Monday, July 3rd 2023
12VHPWR Connector Said to be Replaced by 12V-2x6 Connector
According to Igor's Lab, who has gotten their hands on a PCI-SIG draft engineer change notice, it looks like the not entirely uncontroversial 12VHPWR connector won't be long lived. The PCI-SIG is getting ready to replace it with the 12V-2x6 connector, which will be part of the ATX 3.1 spec and the PCI Express 6.0 spec. The new connector doesn't appear to have any major physical changes though, but there have been mechanical modifications, such as the sense pins having been recessed further back, to make sure a proper contact is made before higher power outputs can be requested by the GPU. The good news is that at least in the draft spec, the 12V-2x6 connector will be backwards compatible with 12VHPWR connectors.
One of the bigger changes, at least when it comes to how much power the new connector can deliver, is that there will be new 150 and 300 Watt modes in addition to the 450 and 600 Watt modes for the sense pin detection. The 12V-2x6 connector is rated for at least 9.2 Amps per pin and the new connectors will carry a H++ logo, with th older 12VHPWR connectors getting a H+ logo. The PCI-SIG has also added stricter requirements when it comes to the cable design and quality, which should hopefully prevent some of the issues the 12VHPWR implementations have suffered from. We should find out more details once the PCI-SIG has finalised the 12V-2x6 connector specification. In the meantime, you can hit up the source link for more technical drawings and details.
Source:
Igor's Lab
One of the bigger changes, at least when it comes to how much power the new connector can deliver, is that there will be new 150 and 300 Watt modes in addition to the 450 and 600 Watt modes for the sense pin detection. The 12V-2x6 connector is rated for at least 9.2 Amps per pin and the new connectors will carry a H++ logo, with th older 12VHPWR connectors getting a H+ logo. The PCI-SIG has also added stricter requirements when it comes to the cable design and quality, which should hopefully prevent some of the issues the 12VHPWR implementations have suffered from. We should find out more details once the PCI-SIG has finalised the 12V-2x6 connector specification. In the meantime, you can hit up the source link for more technical drawings and details.
137 Comments on 12VHPWR Connector Said to be Replaced by 12V-2x6 Connector
I have no idea, but it is a decent Silverstone unit that has been running fine for more than half a year. :rockout:
When the root cause is the length of a couple of sensing pins, that's almost literally a kink. Yeah, I don't have a practical solution either. But that doesn't mean the port/connector doesn't seem to be getting long in the tooth.
There is zero wiggle, so i'm feeling good about it :)
Maybe my PNY card just uses a better quality connector on the PCB, because the wiggle JayzTwoCents showed with the CableMod adapter is non-existent on my end.
It's already been replaced on Nvidia's end. Back maybe 3 months ago. It was submitted to PCI-SIG after the fact to suggest a rolling change to the spec. Someone just managed to see it and "report it" as something phenomenal to get users all riled up just like they did with the whole "four spring vs. three dimple" bullshit.
Slow news day. Nothing here to see.
Those cables have strong tape which prevents bending, however the cable can still be bent sharply at either end of the tape of which I had to do due to the horrible placement of the connectors, however due to this issue, I was paranoid and did some adjustments to make the bending a little less sharp.
Why would we care about power usage over performance? We can't drive 4k at high frame rates and some games don't even run well in 1440p- so why focus on saving $75 a year?
I think the rise of purely 8 Pin based GPUs put the manufacturing cost of 6+2s out of the equation for a lot of people. Quite a few reference boards used dual 6 pins which were replaced on custom boards with a single 8 pin.
What I dont understand is why we had to go to this connector design when all we had to do was adopt the EPS12v standard for 8 pins to DOUBLE the available power draw per 8 pin. No remaking the wheel, no massive changes to production. However I think in the longer term there will be a shift to higher voltages to improve power carry capacity and in THEORY power conversion efficency.
The above would, I'd think, require either step-up from a 12V rail on the PSU side (probably trivial, though there's somone here that'll definitely be able to tell me if I'm wrong) or a dedicated 24V rail, and then step-down at the GPU, since the PCIe slot and therefore presumably the rest of the design would remain 12V.
Reading around what is going on in the datacenter and other things it looks like 400 watt CPUs are going to be the "norm" and up to 1kw accelerators as well.
E.g. Use a bigger connector with 2-3 pins, PCB-suitable voltage & current, and thicker flexible cable like my toaster.
It's the current that matters. Not the voltage. At 1600W, 110V is only 14A. The 12VHPWR supports 50A.
Now, that said, if your wires and terminals were 10g, your idea would work. But this would make for an incredibly unweildly cable.
How about, for practical use, a doubling of the cross-sectional area of the current GPU wire cores.
Current (A) = 600 W / 12 V = 50 A.
6 (incoming power) pins -> 50 A / 6 = ~9 A per pin.
Doubling, ~18 A per pin, the cable could be 14 gauge (according to my understanding of the explainer). Better than 10 gauge, and now needs only 3 (x 2) pins.
Still too stiff? I have no sense of this. The next time I go to Home Depot I hope to check it out.
I'm getting ahead of myself - the explainer shows different temperate ranges available per gauge. I don't know the status quo. That could require a thicker gauge than 14.