NVIDIA Confirms 12-pin GPU Power Connector
by Dr. Ian Cutress on August 26, 2020 9:00 AM EST
Today as part of a video showcasing NVIDIA’s mechanical and industrial design of its GPUs, and how it gets a large GPU to dissipate heat, the company went into some detail about how it needed to improve the design of all mechanical and electrical aspects of the board to aid cooling. This means implementing leaf springs for a back plate solution, as well as vapor chamber technology and using the right sorts of fans and fan management software.
As part of this video showcase, the company also shows its new 12-pin power connector. It also shows the 12-pin connector running perpendicular to the PCB, which is very interesting indeed.
Users who follow the tech news may have seen a few posts circling the internet regarding this 12-pin power connector, with a Seasonic cable that puts together two of the standard PCIe 8-pin connectors into one of NVIDIA’s new 12-pin designs.
Image from Hardwareluxx
NVIDIA states in the video that this 12-pin design is of its own creation. It isn’t clear if this is set to become a new standard in power cable connectivity for power supplies, however going forward we assume that most graphics cards that have this 12-pin power design will have to come with an additional 2x8-pin to 12-pin power cable included. We wait to see if that's the case, or if it will be up to future power supplies to bundle the appropriate connector.
More details about the connector are expected to appear on September 1st during NVIDIA’s GeForce Special Event.
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PeachNCream - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
Ugh, that's disgusting! Between the potential physical durability problems with positioning the connector that way to the idea of needing that many pins to deliver power to a graphics card being such an outstanding example of how much energy and effort we waste while chasing down ways to keep ourselves amused so we need not be bothered with thinking for ourselves, it's just another statement about the sad state of being human.paulharmo - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
Counterpoint: haha rtx graphics go brrrrrrdgingeri - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
What does "go brrrr" mean, anyway?69369369 - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
cooming and shidding itselfTheinsanegamerN - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link
https://brrr.money/nathanddrews - Thursday, August 27, 2020 - link
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/money-printer-go-br...So long as GPUs come with an adapter, I can't say that I care about this at all. Durability shouldn't be an issue any more than any other pin on any given motherboard. To put it another way, if a GPU vendor can't properly attach a power connector to the PCB, you're gonna have other problems in need of RMA.
Alexvrb - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
He was referring to the perpendicular mounting of the new, even longer, connector. Look at the picture, the way it's mounted. Now visualize someone sticking their hand in a chassis to plug said connector into their new GPU upgrade. Hope they're don't apply too much force!My main issue though is the fact that it is an Nvidia creation, it is at this point proprietary. I prefer to avoid adapters when possible.
Kjella - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
Please go back to wccftech. Reading the forums there is just painful.ATC9001 - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
Well if you look at the card realestate 2-8 pins take up and the fact cards are getting longer and longer my guess this is necessary to not make the PCB simply not fit in many cases. Also if you look at 2-8 pin connectors there's 6 wires for ground and 6 for power...so there's no need for the extra 4 "sense" pins. If you hook a 12 pin card up thought with 2 6 pins, you can start fires potentially (those only have effectively 2 positive wires each).DanNeely - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
Also, the new 12pin is the length of a single old 8pin connector; so even mounted flat this will save more space than a naive 12 vs 16 pin consideration would imply.