ASUS has recently introduced a new variant of its GeForce RTX 3060 Ti graphics card that makes use of the 12VHPWR 16-pin connector.
ASUS Brings 12VHPWR 16-Pin Connector To GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Graphics Cards
Earlier this year, ASUS introduced its brand new GeForce RTX 3060 Ti ATS "Atlas Shark" GPU lineup. This lineup initially made use of a single 12-pin connector and the reason for dropping 8-pin plugs was to offer a single cable interface for neater cable management. Now ASUS has upgraded its ATS design which now offers a 16-pin 12VHPWR connector.
Pictures by Extreme Player at Bilibili show that ASUS is now offering a new variant of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Atlas Shark to consumers. This variant is labeled as "ATS-RTX3060Ti-O8GD6X-Gaming-V2" and was shipped out in April of 2023. The graphics card features the same design as the older RTX 3060 Ti Atlas Shark model with a dual-fan and dual-slot design but the biggest change comes in the form of the new connector.
Instead of relying on the 8-pin or 12-pin connectors, the ASUS GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Atlas Shark V2 is using the 16-pin 12VHPWR connector. The 12-pin and 16-pin connectors are compatible with each other so minimal effort would have been made to equip the new plug on the graphics card. Now as to the question of why was there a need to use a 16-pin connector when it's known to be a hazard & user errors leading to melts are a major issue with the card?
It is likely that ASUS ran out of 12-pin connectors since most manufacturers stopped producing them in favor of the newer 16-pin connectors. The company may have not wanted to go back to older 8-pin connectors and that's the only sense I could make of this change. We know that there's a new CEM 5.1 spec out for the 16-pin connector but it is unlikely that this card utilizes that.
ASUS also has a new RTX 4070 Ti connector-less design in the works which we reported here. So far, only the RTX 4070 and below are known to be upgraded with that design. Also, the ASUS ATS cards are only available exclusively in China and the pricing of this card is said to be around $280 US.
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