gaming graphics card. This card was part of a multi-brand showcase AMD set up in its booth. The card features the latest generation of TUF Gaming board design that the company is debuting with the GeForce RTX 50-series and Radeon RX 90-series. The card features a triple slot cooling solution, with its Axial-Tech fans taking up an entire slot (thicker fans mean lower RPM). The PCB is 2/3 the length of the card, so all airflow from the third fan is vented through the heatsink and out a large cutout on the backplate.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the ASUS TUF Gaming RX 9070 XT is its power connectors. The card calls for three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. We've only seen one other custom RX 9070 XT come with three connectors, and that is the XFX RX 9070 XT Merc 319 Black. The question then arises, what is a small performance-segment GPU going to do with 525 W of power on tap? Most other cards, including the PowerColor Red Devil, come with just two 8-pin connectors (375 W), so does the presence of three connectors mean that the board power of overclocked RX 7090 XT exceed 300 W, and board partners are trying to reduce the load on the 75 W put out by the PCIe slot, by sneaking in a third 8-pin input? This isn't the only oddball power connector configuration we've seen at CES for the RX 9070 series. The ASRock RX 9070 XT Taichi comes with a 16-pin 12V2x6 power connector, although there's no way of telling yet if this is configured for 600 W—it could even be keyed for 300 W.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the ASUS TUF Gaming RX 9070 XT is its power connectors. The card calls for three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. We've only seen one other custom RX 9070 XT come with three connectors, and that is the XFX RX 9070 XT Merc 319 Black. The question then arises, what is a small performance-segment GPU going to do with 525 W of power on tap? Most other cards, including the PowerColor Red Devil, come with just two 8-pin connectors (375 W), so does the presence of three connectors mean that the board power of overclocked RX 7090 XT exceed 300 W, and board partners are trying to reduce the load on the 75 W put out by the PCIe slot, by sneaking in a third 8-pin input? This isn't the only oddball power connector configuration we've seen at CES for the RX 9070 series. The ASRock RX 9070 XT Taichi comes with a 16-pin 12V2x6 power connector, although there's no way of telling yet if this is configured for 600 W—it could even be keyed for 300 W.
78 Comments on ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 9070 XT Comes with Three 8-pin Power Connectors
Then I underestimated the 7900XT until I had it in this system and no POST. Hemmed and hawwed over it a bit for months to figure it out.
Help desks across the board (ASUS, AMD, PowerColor, newegg, etc) all BTFO. They lost the plot then PowerColor tried scamming me out of a return.
So, as hinted above, I haven't built a new system from scratch in a REALLY long time. What I build for myself and others is often recycled.
~Sept 2019, this Ryzen box was just me scratching together CPU, mobo, memory and a M.2. After a month of piecemeal, done.
I reused my case, power supply and GPU to get everything running again.
There's a lot to watch out for when parts are 7-10 generations behind but when enthusiast cards:
Fail detection and nobody has any idea what's wrong ("oh it's DOA, return it...")
The same behavior keeps happening with multiple units
The ultra specific hardware failure code (1L4S) doesn't kick off
...Maybe DOA isn't it. It should have been obvious to every builder and literally everybody supposedly trained to catch it completely failed.
We can no longer scratch together systems from old parts. Not when everything is "AI" and spikes more than the entire system power profile.
The really stupid part is how I had to go back specifically to PowerColor's site and confirm the power requirements on their product page.
PowerColor is a vendor, NOT the retailer. I'm not going there for information unless I absolutely need it. I didn't find this ANYWHERE else.
The requirements should be detailed by retailer. So once again, total communication breakdown. This is what confirmed the problem:
Dual 8-pin and 12VHPWR can deal. What can't is every antique power box with a 25A rail and the retailer just assumes you have better.
We are still in that weird transition period where people need to catch on. I've been around for a very long time and this snuck right by.
I also keep finding 25A rail power supplies at worse prices than the stuff that works. There is ALL kinds of junk out there that will ruin a build.
So how well is the 9070XT going to deal with the same problems? It won't. I'll be real, seeing leaks of the core, it looks like a pair of smaller dies.
The power consumption behavior could get real nasty under overclocked loads. Is ASUS going to tell us that? How about MSI or ASRock?
It's gonna be PowerColor again and it's going to be the same communication breakdown again. Good luck nobody.
Looks sane to me for some AIB variants.
If reference 9070XT is somewhere around 280W and have the ability to increase power limit by 15% its up to ~325W. (2x8pin = 300W + 75W = 375W)
AIB variants can easily start from 300-350W and add +15% limit from the performance VBIOS (on dual VBIOS cards).
7900XTX reference is 355W
The Nitro+ 7900XTX starts from 406W +15% = 466-467W for the performance VBIOS.
Thats 110+W up from reference.
You can see that in such cases AIB 9070XT can be close to or even a bit north of 400W
I think going for 3x8pin is the wise thing to do and distribute current, again in such cases...
I dont understand why all the fuss and the bashing here.
Anyone can buy whatever the hell they want when there are options for everyone.
Personally I prefer my 3.5+ slot brick at 360-380W working as silently and as cool as possible over anything smaller.