Nvidia's next-generation graphics cards aren't just expected to be powerful, they're expected to be power hungry too. With some reference designs said to require as much as 300w of power all by themselves, Nvidia has reportedly invested development time and energies into a new 12-pin power connector.
This rumor comes from FCPowerUp, which frequently dives into speculative news and reports on power supply and power delivery. Its sources claim that Nvidia will leverage the new 12 pin power connector on its next-generation GPUs, alongside the new cooler and heatsink design to handle all of the additional power it requires.
It's not yet clear if this is something that will be leveraged by every next-gen GPU, but it seems likely that the top end versions at least will require it. That will mean bundling adapters in the box, although dual 6-pin power connectors may be able to connect directly to it.
There's also a report of an additional four pin connector on some cards alongside the 12-pin input. It's not yet clear what that does, but together they could provide as much as 600w of power, so there's plenty of scope for even more power hungry GPUs than we've heard of so far.
No word from PSU manufacturers on whether this is a bespoke connector they will begin shipping with, but if Ampere proves popular, we wouldn't be surprised to hear news about that in the coming months too.
