A render of NVIDIA’s upcoming GeForce RTX 30 series Ampere gaming graphics cards in its reference Founders Edition design. (Image via Reddit User u/dertpert88)
Last month, we heard a rumor regarding NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards making use of a brand new power interface to facilitate the higher power draw on the flagship gaming graphics cards. Now, this can be confirmed as one major PSU OEM has posted pictures of the NVIDIA 12-pin PCIe Molex power connector adapter.
Seasonic Shows off 12-Pin Micro-Fit 3.0 Power Connector Adapter For Next-Gen NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Founders Edition Graphics Cards
Posted by Seasonic at the Chinese media portal, Bilibili (via HXL @9550pro), the picture shows a box that contains the NVIDIA 12-pin PCIe Molex Micro-Fit 3.0 connector. The Molex connector is packaged within a cardboard box and contains the 12-Pin power connector adapter which makes use of two 8-pin connectors directly from the PSU.
The 2x 8-pin to 1x 12-pin power connector features a length of 750mm which should be enough for most high-end systems. Seasonic has posted a power supply rating of 850W or beyond for use with the 12-pin connector cable. Based on the looks of it, it seems like the higher-end NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series graphics cards might only feature a single 12-pin connector considering it is drawing power from 2x 8-pin connectors which should put the maximum power draw to around 300W (150 Watt per 8-pin connector). The PCIe interface itself delivers 75W of power to the graphics card.
What we don’t know is how Seasonic and other PSU makers aim to supply these adapters. Surely, all new PSUs will be bundled with the cable but users already running existing PSUs might have to purchase the cables separately unless or until they are shipped with the Founders Edition graphics cards. As per the Seasonic official account, the 12-pin connector has been actively used by NVIDIA for internal testing and it is unlikely that graphics card makers are going to ship the adapters by their own as the specifications for the 12-pin adapters are different and have to match the PSU specifications of each manufacturer differently hence can only be provided by the specific PSU vendor.
The blueprint of the 12V 12-pin connector is provided and from first look, it looks like traditional 2x 6-pin connectors hooked up together. The connector looks similar to the Molex Micro-Fit series of power connectors which are 19mm wide and have a 3mm pitch. This is the same width as the two 6-pin power connectors that current PSUs offer but offers a current capacity of 8.5A compared to 6A of mini-Fit 5556 connectors. At a perfect efficiency rate, the mini-fit would deliver 600 Watts of power but that’s not always the case and the actual power delivered to the GPU is around 400W at 6 Amps. The primary bottleneck with the traditional connectors is the 20AWG specifications for the pins.
Alleged NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Graphics Card’s PCB pictured. (Image reconstructed by @326powah)
The Founders Edition design is also expected to feature over 20 power chokes which put it is a more premium design than the flagship non-reference RTX 20 series cards. While the Founders Edition cards feature 12-pin power connectors, the custom designs would still utilize standard 8 and 6-pin connectors as seen in the previous leak.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 ‘Ampere’ Gaming graphics card lineup is expected to be announced on 1st September at a digital event which will be hosted by CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang. We expect at the very least, three new graphics cards during the event which include the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (or RTX 3090), GeForce RTX 3080, and a next-generation Titan. There’s definitely a lot more to talk about regarding the Ampere GPUs but we will have to wait until more information comes our way.
