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

[Pickles von Brine]

Quote

The connector is real, and will be introduced with NVIDIA's next-generation "Ampere" graphics cards. The connector appears to be NVIDIA's brain-child, and not that of any other IP- or trading group, such as the PCI-SIG, Molex or Intel. The connector was designed in response to two market realities - that high-end graphics cards inevitably need two power connectors; and it would be neater for consumers to have a single cable than having to wrestle with two; and that lower-end (<225 W) graphics cards can make do with one 8-pin or 6-pin connector.

The new NVIDIA 12-pin connector has six 12 V and six ground pins. Its designers specify higher quality contacts both on the male and female ends, which can handle higher current than the pins on 8-pin/6-pin PCIe power connectors. Depending on the PSU vendor, the 12-pin connector can even split in the middle into two 6-pin, and could be marketed as "6+6 pin." The point of contact between the two 6-pin halves are kept leveled so they align seamlessly.

As for the power delivery, we have learned that the designers will also specify the cable gauge, and with the right combination of wire gauge and pins, the connector should be capable of delivering 600 Watts of power (so it's not 2*75 W = 150 W), and not a scaling of 6-pin. Igor's Lab published an investigative report yesterday with some numbers on cable gauge that helps explain how the connector could deliver a lot more power than a combination of two common 6-pin PCIe connectors.

Source
This is rather interesting and honestly it a lot of ways make sense. I for one would love to have a single cable for use. The other fact for this cable is the 600W power delivery... However, the fact that this is a new cable all together, the transistion I think is going to be a bit annoying. Adapters and such are may become be necessary for older power supplies. It will be interesting how this goes. What is everyone's thoughts here?

Spoiler

 

 

Looks like it is real. 

[Mateyyy]

So, fancier dual 6-pin.......why

[Bananasplit_00]

At least have it be compatible with two PCIe six pins... Not this proprietary garbage pile

[Herman Mcpootis]

so... this is just a pair of 6-pins taped together, but not only nobody makes it but it also can't take a pair of old 6-pins to make up for nobody using it...

 

... did anyone even ask for this?...

[GoldenLag]

16 minutes ago, Pickles - Lord of the Jar said:

that high-end graphics cards inevitably need two power connectors; and it would be neater for consumers to have a single cable than having to wrestle with two; and that lower-end (<225 W) graphics cards can make do with one 8-pin or 6-pin connector.

Seems like Nvidia forgot that the EPS connector is a thing. And is widely used in the servermarkets. 

 

Why make a new connector when the EPS can allready do it in a slimmer formfactor?

 

I guess they dony want people forcing 6+2pins into the 8pins

[DildorTheDecent]

>9A per pin.

 

Oooh. Little bit of napkin math has that setup capable of pushing a maximum of 648W. Probably don't want to do it all over just that one cable and connector tho. I wonder what Pro-OC will make of this.

 

Kind of hope that this is some bizarre OEM or FE GPU tomfoolery.

[Tan3l6]

So, adapters for a while, before PSUs adapt to the situation.

 

[cj09beira]

i wonder what the real pinout is, on pcie 8 pin you have 2 sense wires so that power loss over the cable can be compensated, will this have any of that or will it be a dumb connector like the pcie 6 pin

[themoose5]

30 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

So, fancier dual 6-pin.......why

 

I think the quote below is really the motivating driver behind the change. It seems like nvidia is anticipating a much higher power draw/power quality in the future which is why they're introducing this new connector. 

Quote

Its designers specify higher quality contacts both on the male and female ends, which can handle higher current than the pins on 8-pin/6-pin PCIe power connectors.

 

[UpTheDons]

This is gonna be annoying. Especially for those with older units *cries in 2012 psu*

[Blai5e]

I assume that for higher power/quality PSU's, CableMod (and others) should be able to make a cable that uses 2 X PCIe outputs from the PSU end.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Herman Mcpootis said:

so... this is just a pair of 6-pins taped together, but not only nobody makes it but it also can't take a pair of old 6-pins to make up for nobody using it...

 

... did anyone even ask for this?...

Pretty much, but the PCIe 6-pins are only for 75w each. It's doubling the current from the 8-pins.

 

The same as a 8-pin. So really it must be rated at 100w per wire vs the 25w per wire for 6-pin and the 2 additional pins are grounds enabling those 3 power pins to do 50w each. Apparently, with that wire gauge, 150w per voltage pin could be done, but would also have reliability issues. So 6x100 vs 3x25 or 3x50. 

 

If nVidia releases GPU's like this, then there will be PSU replacements needed to use it. You're absolutely not going to get away with two 8-pin/6-pin to 12 pin adapters unless the PSU has enough spare capacity to deal with it (eg a 1000w PSU)

[NumLock21]

Is that Intel's ATX12VO specs?

Edit: Intel ATX12VO is 10 pins not 12 pins.

[pas008]

if these are required then these new ampere cards, these should be like 3x plus the performance or nvidia's so called efficiency got demolished here

 

otherwise I dont see why adding more power is needed

am I missing something here?

arent we suppose to be trying to draw less power and get more performance as we go forward?

[Trik'Stari]

Now if only PSU manufacturers would stop making PCI-E wires with OBNOXIOUS EXTRA CONNECTORS THAT HANG OFF THE SIDE OF THE GPU LIKE A HORRID TUMOR, COMPLETELY RUINING THE LOOK OF MY BUILD.

 

*heavy, angry breathing*

[porina]

1 hour ago, pas008 said:

if these are required then these new ampere cards, these should be like 3x plus the performance or nvidia's so called efficiency got demolished here

 

otherwise I dont see why adding more power is needed

am I missing something here?

arent we suppose to be trying to draw less power and get more performance as we go forward?

Just because the maximum power of the connector is going up, doesn't mean every card will use it all the time. I doubt consumer cards will creep up much in power. What might be the case is this is for farm uses, where power density is more interesting.

[pas008]

7 minutes ago, porina said:

Just because the maximum power of the connector is going up, doesn't mean every card will use it all the time. I doubt consumer cards will creep up much in power. What might be the case is this is for farm uses, where power density is more interesting.

I understand those hpc and etc use cases

And a single cable too which would be nice

 

this opens the door for many issues

 

But then again Maybe they are going this route for future mcm gpus with hopper 

[Arika]

YAY proprietary connectors

[TempestCatto]

7 hours ago, Pickles - Lord of the Jar said:

Adapters and such are may become be necessary for older power supplies

Nope. Failure points and risk of melting things. I'd rather put a new PSU on the credit card for that peace of mind knowing the very expensive GPU I just bought won't set a fire.

[Blademaster91]

I hope the 12 pin connector is for the FE or reference cards, proprietary connectors suck.

[Curufinwe_wins]

This sucks. Really badly. I don't want to or need to replace a psu just for a new graphics card, and I will be upgrading when 3000 series drops. Sigh

[RejZoR]

I'm not gonna buy new PSU after buying a brand new top end one like 3 years ago for one stupid graphic card because they decided to make new dumb standard. I don't care if I need to wire two cables to it.

[X-System]

Me, I will use two 6-pin to one 12-pin adapter. The aesthetics isn't a problem for me because my PC case doesn't have window side panel

[Orcblood]

People may end up just buying AMD's alternative instead of dealing with this bs.

[StDragon]

So would this be just for the 3080 series? It might be a non-issue or the 3060 and 3070 (mid-range) cards. Personally, I have no intention of getting a 3080 as I'm not driving 4k anytime soon anyways.