PCIe 5.0 connector supports 600W graphics cards

A new PCIe plug should deliver 600W. That reports Igor’s Lab, which has shared the blueprints of the PCI-SIG plug. This so-called 12Vhpwr power connector is part of the PCIe 5.0 standard.

The High Power Connector must deliver 55A through the plug’s 12V rail, with a specified maximum of 600W, according to Igor’s Lab. The new power socket has a total of sixteen pins, of which twelve, 6×2, are dedicated to the power supply, with the PCI-SIG specifying 9.2A per pin. The other four are connectors for signal transmission according to Igor’s Lab. This includes signals such as interrupts, power management requests, and reset commands.

Information from Amphenol IC indicates that the new 5.0 plug is not compatible with older generation PCIe cards with 2×3 and 2×4 connectors. Furthermore, the site reports that the pins have a spacing of 3mm, while this is a pitch of 4.20mm with the older PCI Express 2×3 and 2×4 sockets. As possible target markets for the socket, Amphenol IC lists artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, gaming, graphical interfaces, networking, computer systems, servers and storage.

A new power connector with more power would be needed because of the increase in the amount of power that new generations of high-end graphics card GPUs require, says Igor’s Lab. Nvidia already unveiled a 12-pin connector with Ampère last year. Currently Nvidia’s RTX 3090 concerns a 350W card, but the rumor of, among others kopite7kimi is that the 3090 Ti gets a tgp, or total graphics power, of 450W.