MSI has unveiled its modern X870 and X870E series of motherboards at Gamescom 2024. Cowcotland I visited the MSI booth and noticed an intriguing addition to these boards. It looks like all of them had an 8-pin PCIe power connector located on the bottom of the boards. But why, you may ask?
Cowcotland reports that these connectors are included to meet the requirements of next-generation Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. This means that some of these cards will likely be consuming grave amounts of power. Assuming that such cards are months away from seeing the lightweight of day, MSI is likely already aware of at least the basic requirements of such cards.
Secondary power connectors aren’t exactly a modern feature. They’re typically found on high-end or overclocking motherboards. Their purpose is to provide extra power to high-powered graphics cards, but their presence in more mainstream options is actually intriguing.
A standard PCIe x16 slot can provide up to 75W of power. If you add another 150W from an 8-pin connector, you get 225W from the motherboard itself. Now, if you add up to 600W from a 12V-2×6 or 12VHPWR connector, the math suggests 800W or more is possible.
Of course, this would only apply to flagship cards like the RTX 5090, but then you could install a pair of less demanding cards for tasks like performance or AI workloads, and that’s a scenario where the 8-pin connector is also beneficial. Having a pair of cards drawing 150W from two PCIe slots would put a lot of strain on the motherboard in itself, so a bit of backup power makes sense.
That said, the power draw and TDP of flagship graphics cards seem to continue to climb. A card like the RTX 4090 draws up to 450W or more for overclocked models. I’d bet that the next generation of Nvidia’s monster won’t be any lower. A 500W+ TDP for the stock RTX 5090 is definitely possible, if history is any indication.
Other manufacturers don’t include 8-pin connectors in their series, though enthusiast boards like the Asus Crosshair X870E Hero include one. Is MSI just being cautious, or will next-gen GPUs really need that much headroom? It’ll be intriguing to see if more boards include the extra connector, especially when Intel’s Z890 boards officially launch in the coming weeks.
