There’s a sizzling new energy connector within the desktop PC world… and by sizzling, we imply “literally melting.” Points with the brand new 12VHPWR energy connector design for the newest PCIe 5.0-compliant graphics playing cards have seen a design flaw that apparently makes it extraordinarily difficult to get electrical contacts correctly inserted and aligned, leading to remoted however extraordinarily troubling examples of pricy failure. Designs for a revised normal at the moment are coming to gentle, and can hopefully clear up the difficulty.
Based on trusted German leaker Igor’s Lab, the PCI-SIG (the economic group that standardizes PCI knowledge and energy connections) has revised the 12VHPWR design into the upcoming 12V-2×6 connector. Bodily it appears to be like nearly an identical, with twelve normal energy pins and 4 further, smaller pins for sideband knowledge (making it reverse suitable), and it may well deal with the identical most 600 watts of energy to the related system.
Based on the leaked specs, slight millimeter-sized tweaks to the connector header will make connections safer and simpler to perform, and playing cards will refuse to energy on if the 4 smaller pins aren’t correctly related, providing an emergency failsafe that informs the person they should examine the connection. There’s additionally an instruction to producers to tie off cables additional behind the male plug so as to keep away from warping points.
Much less drastic revisions to the usual additionally imply that these cables will assist 300-watt and 150-watt playing cards, in order that 12V-2×6 might extra successfully exchange a greater diversity of energy cables used with PCIe playing cards, and the brand new normal permits for as much as 75 watts delivered over the PCIe connection itself. The brand new header connector can be delineated from the previous one with “H++” printed on the plastic, versus H+ on the 12VHPWR.
Sadly, we is perhaps in for a little bit of wait earlier than we see this new header design present up on a lot of shopper merchandise. Based on Igor Wallossek, the brand new normal will arrive together with the PCIe 6.0 and ATX 3.1, and isn’t but finalized. We’d see early variations of the 12VHPWR design implement a few of these modifications (nearly unimaginable to inform by eye, bear in mind)—actually, Nvidia is perhaps utilizing it on some RTX 40-series playing cards already. Different producers are going with extra simple options like MSI’s yellow visible indicators.
