Report: ASUS to Start Production of GPUs With No External Power Connectors

[Daven]

To be fair, Asus is putting all the connectors on the backside of the motherboard. Each of these connectors are already standard. To create a standard of where every motherboard must place standard connectors is ridiculous. In addition, AIBs should have full freedom to introduce features like hardwired power connectors if they wish. All other AIBs GPUs will still work just fine. The Asus design does not prevent the use of other GPUs.

The article should be better worded by focusing on an Asus feature to help with cable management rather than implying the company is trying anything as bold as the creation of a new standard.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

With zero defined ATX Standardisation this is a shit show I will neither support finance or buy into.

Stick it Asus, get everyone on a standard or f### o##.

 

[Eva01Master]

I just wonder, how high will be the ASUS tax on this new lineup?

It's over 9000!

 

[swirl09]

Do I like the idea of power delivery with fewer cables floating around: Yes.
Am I going to buy these current products from ASUS: No.

 

[gffermari]

That’s madness from ASUs if it’s not standardised.
Only a prebuilt has a meaning of this and after that you throw away everything since you can’t save anything.

Dell, HP, Lenovo sell prebuilts and ASUs can do that without having to invent the wheel again.

 

[Daven]

That’s madness from ASUs if it’s not standardised.
Only a prebuilt has a meaning of this and after that you throw away everything since you can’t save anything.

Dell, HP, Lenovo sell prebuilts and ASUs can do that without having to invent the wheel again.

Again this is not an attempt at a standard but rather a competitive feature on some Asus products to help with cable management. Every PSU and GPU will still work with this motherboard. Only the Asus GPU will require this specific board.

Techpowerup recently toured Powercolor.

PowerColor Factory Tour - How Graphics Cards Are Made

We visit the brand-new factory of PowerColor in Taiwan. Here the latest and greatest AMD Radeon graphics cards are built, like the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7600. We'll take you through every production step and also show you how these cards are tested before they are shipped off.

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In this article you will see pictures of GPUs in their unsocketed form. GPUs are added to ‘motherboards’ (generic term for a PCB) just like CPUs.

Many motherboards have unique features such as shrouds, ‘military’ components, soundcards on risers, etc that help set them apart. Asus has a GPU and CPU motherboard business. They are using a feature on both to help sell to people interested in cable management. That’s it!

 

[Bomby569]

Every PSU and GPU will still work with this motherboard. Only the Asus GPU will require this specific board.

there is also the case compatibility you're forgetting

 

[TheLostSwede]

Absolutely. I believe that given how they f**ked up BTX, Intel doesn't deserve to be the authority over the ATX spec in any way - neither the physical form factor (motherboards and chassis), nor PSU rails and output. But we can leave the latter alone for now because it still holds up mostly okay.

What we need is for a whole bunch of players who actually care about this - not Intel, but the motherboard, GPU, PSU, cooler, and case manufacturers - into a room to discuss this and just throw some s**t at the wall and see what sticks, refine it down until they've got a consensus on how they want parts to be shaped and how they fit together, and then present it to the rest of the industry and see how much interest they get. If there's a wide enough agreement then they can release their design as a royalty-free spec, and everyone can just go ahead with building out components utilising this new standard.

To avoid the "too many cooks" approach we should keep this initial working group small (five or six companies), limited to those that have shown interest in innovating in this space. Off the top of my head that would be ASUS (chassis, mobo, GPU), MSI (chassis, mobo) and Corsair (PSU). On top of those we'd want a cooler manufacturer that actually designs coolers, not just rebadges them (so maybe one of the OEMs). Then at least one dedicated chassis manufacturer, although I can't think of one I'd consider innovative per se.

As much as I agree with you, this will sadly never happen.

The Taiwanese hardware makers are too competitive to sit down in a room and work this out. They'd much rather fling poop or stinky tofu at each other than agree on something.

I've attended some of the "working groups" meetings, although this was about an IoT type standard and the big companies pull the "we're bigger than you, so our opinion matters more than yours" card all the time, even though smaller companies might have better solutions to a problem. This is likely to happen in a situation like this as well.
Sadly this is also a reoccuring issue when new standards are approved and we often end up with inferior standards, because reasons.

I've made severa suggestions over the years, but no-one has been interested in listening, as I'm just some crazy foreigner, what can I possly know that these big corporations haven't already figured out?

Then you have companies like Lian-Li who went after pretty much all of their competitiors that made aluminium chassis at one point and took them to court, as they claimd they had a patent or some shit on that.

The industry is screwing itself over as 1. they won't play nice with their competitors and 2. they won't listen to customer feedback and 3. they can't work out new standards, so big daddy Intel has to give them an spanking and tell them what to do. In all fairness, since Intel stopped doing IDF Taiwan, the so called "innovation" has also slowed down, as the Taiwanese hardware makers don't get reference designs from Intel any more to base their new laptops and what not on. So as much as I don't disagree that Intel has made some bad calls, they were also a driving force for new products, which the company isn't to the same extent any more.

 

[Nater]

Things that should have happened 20 years ago, Alex.

 

[Tahagomizer]

This is just an attempt to create a closed proprietary ecosystem playing on vanity. In the next generation they'll move the connector by two millimeters and stop supporting the "old" standard so people will have to buy a new graphics card if they get a new motherboard or the other way around. That's one of the reasons for the existence of standards.

 

[Chrispy_]

To be fair, Asus is putting all the connectors on the backside of the motherboard. Each of these connectors are already standard. To create a standard of where every motherboard must place standard connectors is ridiculous. In addition, AIBs should have full freedom to introduce features like hardwired power connectors if they wish. All other AIBs GPUs will still work just fine. The Asus design does not prevent the use of other GPUs.

The article should be better worded by focusing on an Asus feature to help with cable management rather than implying the company is trying anything as bold as the creation of a new standard.

That's the issue. This is a LIMITATION even if it does become an open standard (unlikley, IMO).

By restricting where manufacturers can put connectors on their boards, you're limiting the board layout even more than it already is. Yes, the edges is the most convenient place for the connectors, but it's not always possible. And how does "around the edge" work for E-ATX (SSI EEB), mATX, and mITX boards, exactly? They have no more than two edges in common.

 

[Deleted member 232534]

BTW title is misleading, because this still have power connector. Title suggest asus is going full out in a 70watt segment.

What we need is for a whole bunch of players who actually care about this - not Intel, but the motherboard, GPU, PSU, cooler, and case manufacturers - into a room to discuss this and just throw some s**t at the wall and see what sticks,

IMO the psu/case cables in the back makes sense. (You don't touch case cables unless changing the case. You run the psu cables in the back anyway)

This asus power connector embedded in motherboard have no sense.

 

[Tek-Check]

Initial impressions:
- I love innovations, but are they all meaningful?
- why is that 4070 GPU so da** big!? Absurd... We know that Ada GPUs are efficient and easier to cool. Why waste so much material for nothing? Brain hurts...
- does this new power port GC_HPWR mean more heat on the custom motherboard, as power is delivered through PCB?
- if so, more PCB layers are needed to isolate high power traces and therefore more expensive boards?
- what is going to cool this area of PCB? MB vendors are reluctunt to give us 60W/100W power for charging over USC-C ports, and now 600W is suddenly easy and fine?
- will backplate space in PC cases need to widen to 4-5cm (double than now) to cover safe bending curve for 600W power cable?
- if so, will all PC cases be even wider and bulkier? CPU air coolers are not getting any smaller, so there is no saved space on the facing side of motherboads.
- will 600W power cables finally arrive angled by default, os that no one worries anymore about bending issue?
- if not an open standard, will it ever survive an experimental line of products?

 

[Luke357]

If they want to do this right they should leave the motherboard as standard ATX (not this reverse connector layout). And move the VGA power to somewhere near the ATX or CPU power plugs (IE somewhere that you could use in a standard layout case). IF they made these changes the only proprietary parts would be the motherboard and the video card which still isn't great but it's a much easier pill to swallow VS the aSUS design.

 

[Dragokar]

To be fair, as easy and clean this might look, I simply don't want to have so much “power” running through my mainboard. The mainboard vendors still ef up so basic things that I surely DON'T want to trust them with high power GPU lines. I know we had boards in the past with extra molex and so on for better “stability and oc”, but still I really dislike this idea.

In the end, it comes down to one board to kill them all (the components)........

 

[zlobby]

This will likely fail, but it's an interesting anti-sag mechanism

And when it fails, it will be spectacular!

 

[Bomby569]

To be fair, as easy and clean this might look, I simply don't want to have so much “power” running through my mainboard. The mainboard vendors still ef up so basic things that I surely DON'T want to trust them with high power GPU lines. I know we had boards in the past with extra molex and so on for better “stability and oc”, but still I really dislike this idea.

In the end, it comes down to one board to kill them all (the components)........

they are notorious for having amongst the worst failure rates, what can go wrong there /s

one the other hand with the insane prices they ask for one, the more they fail the better it is for profits

 

[Jism]

We definitely need some sort of standard for this.

Powering stuff through the motherboard is'nt new. It's happening in servers already (no need for loads of cables) as much of that power is guided through the board. In crossfire boards you also had a seperate 12V molex connector that would power the PCI-E crossfire or SLI setup - i mean you could still technically provide up to 3 or even 4 PCI-E powered based cards up to 75W a piece. Noj way you could feed that all through on 24 pin connector without causing a fire.

Above demo is only for those who want to hide "all" cables and guide it through the back of the case.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Best of luck to those wanting to sell their card on the second hand market.

This is why 12VHPWR was introduced, to slim down on cables.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

View attachment 306391

Powering stuff through the motherboard is'nt new. It's happening in servers already (no need for loads of cables) as much of that power is guided through the board. In crossfire boards you also had a seperate 12V molex connector that would power the PCI-E crossfire or SLI setup - i mean you could still technically provide up to 3 or even 4 PCI-E powered based cards up to 75W a piece. Noj way you could feed that all through on 24 pin connector without causing a fire.

Above demo is only for those who want to hide "all" cables and guide it through the back of the case.

Come to think about it, is there a reason why PCIe is limited to 75w?
Going to 250/300w could end the need for external power for most GPUs.

 

[Jism]

Come to think about it, is there a reason why PCIe is limited to 75w?
Going to 250/300w could end the need for external power for most GPUs.

75W is just the standard. Anything above requires it's own power source. But you would have to provide quite some big traces on the board to cover 300W of power.

I'm sure ASUS tested that - but there where incidents in the past in regards of world record overclocking, where cards pushed to their limits would actually fry the motherboards because they pulled way too much current over the PCI-E slot(s).

 

[Assimilator]

View attachment 306391

Powering stuff through the motherboard is'nt new. It's happening in servers already (no need for loads of cables) as much of that power is guided through the board. In crossfire boards you also had a seperate 12V molex connector that would power the PCI-E crossfire or SLI setup - i mean you could still technically provide up to 3 or even 4 PCI-E powered based cards up to 75W a piece. Noj way you could feed that all through on 24 pin connector without causing a fire.

Above demo is only for those who want to hide "all" cables and guide it through the back of the case.

The amount of power that can provided by a 4-pin Molex or even a 6-pin PCIe pales in comparison to the six hundred watts possible via 12VHPWR. That's 8 times more power, with the associated considerations for heat dissipation - which are particularly notable in desktop boards that are passively cooled and aren't guaranteed to have constant airflow over them like their server brethren. And that much extra copper isn't gonna be cheap.

Come to think about it, is there a reason why PCIe is limited to 75w?
Going to 250/300w could end the need for external power for most GPUs.

PCIe was designed back when an entire system consuming 600W was considered ridiculous. Nowadays a single component in a system can draw up to that much power. Which begs the question whether the problem lies with PCIe, or the components that are so ridiculously power-hungry.

 

[chrcoluk]

Moving the dubious power connector to the back of the board doesn't solve anything, it's just adds one additional connector to the entire system.

As for this proprietary GPU that only works in a proprietary board that only works in a proprietary case, there are no pre-built reviews that praise the concept. AFAIK, it's a massive point of criticism that does nothing apart from lock customers into overpriced, under-available parts and generate e-waste.

Step one, if ASUS want to do this - is make an open standard, release it to the industry for royalty-free use, and sponsor a few case manufacturers to produce ATX-compatible cases that also work with Asus's new standard.

I assume an extra $100 for the board as well to add the integrity required to route 100s of watts over the PCB, horrible idea in my opinion.

What happens if the power stops routing properly, isnt clean etc? Just feels such a mess and a bodge job.

 

[gffermari]

Again this is not an attempt at a standard but rather a competitive feature on some Asus products to help with cable management. Every PSU and GPU will still work with this motherboard. Only the Asus GPU will require this specific board.

Techpowerup recently toured Powercolor.

PowerColor Factory Tour - How Graphics Cards Are Made

We visit the brand-new factory of PowerColor in Taiwan. Here the latest and greatest AMD Radeon graphics cards are built, like the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7600. We'll take you through every production step and also show you how these cards are tested before they are shipped off.

www.techpowerup.com

In this article you will see pictures of GPUs in their unsocketed form. GPUs are added to ‘motherboards’ (generic term for a PCB) just like CPUs.
View attachment 306374

View attachment 306375Many motherboards have unique features such as shrouds, ‘military’ components, soundcards on risers, etc that help set them apart. Asus has a GPU and CPU motherboard business. They are using a feature on both to help sell to people interested in cable management. That’s it!

If it’s not standardised,
you can’t sell the gpu to anyone unless the buyer has specific mobo.
You can’t sell the mobo, unless the buyer has specific case.

This concept works only as a prebuilt. And you throw it away altogether at the end of its life.

 

[claes]

I said it already in this thread, but there actually is an attempt at standardization. Don’t know why TPU editors keep ignoring this.

MSI, Maxsun Make Back-Connector Motherboards Based on Asus's DIY-APE Standard

Hide all your motherboard cables behind your case.

www.tomshardware.com

MSI preparing AMD B650 "DIY-APE" motherboards with connectors on the back - VideoCardz.com

MSI B650 motherboards with connectors moved to the back The company is to expand its offer with highly customized AMD motherboards. MSI B650 DIY-APE motherboards, Source: Bilibili It is not just ASUS, but MSI and MaxSun are to add more mid-range solutions based on their DIY-APE design. What...

videocardz.com

ASUS DIY-APE Revolution project is an attempt to improve PC cable management - VideoCardz.com

ASUS DIY-APE Revolution for Intel and AMD motherboards A ‘revolution’ in hiding power cables. ASUS DIY-APE Revolution project, Source: Bilibili The concept of moving power connectors to the other side of the motherboard is not new. Gigabyte have now launched its Stealth program that involves...

videocardz.com

If you look deep into CES coverage, including some of the coverage here, you could find close to a dozen cases supporting this diy-ape/ytx standard. TPU editors ought to know this and refer to their own coverage. I get that you guys don’t seem to have board meetings but come on…

This is not an endorsement of whatever this is, ATX needs a complete overhaul and board partners should lead the way, but not just so they can hide cables.