Proposed new Power Connector

[Chrispy_]

Why's that?

600W at 12V is a total of 50 Amps. A single cable the correct gauge to handle 50A is quite chunky and inflexible - it would need to be 5mm in cross-section. Even if a single pair cable was made with 50A wires and big, strong, chunky connectors, it would be so stiff and hard to bend towards the graphics card's connector that it'd likely just rip the connector off the board at the solder joint.

Splitting the 50A down 6 wire pairs makes it 8.3A per wire, which means you can use much thinner wires and connectors that are easier to manipulate and their bend radius would exert much less force on the connectors. The alarming thing is that the small connectors and AWG16 wire used for 12VHPWR/12V-6X2 are only rated to 9.5A and they're getting up to 8.3A by default, with no other factors considered. The older PCIe 8-pin or 6+2-pin connectors are rated to 13A per wire and only carry 4.2A by default, so there's a huge difference in the safety margin.

What you gain by using more pairs of smaller wires is a cable that's easier to use and far more practical, but the risks are that the current isn't distributed evenly down all of the wire pairs. Using shunt resistors to monitor current on the 12V wire pairs with allows the VRM controllers to load-balance all of the wires, but the GPU designs that have caused melted cables haven't done this, so all 600W of power (50A) is going over fewer wires, or even just one wire, which vastly exceeds that max current rating and gets them hot enough to melt/ignite the plastic connector and wire sheathing.

Edit:
If it hasn't been linked already, this video explains it all rather well:

 

[xtreemchaos]

im going to say it "hold me back" why not make GPUS that use less power on the hi end eh? this higher clocks more power runaway has no future i spend most my time undervolting most of me kit just to feel right with the world.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Because all you're doing is moving the problem to the motherboard, and nobody wants stupidly long PCIe slots that take up all the space on the board.

I would not call this "stupidly long" it is the same length plus a little x2 slot which is already space you cant use on the motherboard because the GPU is in the way. Literally does not impact anything. And this way, you dont have to worry about the pins in the GPU cable frying the connector and the card. I see no downside here. The issue is the pins in the PSU cable. There is no transferring of issue to the motherboard.

Consumers don't want more connectors with thicker wires. They want fewer connectors with thinner wires, that are less hassle to remember to plug in and can be more easily routed.

The BTF design eliminates the wire.

 

[Chrispy_]

I would not call this "stupidly long" it is the same length plus a little x2 slot which is already space you cant use on the motherboard because the GPU is in the way. Literally does not impact anything. And this way, you dont have to worry about the pins in the GPU cable frying the connector and the card. I see no downside here. The issue is the pins in the PSU cable. There is no transferring of issue to the motherboard.

So where do you think the motherboard supposed to get its extra 600W from?
Answer: From a 12V-6X2 connector somewhere on the back of the board, using the same melty cables into the same melty socket. All you're doing is adding extra steps between the PSU cable and the GPU to hide the loop of power cable visible on the front side. BTF boards aren't using some magical wireless power transmission system, they just have all the usual connectors on the other side of the board.

The BTF design eliminates the wire.

Correction: The BTF design simply moves the wire to the back where it's out of sight and jammed in with a tight bend radius against the rear case panel. The wire is still there, of course - whether it's a 12V-6X2 or four 8-pin PCIe wires is up to the motherboard manufacturer to decide.

 

[Rover4444]

600W at 12V is a total of 50 Amps. A single cable the correct gauge to handle 50A is quite chunky and inflexible - it would need to be 5mm in cross-section. Even if a single pair cable was made with 50A wires and big, strong, chunky connectors, it would be so stiff and hard to bend towards the graphics card's connector that it'd likely just rip the connector off the board at the solder joint.

Splitting the 50A down 6 wire pairs makes it 8.3A per wire, which means you can use much thinner wires and connectors that are easier to manipulate and their bend radius would exert much less force on the connectors. The alarming thing is that the small connectors and AWG16 wire used for 12VHPWR/12V-6X2 are only rated to 9.5A and they're getting up to 8.3A by default, with no other factors considered. The older PCIe 8-pin or 6+2-pin connectors are rated to 13A per wire and only carry 4.2A by default, so there's a huge difference in the safety margin.

What you gain by using more pairs of smaller wires is a cable that's easier to use and far more practical, but the risks are that the current isn't distributed evenly down all of the wire pairs. Using shunt resistors to monitor current on the 12V wire pairs with allows the VRM controllers to load-balance all of the wires, but the GPU designs that have caused melted cables haven't done this, so all 600W of power (50A) is going over fewer wires, or even just one wire, which vastly exceeds that max current rating and gets them hot enough to melt/ignite the plastic connector and wire sheathing.

Edit:
If it hasn't been linked already, this video explains it all rather well:

Thanks, I didn't even know Buildzoid made yet another video about these connectors I had to check the date posted lmao

How much current would be going through 2 8-pins at 600W?

 

[Assimilator]

How much current would be going through 2 8-pins at 600W?

There are three 12V contacts per 8-pin connector, so 6 in total, against 50A total draw = ~8.33A/contact.

 

[Chrispy_]

Thanks, I didn't even know Buildzoid made yet another video about these connectors I had to check the date posted lmao

How much current would be going through 2 8-pins at 600W?

8-pin connectors use three 12V pairs each, for a total of 6 pairs in two connectors. That's 600W, 6 connectors, so 100W per connector.

100W / 12V = 8.33A, just like 12VHPWR and 12V-6X2.

The difference is that the pins in an 8-pin are larger, stronger, and rated to 13A each, rather than the puny 9.5A of the 12VHPWR and 12V-6X2 connectors.

 

[9087125]

If you wan't more graphics fidelity and frames, you need to increase power consumption in gpu, look at the amount of details in games, 600watts is what you would expect. we will no doubt move up to 1000watt, gonna need to for 8K 120fps. All gpus are power hungry inefficient beasts nowadays since we are seeing the full effects of the end of dennards scaling finally kick in, really im amazed they have gotten this far. when you complain about power hungry gps and expensive gpus you are seeing the slow final demise of moores law, this is the scary shit we have been hearing for years.

history has shown again and again when new standards are introduced they often dont work so well and get botched and bloated by the omni present incompetence and filthy greed in our world.

 

[Steevo]

If you wan't more graphics fidelity and frames, you need to increase power consumption in gpu, look at the amount of details in games, 600watts is what you would expect. we will no doubt move up to 1000watt, gonna need to for 8K 120fps. All gpus are power hungry inefficient beasts nowadays since we are seeing the full effects of the end of dennards scaling finally kick in, really im amazed they have gotten this far. when you complain about power hungry gps and expensive gpus you are seeing the slow final demise of moores law, this is the scary shit we have been hearing for years.

history has shown again and again when new standards are introduced they often dont work so well and get botched and bloated by the omni present incompetence and filthy greed in our world.

This has nothing if little to do with "filthy greed" and everything to do with attempting to make their cards unique and push a standard that was poorly implemented and designed.

 

[GerKNG]

what about keeping it simple and reliable and put two 8 Pins on any GPU and the world moves on.
you can easily draw 350-400W out of a single 8 Pin without any problems (if you don't have a low end junk PSU) and then there are another 66W from the PCIe slot... should be enough.

 

[Steevo]

what about keeping it simple and reliable and put two 8 Pins on any GPU and the world moves on.
you can easily draw 350-400W out of a single 8 Pin without any problems (if you don't have a low end junk PSU) and then there are another 66W from the PCIe slot... should be enough.

The issue is with the rapid resistance rise with temperature. Copper has a resistance rise of 24% from 20C to 80C so it only takes a small break in a conductor or even less in fewer pins to cause thermal runaway. Nickel plated contacts are 5X less conductive at their contact point than pure copper. Stainless steel is more than 10X less conductive.

 

[jnv11]

what about keeping it simple and reliable and put two 8 Pins on any GPU and the world moves on.
you can easily draw 350-400W out of a single 8 Pin without any problems (if you don't have a low end junk PSU) and then there are another 66W from the PCIe slot... should be enough.

That won't fly in the standards bodies. Intentionally drawing more than 150 watts per 8 pin PCI Express Graphics power connector can cause the card to fail PCI Express certification. That can cost OEM sales. Some OEMs will refuse to buy PCI Express graphics cards that fail certification as a way to deflect defective product lawsuits.