Inno3D Unveils RTX 4070 & 4060 Ti GPUs With Hidden Power Connectors

[DuckDodgers]

 

Taking a shot at Asus, Inno3D took a different route coming out with non-proprietary and simpler implementation of alternative power delivery routing, without requiring matched mobo and card. 

 

Quotes

Quote

The company showcased two brand new GPU designs, the GeForce RTX 4070 AX eSports and the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti iChill X2 White. Both of these designs are new in the sense that they adopt a very discrete placement for the power connector which isn't located on the side of the card as it should be. Instead, Inno3D hides the connectors on the inner side of the PCB and is sandwiched right between the heatsink and the backplate.

 

Are all these complications worth for the aesthetic vibe?

 

Source: https://wccftech.com/inno3d-unveils-geforce-rtx-4070-4060-ti-gpus-with-hidden-power-connectors/

[Levent]

That look fun to take off.

[Techstorm970]

2 minutes ago, DuckDodgers said:

 

That's something that an inexperienced PC builder may have trouble with, I imagine.  The power connector is facing the motherboard rather than the away from it, demanding a bit of skill and creativity from the builder when it comes to installation and cable management.  Also, the cabling could get in the way of the clip holding the PCIe connection in place, making uninstalling the card kind of a hassle.  That being said, the best way to install this card would involve plugging in the cable first, and the best way to uninstalling it would involve unplugging the cable last.

 

I wouldn't buy this card, but I would be intrigued to hear from someone who did.

 

I feel like having the connector rotated 90 degrees so that it's facing the front of the case would have been better.  Just redesign the heatsink to accommodate that.  That way, you still have a hidden connector and you don't have to worry about damaging your motherboard during installation.  Plus, the heatsink could then easily act as free cable management.

[Jurrunio]

Nah I still prefer the R9 Nano's right-facing connector design, except meant-for-mITX cards like the R9 Nano when length is also a concern. Inno's motherboard facing design means it will get in the way of the CPU cooler, not cool if an air cooler is used.

[SorryBella]

57 minutes ago, DuckDodgers said:

Inno3D took a different route coming out with non-proprietary and simpler implementation of alternative power delivery routing, without requiring matched mobo and card. 

This is non-proprietary for the sake of non-proprietary. Ugly as sin, id rather have something like EVGA Powerlink and have the connector face away from the card facia.

[thekingofmonks]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Nah I still prefer the R9 Nano's right-facing connector design, except meant-for-mITX cards like the R9 Nano when length is also a concern. Inno's motherboard facing design means it will get in the way of the CPU cooler, not cool if an air cooler is used.

Right-facing connectors aren't so uncommon, are they? I happen to have a Windforce 560Ti with 2x 6pins facing the front side of the case.

[Jurrunio]

3 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

Right-facing connectors aren't so uncommon, are they? I happen to have a Windforce 560Ti with 2x 6pins facing the front side of the case.

nowadays they are rare, especially newer cards with way longer heatsinks than their PCBs

[jagdtigger]

Like thats going to solve the problem of the badly designed connector..... Just ditch that POS and slap on a couple EPS connectors....

[grg994]

Let's make GPUs that take up an extra PCIe slot of space also towards the cpu, great idea!

[RejZoR]

Why not parallel with PCIe slot going to the front of the card?! My mobo has chipset heatsink and fan in place where cable goes 90° out of the card here.

 

This way would be much better, cleaner and not in the way of anything plus it would route neatly out of the card and around the mobo going through grommets to the back of the motherboard tray.

[TetraSky]

10 hours ago, Levent said:

That look fun to take off.

wouldn't be that bad on a horizontal (standard) mount. Vertical might be a bit annoying as it would be sitting behind the card. But can always just lift it off the socket and then disconnect the power cable.

[Dabombinable]

It'd be so much fun to use on all of these boards with a PCH heatsink underneath the rear of the GPU.

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Why not parallel with PCIe slot going to the front of the card?! My mobo has chipset heatsink and fan in place where cable goes 90° out of the card here.

 

This way would be much better, cleaner and not in the way of anything plus it would route neatly out of the card and around the mobo going through grommets to the back of the motherboard tray.

Problem then is that the angle of the wires at the connector would potentially be bent too far, and cause contact issues.

[NF-A12x25]

I’d get one of these if I wanted a 40 series gpu and it was one of the decent models lmao, would still rather have the Noctua 4080 but i’m skipping this gen (and 5000) because I already have a Noctua 3070. Plus i’m probably going to go AMD with the release of the Noctua AMD card that they are supposedly considering (they replied to a comment on their insta page that they are thinking about it), but only if they don’t release a 6090 and if they do I’ll only get one if the 6090 is actually good. Otherwise, AMD is gonna be my go-to.

[RejZoR]

5 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

It'd be so much fun to use on all of these boards with a PCH heatsink underneath the rear of the GPU.

Problem then is that the angle of the wires at the connector would potentially be bent too far, and cause contact issues.

Not really. There would be motherboard in the way there as not even mATX boards are so small to not have few centimeters of PCB past PCIe slot. Besides, have you seen how far cables are bent on traditional side PCIe connectors? There is no way you could bend my version anywhere close to that because of motherboard. But it would go parallel with the motherboard for a bit and then bent behind it. It may seem like it will be sharp U bend around the board, but it wouldn't really be as the cable would be going downwards at an angle with basically no bend in the cable.

[Mark Kaine]

its a good idea, sure looks a bit unsafe and potentially inconvenient (because there might not even be enough space between mobo and card)... 

 

 

Im all for moving the connector, but this doesn't look ideal... on the side, closer to the PSU would be better (as kingpin keeps suggesting,  but nobody listens...lol)

 

 

11 hours ago, RejZoR said:

There is no way you could bend my version

Ok

[williamcll]

Why not just drive more power into the PCI connector? Even USB-C 4 is hitting 240W

[Kisai]

On 6/10/2023 at 1:42 AM, DuckDodgers said:

 

Taking a shot at Asus, Inno3D took a different route coming out with non-proprietary and simpler implementation of alternative power delivery routing, without requiring matched mobo and card. 

 

I see that being a super nightmare. That makes that GPU only possible to use on a PCIE riser cable to move the GPU off the motherboard.

 

While ASUS's solution deserves some criticism for requiring a proprietary motherboard but not actually solving the problem (it's simply routing the power through the motherboard instead of directly to the GPU, which has some obvious pitfalls if you want two x16 cards.) 

 

Realistically the solution has to be a de-facto moving the GPU off the motherboard when it takes up 2+ slots. Standardize on a "2+ slot PCIE expansion device placement" in the ATX standard, like how PSU's have a standard bracket.

 

Like this. 

 

The alternative most obvious way to solve this is to just make eGPU's the norm without a thunderbolt interface. So think how 5.25" drive bays worked before, where there is an actual "track" for the drive to sit in, and it's held from the side.

 

At any rate, I don't see the status quo being around much longer, because manufacturers don't want to be constantly receiving RMA's for design oversights caused by trying to have a massive cooler.