ASUS is extending its connector-less design to graphics cards and has showcased the first GPU, a GeForce RTX 40 design, which features now power plugs.
Spotted during our tour at the ASUS HQ, the ROG team gave us a first look at an upcoming graphics card (currently still in the concept phase) which is part of its GeForce RTX 40 family. The graphics card itself was a GeForce RTX 4070 design but it doesn't fall under any existing VGA product lineup & comes in an interesting design. Portable Phone Charger
ASUS Concept GeForce RTX 4070 GPU Without Power Plugs
So the graphics card itself is a 2.3 slot design that features a triple axial-tech cooling fan system and once again, it isn't part of any interesting GPU lineup from ASUS such as ROG STRIX, TUF Gaming, Dual, etc. The backside of the card features an extended backplate that extends beyond the PCB & there's a cut-out for the air to pass through. The card also comes with a dual-BIOS switch that lets you switch between the "Performance" & "Quiet" modes but while there's a "Megalodon" naming on the backplate, we were told that isn't the final branding for this card.
The most interesting aspect of this graphics card is that in addition to the standard PCIe Gen 4.0 x16 slot, it also has a special slot connected to the PCB which is where the power would be fed through. There are no physical connectors on the PCB and we'll explain where the card gets its power in a bit. ASUS has told us that the slot is proprietary although we have seen a similar slot implementation on AMD's Radeon Pro offerings for Apple Pro systems.
The connector is rated to deliver up to 600W of power and it will use a special connector that is available on a select range of motherboards.
ASUS Z790 TUF Gaming ATX Motherboard With Back-Connector Design
For demo purposes, ASUS also showcased a Z790 TUF Gaming motherboard that features no power connectors at the front. All of the connectors are at the back. The Z790 TUF Gaming connector-less design also hosts three 8-Pin connectors and a single 12VHPWR connector. These connectors feed power directly to the graphics card through the proprietary slot.
The motherboard itself is a very standard affair Z790 TUF Gaming design in an ATX form factor which features the LGA 1700 socket, a 16+1 phase VRM delivery with 60A MOSFETs, all of the latest I/O connectivity, two PCIe 4.0 x16, two PCIe 4.0 x1, and a single PCIe 4.0 x4 slot. Only the topmost PCIe 4.0 x16 slot has the proprietary connector. It also comes with the PCIe-Slot Q-Release. All M.2 slots are covered by heatsinks and feature the M.2 Q-Latch.
The connector itself is labeled as "GC_HPWR". ASUS will have a more official name for it close to launch.
According to ASUS, both of these motherboards are planned to hit retail later this year and unlike the BTF connector-less motherboard offerings which were limited to China, these two product lines are expected to be available globally.
In terms of pricing, while it's still early to say what these GPUs and boards would cost, ASUS did say that they will be priced slightly higher than the normal SKUs due to the extra manufacturing costs associated with moving and realigning the connectors on the PCB. If you go for the motherboard, you can use virtually any graphics card fine but if you buy the new connector-less GPU, then you need to buy the motherboard too since there's no other design that supports such a slot.
You can also see pictures of the ASUS connector-less motherboard and GPU installed in a chassis from the front and back. Do note that the casing will also need to be designed accordingly to have support for new back-connector designs on upcoming hardware. These will obviously be a limited production run at first since companies still need to see if there's a demand for such products in the market or not.
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