AMD won’t use controversial 12Vhpwr connector for RDNA 3 GPUs

AMD has no plans to use the controversial 12Vhpwr connector to power its upcoming Radeon RX 6000 and subsequent RDNA 3 GPUs. The PCIe 5.0 connection is currently used in the RTX 4090 and would melt in some cases.

The relevant upcoming video cards within the Radeon RX 6000 and the suspected Radeon RX 7000 series will receive a different method of power supply, confirms Radeon CEO Scott Herkelman on Twitter. He is responding to the reports of former HardOCP owner and Intel employee Kyle Bennett, who previously reported this information based on anonymous sources.

The GeForce RTX 4090 uses a single 12Vhpwr connector
for its power supply

In many cases, new premium video cards require significantly higher power than is currently common. Intel’s ATX 3.0 specifications meet these higher requirements and the 12Vhpwr connector is based on those specs. The relevant power supply can deliver up to 600W to the GPU via a single cable. AMD uses a different way of power delivery, probably simply the current standard, which is multiple 8-pin connectors with a maximum of 150 watts per cable. Herkelman has not yet officially confirmed this.

As far as we know, AMD Radeon’s decision not to use a new 12Vhpwr connector is not based on recent reports of this connector melting. At the time of writing, there are only a few known cases where the included 16-pin adapter for the RTX 4090 melted, so wrote Tom’s Hardware. These are unverified incidents; for example, it is not clear whether those involved have properly connected the cables and whether supported hardware has been used. Nvidia is investigating the incidents.