Purpose of PSU's PCIe cable tail?

[EchoEcho]

Disclaimer: I did do a quick search to see if anyone else was having this issue, watched multiple videos, and consulted the manuals for my parts (the PSU only has a safety pamphlet). I also used PC part picker and did not get any compatibility errors.

 

I am a first time PC builder so please bear with me. I have been following the PC build guide on LTT's Youtube channel. I am about to test my machine before installing into my case, but I'm worried about my PSU's PCIe cable. The PCIe cable has a another 8 pin (6+2), tailed to the end of it. Is this supposed to also go into another GPU or somewhere else? Or do I have the wrong cable and need to cover it up? Or buy a different one?

 

Images and specs are below.

This is the link to the PSU's information (page 6).

 

Specs:

OS: Haven't installed yet, but will use Windows 11 Home.

Mobo: ASUS Prime Z790-P WiFi LGA1700 ATX

CPU: Intel Core i7-13700K

GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 3060 12GB

CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE RGB

RAM: G.Skill RipJaws S5 Series (Intel XMP) 32GB(2x16GB) DDR5

Storage: Kingston NV2 1TB M.2 2280 NVME PCIe 4.0 SSD

PSU: Corsair RMX Series (2021) RM1000x Gold Fully Modular (1000 watt max)

Case: Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB ATX

[Hinjima]

1 minute ago, EchoEcho said:

Disclaimer: I did do a quick search to see if anyone else was having this issue, watched multiple videos, and consulted the manuals for my parts (the PSU only has a safety pamphlet). I also used PC part picker and did not get any compatibility errors.

 

I am a first time PC builder so please bear with me. I have been following the PC build guide on LTT's Youtube channel. I am about to test my machine before installing into my case, but I'm worried about my PSU's PCIe cable. The PCIe cable has a another 8 pin (6+2), tailed to the end of it. Is this supposed to also go into another GPU or somewhere else? Or do I have the wrong cable and need to cover it up? Or buy a different one?

 

Images and specs are below.

This is the link to the PSU's information (page 6).

 

Specs:

OS: Haven't installed yet, but will use Windows 11 Home.

Mobo: ASUS Prime Z790-P WiFi LGA1700 ATX

CPU: Intel Core i7-13700K

GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 3060 12GB

CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE RGB

RAM: G.Skill RipJaws S5 Series (Intel XMP) 32GB(2x16GB) DDR5

Storage: Kingston NV2 1TB M.2 2280 NVME PCIe 4.0 SSD

PSU: Corsair RMX Series (2021) RM1000x Gold Fully Modular (1000 watt max)

Case: Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB ATX

That extra 8 ( 6+2 ) pin is for graphics cards with more than one 8 pin power connector. You can use this cable no problem, ziptie the extra cable to the existing cable that is in your GPU to make it look a bit nicer. Nothing to worry about here.

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, EchoEcho said:

Is this supposed to also go into another GPU or somewhere else?

If your GPU requires 2-3 8 pin power connectors, you can use it for that. It's generally considered best practice to avoid using them if you can, on some Nvidia cards it can cause slight performance drops, and for very power hungry cards like 3090s it they can cause the single cable to get very hot if only one pigtail is used, but they're plenty adequate for most situations where it's need it. 

 

Just cable manage it away somewhere and ignore it, for your system it isn't used. 

[CreedTT]

its for GPU'S which require extra pins, it's perfectly safe for it to be there. 

[BondiBlue]

It's for use with GPUs that need more than one PCIe power connector. My RTX 2070 Super, for example, uses one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector for power. Since that card doesn't draw a ton of power it's perfectly fine for me to use the second connector on the cable to power the card with one cable from the PSU. With more modern GPUs that use a lot more power (something like the RTX 3080, for example) it's recommended that you only use one connector on the cable and use separate cables for each power connector on the card. 

 

There's nothing to worry about. That's the correct cable, and you can just ignore the extra connector. Just tuck it out of the way somewhere. 

[EchoEcho]

40 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

It's for use with GPUs that need more than one PCIe power connector. My RTX 2070 Super, for example, uses one 8-pin and one 6-pin connector for power. Since that card doesn't draw a ton of power it's perfectly fine for me to use the second connector on the cable to power the card with one cable from the PSU. With more modern GPUs that use a lot more power (something like the RTX 3080, for example) it's recommended that you only use one connector on the cable and use separate cables for each power connector on the card. 

 

There's nothing to worry about. That's the correct cable, and you can just ignore the extra connector. Just tuck it out of the way somewhere. 

Ok that makes a lot of sense. I was scared I had inadequate cables or something but that means I can go ahead with the rest of my setup. Thanks so much!