Friday, February 28th 2025
Custom AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Appears Powered by 12V-2x6 Connector
Days before releasing, Chinese leakers on Chiphell are showcasing a custom variant of AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 9070 XT with what appears to be a 12V-2x6 power connector. The custom AIB model is Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT NITRO+, which features a triple-fan cooling configuration and a departure from Sapphire's older GPUs that used eight-pin power connectors. Despite proving to be problematic for NVIDIA, this power connector could do well with AMD's Navi 48 XT GPU SKU due to its power consumption envelope. With an entire GPU projected to use 304 W total board power, the 12V-2x6 connector could easily power this configuration without the need to overheat and possibly melt. If it manages to power 600 W TGP NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, then powering a custom Radeon RX 9070 XT shouldn't be an issue.
Even if the card experiences a heavy overclock, power limits will remain within a usable range so as not to cause any trouble. Sapphire's reason for ditching the older, reliable eight-pin power connectors is unknown, but the use of the new 12V-2x6 here isn't expected to be problematic either. Some previous VBIOS records in our GPU DB indicate that the GPU could boost the Navi 48 XT SKU to 2,520/2,518 MHz, which is about 120 MHz higher than the stock AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT boost clock.
Sources:
Chiphell, via HXL on X
Even if the card experiences a heavy overclock, power limits will remain within a usable range so as not to cause any trouble. Sapphire's reason for ditching the older, reliable eight-pin power connectors is unknown, but the use of the new 12V-2x6 here isn't expected to be problematic either. Some previous VBIOS records in our GPU DB indicate that the GPU could boost the Navi 48 XT SKU to 2,520/2,518 MHz, which is about 120 MHz higher than the stock AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT boost clock.
47 Comments on Custom AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT Appears Powered by 12V-2x6 Connector
I am not against anyone using the 12V-2x6 connector, but I really feel it was badly specced.
As I recall, it has only a 10% safety overhead for the connector, which means it is running overly close to the limit, when supplying 600W.
On a card like this, where power draw is kept under 450W, it should be more than fine.
Anything higher than a 450W TBP, though, and I strongly feel 2x connectors should be required...
And Sapphire knows how to make GPU coolers.
I do wonder how they solved the bending issue, with connector located in this position you're bound to run into some hard turns:
They look open enough for air to still pass through despite a cable crossing through it.
Most of those NVIDIA AIB cards were so tall they ended up slamming the connector straight into the tempered glass (or solid/meshed) case panel. Not sure how those with vertical GPU setups with risers had burning issues but I'm assuming they probably had it slammed against an air cooler tower or such.
I don't trust the connector being bent at all since the crimped in pins are still an issue causing uneven power loading per wire. Unless Sapphire took account for it in their design, using 12v2x6 seems unnecessary IMO.
In a vertical GPU setup with a riser, as long as the case has a slot or hole that goes straight into the PSU cage, you might not even notice the cable unless you look for it.
Besides, that burning issue mostly happened with the RTX 4090s and those 5090s which all pushed 450W+.
And the fact that almost all the ATX 3.1 PSUs coming out have a 12V-2x6 connector with cable now, so might as well use it and reduce the amount of cables in a setup.
I still hate this thing's size though. Looks good but too big. But I think this can still fit in a HYTE Revolt 3 but definitely not a Fractal Ridge. AMD caused some disappointment by not having their own MBA model.
Visually this is nice, I hope that functionally it is too, but wanting for <400w power I'd imagine low issues with the connector itself.
At least they could add a cable clip or something on the back plate, 5 centimeters away from the socket and in line with the socket, to help the cable stay in straight line and not bend at the socket.
On the other hand, imagine AMD using this socket on all it's cards and we had no incidence with AMD cards. Tech press would have a difficult task to push the "user error" narrative.
If a fan goes out for example, if can get very toasty