Gigabyte: Triple 8-pin PCIe 5.0 compliant standards

With the next generation of graphics card, we are facing a change in terms of the necessary power connections. If 6- and 8-pin connections are still the measure of things regardless of NVIDIA’s Founders Edition, future PCI Express 5.0 compatible graphics cards should rely on a 12- or 16-pin connection, which is the theoretical only possible 450 or 600 watts supply.

On the other hand, the initiative to find a new standard is certainly welcome. Having one plug for all cards and continuing to work without an adapter – very few will have anything against that. To do this, however, it is essential for as many individual manufacturers and components as possible to play their part in the associated ecosystem. The PCI-Express 5.0 specification may be the necessary restart of the adaptive ecosystem. NVIDIA failed to do this with 12VHPWR.

Proof of this restart is the introduction of the UD1000GM as a new power source for the Gigabyte. It is one of the new power supplies now being offered by many manufacturers which is said to be PCI Express 5.0 compatible.

A prerequisite for this compatibility should be a 12 and/or 16-pin connection. Gigabyte plus:

Conventional power supplies need three 8-pin to 16-pin adapters to support the latest PCIe Gen 5.0 graphics cards.

A 3x 8-pin to 16-pin adapter is a must in order to be able to supply the cards in another way. Gigabyte talking here Frankly, this does not mean that on some models it will still be possible to use the 8-pin connectors directly on the card. Thus, PCI-Express 5.0 based cards may also require a power supply via the new connector and no longer allow manufacturers to continue relying on 8-pin connectors.

The first PCI Express 5.0-compatible AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards aren’t expected until the second half of 2022. AMD will be based on the RDNA 3 architecture here, with NVIDIA Lovelace being the name of the next architecture in the room.