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High Power PCIe Gen5 power connector for next-gen GPUs pictured, up to 600W
Earlier this week [we published] an article about the upcoming flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, which is now set to launch in January. The graphics card is supposedly the first card to feature a PCIe Gen5 power connector, a new standard that will ultimately solve one of the biggest drawbacks of the current 8-pin power connector, an insufficient power it can provide (up to 150W).
Igor Wallossek from Igor'sLAB managed to obtain the schematics and the information on the new connector, confirming that there is indeed a new standard coming, possibly to all new graphics cards in 2022.
Just as we said, the power connector has 16 lanes in total (12 power and 4 signal lanes), but it's not a MicroFit Molex standard, but something entirely new. The standard [as defined] has smaller spacing than existing connectors, a change from 4.2 mm to 3.0 mm. The connector has a width of 18.85 mm, so it is not exactly small, but much smaller than dual or triple 8-pin connector configuration. This will greatly simplify the circuit and PCB design process, not to mention all the space that will be saved.
The PCI-SIG specs define that each pin can sustain up to 9.2A, which means a total of 55.2 A at 12V. This gives a maximum power of 662W, but the specs officially go up to 600W, Igor notes. Along with twelve pins for power, there are [an] additional 4 signal lanes right underneath the connector. At this moment it is unclear what [their purpose is] or whether they are required or optional.
Also at Wccftech.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday October 10 2021, @04:34PM (10 children)
While they might not pull it yet, or some kind of specialty card such as miners probably will, I wonder how much heat will a 600W GPU card generate and how much sound will be produced as you try and dissipate said heat via fans, or are they strictly for liquid cooling. I don't see Igor mentioning anything about heat, but I could have missed it. 600W is a fairly decent small space heater.
From the images on Igors site it looks like they just fused two connectors together, a standard four pin molex attached to a normal 12 pin power plug. They could have just used two cable to connect to it them. Putting them in one plastic package really isn't some gigantic leap forward in connector design is it?
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Sunday October 10 2021, @04:54PM (5 children)
That one is easy: About 600W. Almost all the energy that goes in the card is turned into heat.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @10:55PM (2 children)
Heat, and hi-def VR porn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 11 2021, @01:32AM (1 child)
VR porn turns into heat went the meat is beat.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday October 11 2021, @04:12PM
The angle of the dangle is directly proportional to the heat of the meat times the direction of the erection and is inversely proportional to the mass of the ass squared.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday October 11 2021, @12:49PM (1 child)
It's funny, that is exactly the answer I got from the HPC guy back at university. I did not reply at the time, only thought to myself: you haven't thought this one through. What exactly should be the "left over energy" be? All the bit configurations are equivalent, thereby containing the same energy. The only loophole is to argue that you can change the number of "1"s vs "0"s. Whichever charges a capacitor more, holds more energy. So writing all "1"s (or "0"s, depending on hardware) to every memory location might indeed store a tiny bit of energy, but you are not allowed to write a "0" henceforward.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 11 2021, @04:08PM
A small part of the energy leaves the card in the form of electric signals to the motherboard, or to the monitor. Sure, eventually that energy will be turned into heat, too, but not in the graphics card (and also, eventually, any energy will be turned into heat, therefore it is not reasonable to count the heat generated elsewhere as part of the heat generated by the graphics card). Also, an even smaller of the energy will leave in the form of non-thermal electromagnetic radiation. And of course, part of it will be turned into kinetic energy of air or water, depending on the cooling system (remember, the connector provides power for the complete graphics card, not just the chips in it), and if it is air, probably also quite a bit of acoustic noise.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 10 2021, @08:39PM (1 child)
I got the impression that this is intended to be the final cable for all GPUs. Just use this thing on all of them and you're good, with the exception of the ones that only need 75 Watts. Nothing will actually use 600 Watts, and if it does, it could be during a turbo boost mode or just to set world records.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Sunday October 10 2021, @09:59PM
NVidia designs like 2022 upcoming RTX 3090Ti already is at 450W and next generation designs RTX 4000 (Lovelace, 5nm) are at 600W,
out of pure despair in marketing department since on market this is expected to be positioned against Navi31 at 450W.
Anyway, 450W per card is becoming a high end standard in 2022/2023.
As always, always expect the worst.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10 2021, @11:00PM
Not problem, water cool. So the stream that is released turns a turbine and generates electric power to power that card. Nice closed loop system.
New York could use this to create stream to heat building. No need for fossil fuels. And they pay for themselves with bit coins. Lowers the cost of heating for everyone.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Tuesday October 12 2021, @02:25PM
Next generation, both CPU and GPU has been announced as using I think 45 percent more power.
So, a couple months and we will be seeing normal consumer cards pulling that.