Computer

This is the PCIe cable your new RTX 40 or RX 7000 GPU will need

That we are going to have a new standard power connector for graphics cards is no secret, but until now we had not seen the 12-pin cable for PCIe Gen 5 and it turns out it is exactly the same as NVIDIA in shape. Is this just a coincidence or has this been standardized?

A few days ago we were talking about ASUS power supplies with a PCI Express 5.0 connector and among the different images of the presentation there was one that caught our attention where an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition was connected to said port of the motherboard.

PCI Express 5.0 12-pin connector

We have to start from the beginning that said NVIDIA graphics card is not compatible with PCI Express 5.0, but the GeForce manufacturer introduced a 12-pin connector to feed the high-end models of its RTX 30.

This is the 12-pin PCIe Gen 5 cable

PCIe Gen 5 power cable

One of the things that computing standards have is that most of the time you end up adopting existing and proven technology. This is the case of the power cable for PCIe Gen 5. The reason? It is exactly identical to the 12-pin power cable that NVIDIA introduced in its RTX 30, that is, a Molex Micro-Fit 3.0.

From what we can say that the 12-pin cable that NVIDIA introduced in its latest generation of graphics cards for gaming has been standardized, since it is this that has been adopted as the standard power cable for PCI Express 5.0.

All this explains the rumors of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti being compatible with PCIe Gen 5 and making use of the 600 W of power that the new standard can give. At the end of the day, they hardly have to make changes in what is the design of the analog circuitry in the face of power on the graphics card. Keep in mind that the current RTX 3090 can reach 450 W of consumption and therefore does not take the full potential of the new connector.

More than 600W of power

12-pin PCIe Gen 5 600 W cable

It’s no secret that the new 12-pin PCIe Gen 5 cable will be able to power graphics cards with up to 600W, which is something that was well within the scope when NVIDIA first showed its connector a year ago. but no one has yet made a graphics card with such a consumption level.

Since the 12-pin connector was proprietary to NVIDIA up to now, on the AMD RX 6000 they have used the connectors within the standard, although it is clear that their multichip GPUs for the next generation could take advantage of the new power connector, as well as the new 12-pin PCIe Gen 5 cable.

Since the new cable is standard and it is no longer a proprietary implementation not only NVIDIA, both Intel and AMD will be able to make use of their graphics cards and will be able to upload them up to 600 W of consumption. Which is paradoxical in a world where it seeks to reduce energy consumption as much as possible. All this supported by the problem of energy consumption of memory interfaces, which is found everywhere, from telephones to supercomputers, through our PCs.

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