NVIDIA is said to be considering changing the power connector standard once again for the fourth time in three years with its upcoming GeForce RTX 50-series "Blackwell" GPUs, as reported by Moore's Law is Dead. The new 16-pin connector is expected to have 16 pins dedicated to 12 V power delivery, in addition to signal pins. The current 12V-2x6 connector has 12 pins for power delivery. NVIDIA initially used the 12-pin Molex MicroFit connector for the GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 Founders Edition cards after moving on from the 8-pin PCIe connector. The RTX 3090 Ti then introduced the 12VHPWR connector, which was later used in more of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40-series "Ada" product stack. Some partner RTX 40-series cards are now starting to use the more robust 12V-2x6 connector due to concerns about the reliability of the 12VHPWR connector. If rumors are true, the switch to the 16-pin PCIe Gen 6 connector would mark the fourth power connector change.
Update 15:48 UTC: Hardware Busters, who have sources in the power supply industry, suggest that the reports of NVIDIA adopting a new power connector with "Blackwell" are likely false. They point out that if a new power connector was indeed being introduced with the new GPU series expected in 2024, the power supply industry would have some information by now, which they do not. For more details, refer to the Hardware Busters article linked below.
