New graphics card power plug for up to 600 watts is coming (12VHPWR)

Graphics cards are becoming more powerful, but they are also becoming more energy-intensive. A 450-watt power delivery is expected for the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti / Super, which is expected to ship in early 2022 - and that's not all, a new power plug is required to make this happen.

The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, will be released in January of next year and will use up to 450 watts, 100 watts more than the current GeForce RTX 3090. When three 8-pin power plugs are used, the power consumption reaches its maximum of 450 watts, which is also the maximum allowed. As a result of the possibility of even faster custom designs, and particularly in light of the next-generation GPUs Lovelace and RDNA 3, something new is unavoidably required, because even more 8-pin connectors are difficult to integrate sensibly from the onboard design alone.

In order to avoid ambiguity, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti should include a proprietary power connector comparable to the Founders Edition of the GeForce RTX 3000 series, but .. bigger. It is a new 16-pin Microfit connector will be known as the “High Power Connector” or “12VHPWR” by the PCIe SIG for the PCIe 5.0 standard. The name is literal, as the plug should deliver 600 watts. The plug can deliver up to 600 watts at a constant 55 amps, and theoretically up to 662 watts.

Amphenol ICC is the first manufacturer to have inadvertently revealed the new power plug, as it is now visible on the website, and the suspected specifications are now confirmed. There is additional information regarding “4 signal contacts” on the connector on the bottom.