Building PCs is fairly straightforward, nevertheless it’s not with out its challenges. Many lovers will let you know that probably the most tedious a part of placing a PC collectively is among the final: hooking up the ability provide cables. By necessity, energy connectors are type of giant and unwieldy, they usually can’t solely be a ache to route, but additionally sometimes troublesome to really get fully-seated. That’s vital, lest you find yourself with a smoking cable.
The thought is that, as a substitute of plugging a bunch of cumbersome wire bundles into your graphics card, completely trashing the aesthetics of your construct, you as a substitute slot a second connector on the cardboard right into a small slot towards the entrance of the board that then provides the ability. This connector idea is named “GC-HPWR”, and ASUS already has working prototype graphics playing cards and motherboards utilizing it.
HPCE stands for “High Power Card Edge”, and it is a design that has seen lengthy use in servers and supercomputers for delivering plenty of energy by, you guessed it, a card edge connector. Some websites have reported this time period because the identify of the connector, however that is incorrect; that is simply the kind of the connector.
Note that you just nonetheless have to attach a 12VHPWR connector to the motherboard. Indeed, whereas this connector removes the necessity for working cumbersome wire bundles to the surface fringe of your graphics card, it does not fully take away the necessity for such cables. After all, the GPU has to get its energy from someplace. On the unique idea that the corporate confirmed again in May, that motherboard had all the further energy connectors on the again of the board—handy, for making a clear construct, however definitely not nice in your common pc case.
ASUS will apparently be promoting a small provide of graphics playing cards and motherboards sporting this configuration, doubtless as a pair, however we’ve not seen any point out of pricing or launch dates for these. Likewise, we additionally have not seen some other distributors speaking about related configurations. What do you consider the GC-HPWR connector? Is it one thing you’d use, or would you somewhat stick to ol’ dependable 8-pin energy connectors? Let us know within the feedback.