The first AMD Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards to feature the 12V-2×6 power connector are now on the horizon following an announcement for Computex. The 12V-2×6 power connector, and its predecessor the 12VHPWR connector, have up until now been exclusive to NVIDIA RTX graphics cards with the ladder’s introduction on the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. After a great many reports of melted connectors, and worse, the 12VHPWR was updated with “sense” connectors to cut off power if not properly attached. NVIDIA’s RTX 40 series cards have been getting upgraded to the 12V-2×6 connector throughout 2024.
The advantage of the new connectors is a single cable that is capable of up to 600 Watts of power delivery. Presently ASRock only appears to be including the 12V-2×6 power connector on two of its workstation models, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX WS 24GB and Radeon RX 7900 XT WS 20GB. ASRock adds that having a single power connector simplifies multi-GPU setups for AI tasks and additionally adds these cards are only 2-slots wide further making them an attractive choice for an AI-focused build.
Per ASRock:
“ASRock Launches AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 XTX WS 24GB and Radeon™ RX 7900 XT WS 20GB
In anticipation of the arrival of the AI era, ASRock launches the ASRock Radeon™ RX 7900 XTX WS 24GB and ASRock Radeon™ RX 7900 XT WS 20GB, supporting multi-GPU collaborative computing. ASRock Radeon™ RX 7900 WS series graphics cards are powered by the AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 XTX and Radeon™ RX7900 XT GPU. Designed for multi-card parallel computing and artificial intelligence acceleration, Radeon™ RX 7900 WS series graphics cards are featuring a VAPOR-CHAMBER heatsink, efficiency blower fan and 2-slot thickness. Furthermore, thanks to the single horizontal 12V-2×6 power connector, to install couple of ASRock Radeon™ RX 7900 XT WS series graphics cards become much easily due to less power cords.”
As these are the first AMD Radeon RX 7000 Graphics Cards to adopt the 12V-2×6 power connector it is still unknown if AMD or its other board partners will do the same. With RNDA4 also on the horizon, anything is still possible.