The Curious Case of the 12-pin Power Connector: It's Real and Coming with NVIDIA Ampere GPUs

[Vya Domus]

What you also need to understand is margins and volume shipped. Amazon has measly margins too but what do you know they are one of the largest or maybe the largest company out there.

 

[BoboOOZ]

True, but Amazon is not a manufacturer, it's just a reseller. Small margins high volume works fine for reselling, for manufacturers it's harder. It's sufficient to have a few faulty products and you throw away all your margin.

 

[gridracedriver]

600 watt?

LOOOL

 

[L'Eliminateur]

The connector pinouts are not quite accurate.
While technically most PSUs provide +12V on pin 2 for 6-pin connector, that is not the spec and pin 5 accordingly is sense. 6-pin connector officially has 2 +12V pins.
Similarly, 8-pin connector includes 2 sense pins 4 and 6 and has 3 +12V pins.
I bet 12-pin connector will end up with 5 +12V pins.

i don't think so, the current connectors have sense pins since they can be joined together and without sense the card has no way of knowing you plugged a 6 or 8 pin cable to it so they have to waste pins for that.
Since this new 12-pin connector seems to be monolithic (althought it's mentioned it can be split in half, that has me puzzled) they wouldn't need any sense as it's always a 12-pin plugged.
Or if it indeed can be split for smaller GPUs then you're right it would require one sense pin on the 2nd half

 

[tomc100]

Soon the gpu will just plug directly into the wall with an AC adapter.

 

[L'Eliminateur]

Soon the gpu will just plug directly into the wall with an AC adapter.

jaja cannot happen, the power consumption of GPUs means the PC PSU is the only viable option, or the power brick would essentially be a dedicated PC PSU, doesn't make sense

 

[Jism]

jaja cannot happen, the power consumption of GPUs means the PC PSU is the only viable option, or the power brick would essentially be a dedicated PC PSU, doesn't make sense

The 3dfx actually came with it's own power brick to be plugged into the wall to feed the GPU.

Apart from that, weird decision. 2x8 pins should be more then enough for most GPU's unless this thing is supposed to feed GPU's in enterprise markets or machines.

Lot of wires are overrated as well. One single yellow wire on a good build PSU could easily push 10A up to 13A.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Yeah I realized that, still, they aren't exactly small.

Don't believe their waffle for a moment, they make moooooooooooooore than enough. Not "small profits" at all. I can tell you stories that will make you infuriated with the injustices people pay for today's products. Suffice to say, most consumers are extremely unaware of how badly they are being ripped off.

 

[Overclocker_2001]

i bet this connector will be used in server / hpc space, where one cable is better than 2, and where PSU are designed to be fitted inside a case, with special connector.

remember Nvidia HGX gpu? well.. that's a 400W BEAST... but does not have any connector to power it because.. well.. 4*8pin PEG cable is not an option.

definitely 600W for a single VGA (single or dual gpu doen't matter) is quite too much for consumer, but not for PRO / server / HPC application

 

[Vya Domus]

but not for PRO / server / HPC application

Yeah it is, when you have thousands of them the cost of electricity and cooling stacks up.

 

[Dirt Chip]

What about LED??!
Must have RGB lighting in this new spec and adapters!

 

[Flanker]

看来有一些读者尤其是国外的读者不能理解中文的幽默，我更新一下最新的图纸和消息汇总。消息是真的。既然Techpowerup发了图纸，那我也发一下。

You guys can't read Chinese?

以上的内容都是我编的。
Anyone with somewhat reasonable competency in Chinese would know it is literally a joke, nothing more.
fcpowerup are legit, they are reviewing power supply since birth of Jesus Christ, if you don't believe it, at least try to read the write up from igor labs.

I read and speak Chinese and I don't see the joke? Some historical reference with FCPowerup?
I get that FCPowerup is legit, I'm just confused AF

 

[Mistral]

So now we have to have different nVidia and AMD connectors on PSUs, or what?

 

[Krzych]

Funny how when AMD has a power hungry GPU every one thinks power consumption is everything but when Nvidia hints at an upcoming power hungry atrocity everyone's cool with it.

This is entirely relative. There is a difference between pointlessly drawing way more power for the same performance and pushing the limits of performance, and we are talking the latter here. To do as badly as AMD did back in the days you refer to, they would have to release a new 300W+ card thats slower than RTX 2070.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

This is entirely relative. There is a difference between pointlessly drawing way more power for the same performance and pushing the limits of performance, and we are talking the latter here. To do as badly as AMD did back in the days you refer to, they would have to release a new 300W+ card thats slower than RTX 2070.

Exactly, in terms of power consumption to performance AMD wasn't doing good.

 

[Verpal]

I read and speak Chinese and I don't see the joke? Some historical reference with FCPowerup?
I get that FCPowerup is legit, I'm just confused AF

TF? I thought the joke is like..... obvious?
To be fair if it late night and you are just reading stuff literally...... sure
But context is important here, the piece is too high effort and well reference to be a joke, especially when it is just a single line at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, he put in additional material already, although I like the write up with Igor's lab more, FCPowerup's info is about the same, go check it out

 

[Parn]

Does that mean for any potential RTX 3080/3080 Ti buyers they would have to buy one of those new shiny PSUs to benefit from less cluttering cables? Unless this 12-pin connector can provide double the amount of wattage of the 8-pin, what's the point?

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Okay, I didn't read the thread, but....

I can't see this coming to desktops. AI focused cards? Yes. Desktops? No. Why? Because places like California would have a power usage fit. To me, the industry is very conscience of their power usage and NOT trying to draw attention to themselves.

New California Energy Commission Regulation Threatens Pre-built Gaming Desktops

California Energy Commission (CEC), the body tasked with keeping the US state of California both energy-rich and energy-efficient, is preparing a new series of regulations aimed at reducing power-draw of computers and the overall consumption of PC monitors. These regulations could have a...

www.techpowerup.com

All ASUS Motherboards Meet Stringent New California Energy Commission Standards

ASUS today announced that its motherboards meet ambitious energy-efficiency standards laid down by the California Energy Commission (CEC), and due to come into force on January 1, 2019. From this date, most new computers, monitors and signage displays sold or offered for sale in California must...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Deleted member 177333]

Good info, thanks.

 

[BoboOOZ]

I can't see this coming to desktops. AI focused cards? Yes. Desktops? No. Why? Because places like California would have a power usage fit. To me, the industry is very conscience of their power usage and NOT trying to draw attention to themselves.

If I understand correctly, all these regulations stipulate about efficiency, not power draw. That's why the evolution of the ATX format, so that there are less losses. There will still be 1500W PSU, it's just that the current conversions will be made at a single point, to avoid waste.

 

[nickbaldwin86]

I hope this is true. would be great to have a single plug. I have 2 8pins, which is still more wires and involves two plugs and two cables.

wondering when cards will just have 2x12pin LOL

 

[Assimilator]

One more thing: the schematic for that connector has durability at only 25 insertion/removal cycles.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh .........

https://twitter.com/x/status/1283502759292162051

TPU should at the very least check what the Chinese text says instead of running with whatever BS leak comes to their hands , just saying !

You should at the very least check the previous posts in this thread before you post something that has already been addressed, thereby making yourself look ignorant.

Just saying!

 

[W1zzard]

he schematic for that connector has durability at only 25 insertion/removal cycles

Hard to believe, and would be terrible if true. I must have plugged my PSU cables several hundred times and they're still fine. Slightly less force needed to connect, but np otherwise. Didn't we heard similar claims the first time LGA sockets were announced?

 

[Assimilator]

Hard to believe, and would be terrible if true. I must have plugged my PSU cables several hundred times and they're still fine. Slightly less force needed to connect, but np otherwise. Didn't we heard similar claims the first time LGA sockets were announced?

I had a look at Molex's page for current PCIe connectors afterwards, and those are only rated at 30 cycles! Guess they just take the worst-worst-worst case...

 

[Vya Domus]

This is entirely relative. There is a difference between pointlessly drawing way more power for the same performance and pushing the limits of performance, and we are talking the latter here. To do as badly as AMD did back in the days you refer to, they would have to release a new 300W+ card thats slower than RTX 2070.

"To do as badly" is entirely relative, gotcha. You can try and justify it all you can want, an unacceptable amount of power should remain unacceptable no matter what.