You may have wondered why your graphics card needs additional power and it is not enough to connect it to the motherboard. Many graphics cards, basically all but the low-end ones, need additional power to function properly and we are forced to connect cables directly from the power supply .
Sometimes it is a hassle to have to run cables from the power supply to the graphics card, often getting in the way and dirtying the aesthetics of the interior of our system. However, that graphics cards need these extra connectors makes sense and is, in fact, necessary for them to work.
If a graphics card has power connectors and we do not connect their corresponding cables from the source, it will not work directly . If you just bought a new chart and it doesn’t work for you, check that you have connected the additional power first of all.
Graphics card power
Ok, we all know that the more powerful a graphics card is, the higher its power consumption , and the problem is that all graphics that need additional power consume more power than the PCI-Express socket is capable of providing, currently limited in 75 watts . In other words, any graphics card that has a consumption greater than 75W will need additional power, and the way to provide it is by connecting it directly to the power supply using the well – known 6 and 8-pin PCI-e cables .
Each of the connectors on the power supply PCIe cables is capable of providing an additional 12.5 watts . In other words, a 6-pin PCIe connector is capable of delivering up to 75 watts , while this goes up to 100 watts on 8-pin connectors .
Thus, a graphics card that has an electrical consumption of 150 watts, would need the 75 that the motherboard provides but another 75 through the additional power of the source. In this example, we would need an additional 75 watts, and a 6-pin connector would suffice. If the graph had a consumption of 225 watts, we would need the 75 from the board and another 150 additional, which we could provide through two 6-pin connectors, or even one of 6 and another of 8 to reach 250 watts and thus have a margin of maneuver for overclocking .
We are going to put some additional examples with existing graphs.
- An AMD Radeon RX 550X has a TDP of 50 watts, and therefore does not need additional connectors.
- A GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB has a TDP of 120 watts, so you need the 75W from the motherboard and an additional 6-pin PCIe connector.
- A Radeon RX 380X has a TDP of 190 watts, and in this case it is two additional 6-pin PCIe connectors that you need.
- A GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER has a TDP of 250W, so it needs a 6-pin and an 8-pin PCIe connector.
- A Radeon RX Vega 64 needs two 8-pin PCIe connectors because its TDP is 295W.
- There are special cases, like the PowerColor Radeon Devil 13 that had two R9 290Xs, and that needed four 8-pin connectors since its TDP was up to 475 watts.
This in any case depends on the manufacturer, who is the one who designs the graphics and adds PCIe connectors according to the consumption it has , so it is not something you have to worry about: your graphics card will already have the additional power connectors it needs, and you just have to be sure to give it that extra nutrition it needs.
Why don’t some charts need it?
We already mentioned at the beginning that almost all graphics need these additional power cables, but not all. Those that do not need it are generally low-end and / or low-consumption models, and this does not exceed the 75 watts provided by the plate. If they already have enough of this, then they will not need anything else to function.
Logically, these types of graphics have a much lower performance that, in many cases, does not even allow them to be used in games, or at least not games that are not light because as soon as they have somewhat advanced graphics they will require more graphic resources. , something that one of these low-power graphs is usually not able to provide (at least not to date).
In any case, the extra power through the PCI Express port is preferable to having to rely on a power supply for the GPU. And yes, there was a time when they sold graphics cards like the Voodoo 5 5500 from 3Dfx and the GeForce FX that needed to be plugged into the power with the inconvenience that all this entails.
