08-27-2020, 07:10 AM
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia...-connector
https://www.techpowerup.com/271410/nvidi...-confirmed
Quote:If you've been following the hard-to-miss news about the upcoming Nvidia Ampere graphics cards, you'll know that the rumors point to a few unusual design choices. There is talk of a 12-pin power connector and a whole new PCB and cooler design that is radically different from before. Now, in a new video detailing the design philosophy, Nvidia has confirmed the new cooler and 12-pin power connector, subtly explaining why certain decisions have been made.
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"Whenever we talk about GPU performance, it all comes from the more power you give, and you can dissipate, the more performance you get." says Gabriele Gorla, Director of Systems Engineering at Nvidia "The biggest challenge, when you do a very high-end board and try to squeeze it into 6-7 inches, is that the power density becomes really really high"
So it looks like Nvidia had a handful of ambitions with the new cards, and challenges to solve in order to accomplish the goals. The team wanted to pump more power into the cards, and thus the cooler had to grow. But, this couldn't happen without shrinking the PCB to ensure the card in its entirety didn't grow too much, limiting the PCB itself to be 6-7 inches long.
As it turns out, that's where the new 12-pin power connector comes in. It may not seem like much, but it's smaller than the dual 6-8 pin connectors Nvidia previously used. And that's not only because of its physical dimensions, but because it looks like Nvidia is planning on mounting the connector perpendicular to the board — this couldn't have been done with the old PCIe power connectors.
Nvidia didn't explicitly detail too much, but the images provided in the video confirm the rumors. The PCB will be quite short and have a triangular bite taken out at the end to make room for a fan in the cooler that can pull the air in through the bottom, and out the top end of the card, tapping into the airflow path to be exhausted by the rear case fan.
Given that the RTX 3090 is the first card to come from Nvidia with the **90 nomenclature since the GTX 690, we're expecting the halo GPU to pack an incredible punch — it's almost certainly going to be a card that Nvidia builds to show off what it can do, but will in practice be far too expensive for most consumers.
Whether this new cooler design with the smaller PCB and new power connector will make it to the more mainstream models, such as the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 remains to be seen. If it does though, there is no cause for concern as Nvidia also stated in this video that adapters will be provided — so no, you will not need a new power supply for the Ampere graphics cards, unless you're going for the halo card and need more watts.
However, what must be noted either way is that these rumors are all about the Nvidia reference card, so it isn't necessarily telling anything about the custom cards that make up a large chunk of the market. Nvidia's board partners will undoubtedly have their own designs, possibly sticking to the classic card design with roomier PCBs and the old-style PCIe power connectors. As noted in Seasonic's power cable leak, the 12-pin cable from the PSU manufacturer was only meant to be used with PSUs of 850W and above, so I believe there's a good chance that the 12-pin connector is only a thing on the halo GPU.
https://www.techpowerup.com/271410/nvidi...-confirmed
Quote:Although the video does not reveal any picture of the finished product, the bits and pieces of the product's wire-frame model, and the PCB wire-frame confirm the design of the Founders Edition which has been extensively leaked over the past few months. NVIDIA mentioned that all its upcoming cards that come with 12-pin connector include free adapters to convert standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors to 12-pin, which means there's no additional cost for you. We've heard from several PSU vendors who are working on adding native 12-pin cable support to their upcoming power supplies.
The promise of backwards compatibility has further implications: there is no technical improvement—other than the more compact size. If the connector works through an adapter cable with two 8-pins on the other end, its maximum power capability must be 2x 150 W, at the same current rating as defined in the PCIe specification. The new power plug will certainly make graphics cards more expensive, because it is produced in smaller volume, thus driving up BOM cost, plus the cost for the adapter cable. Several board partners hinted to us that they will continue using traditional PCIe power inputs on their custom designs.