AMD Radeon RX 7000 cards reportedly not using PCIe Gen5 "12VHPWR" connector

Sep 18, 2023

Multiple sources now claim that AMD will not be adding a new PCIe Gen5 power connector to its new Radeon GPUs.

Update:

Scott Herkelman (General Manager for AMD Radeon) confirms RDNA3 GPUs will not use this connector:

The Radeon RX 6000 series and upcoming RDNA 3 GPUs will not use this power connector.

— Scott Herkelman (@sherkelman) October 25, 2022

Original story:

Kyle Bennett recently revealed RDNA3 Navi 31 GPU will support unannounced (at the time) DisplayPort 2.1 specifications, only for the VESA consortium to formally announce 2.1 specs a few days later.

According to Kyle's sources, AMD is not planning to add PCIe Gen5 power connector to new Navi 31 reference cards, in fact, no board partner card is now confirmed to be using such connector either.

This news comes just as NVIDIA is facing reports about melting 16-pin power connectors on their 450W GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards. The company adopted a 12-pin power connector for its RTX 30 Founders Edition GPUs back in 2020, only for the new ‘Ada’ series to feature the full implementation with 12+4pin and defined as 12VHPWR spec and offering up to 600W of power.

As a matter of fact, Kyle's claim is not the only one. It was Angstronomics that was the first to break the news that AMD is not planning to use the new power connector on their reference designs. The company would rely on dual 8-pin power connectors on their Navi 3X-based model:

The reference card appears to have an updated 3-fan design that is slightly taller than the previous generation, with a distinctive 3 red stripe accent on a section of the heatsink fins near the dual 8-pin connectors.

— Angstronomics

The site correctly mentioned 3 red stripes on the reference design, which was revealed by AMD in late August. However, AMD's official render did not show any power connector:

AMD RDNA3 Reference Design, Source: AMD

There is also a report from Igor'sLAB who revealed a PCB design for the upcoming RDNA3 GPU, possibly a custom variant. That card reportedly features triple 8-pin power connectors. With that in mind, there are now three sources with a relatively good track record claiming that AMD is not using 12VHPWR connector on RDNA3 GPUs.

If these reports turn out true, then NVIDIA will remain the only company using this new high-power connector. And that's despite Intel and AMD launching new desktop cards almost at the same time.

Source: Kyle Bennett, Angstronomics