Cable adaptors are going to be a nightmare for 16-pin PCIe 5.0 cables

Published: 24th April 2022 | Source: Vince Lucido - Kingpin (Instagram) | Author: Mark Campbell

Good luck cable managing systems with 16-pin PCIe 5.0 cable adaptors

The 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power standard is an elegant solution to a big problem. Graphics cards are getting more power hungry, and traditional 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power cables cannot supply enough power to modern GPUs. That's why many of today's high-end GPUs use two or three 8-pin PCIe power cables.

With a single 16-pin PCIe 50. power connector, a single cable can be used to deliver a staggering 600 watts of power. That's four times more than an 8-pin PCIe power cable. That's great news for future systems, as this new power solution will cut down on cable clutter and streamline PC building. That said, it will bring with it a world of hurt for owners of PSUs that do not support 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power cables.

EVGA shows us the cable clutter madness of PCIe 5.0 power adaptors

On Instagram, KINGPIN ( Vince Lucido ) has showcased a system with two RTX 3090 Ti KINGPIN series graphics cards, each of which features two 16-pin PCIe power cables. Each of these 16-pin power cables uses a 16-pin to 3x PCIe 8-pin power adaptor, which means that KINGPIN's two graphics cards are connected to a total of twelve PCIe power cables. That's nuts!

The good news is that most PC gamers are not investing in a multi-GPU setup. SLI and Crossfire are not supported in most modern games or on most modern graphics cards. As it stands, multi-GPU gaming is effectively dead. So nobody should be pairing together graphics cards like this outside of high-end overclocking/benchmarking circles. Even so, even a single RTX 3090 Ti KINGPIN can be connected to six 8-pin PCIe power cables when using adaptors. Even that is crazy.

Until PCIe 5.0 16-pin power cables are widely adopted by PSU manufacturers, many PC builders will need to use PCIe 5.0 power adaptors to power high-end graphics cards. Even then, PC builders will need a new power supply to have units with full-on 16-pin PCIe 5.0, or buy a direct-to-PSU 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power adaptor kit.

With current-generation and next-generation graphics cards asking more from our power supplies, the PCIe 5.0 16-pin cable is a necessary evil. The PC industry needs a single cable solution that can provide users with huge amounts of power. Since today's PSUs are built using aging power standards, most PC builders will either need to use unsightly adaptor cables or purchase a new power supply to use a high-end graphics card that uses a 16-pin PCIe 5.0 power cables.

You can join the discussion on EVGA's cable management nightmare on the OC3D Forums .

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