Antec Recommended Precautions: Individual PCIe cables per socket

Antec has a recommendation to use PCI Express power cables from their power supplies export, which should be understood as a precaution for current high-end graphics cards, but above all with a view to the next generation. Some power supply manufacturers offer PCI Express extension cables in the form of 2 6 + 2 pin connectors. If the graphics card has additional sockets, a cable with 2 x 6 + 2 pins can theoretically be used to supply the graphics card.

It is often discussed whether this will make sense for cards with 150 or 200 watts and more, because in theory the conductor is specified for 150 watts. If both sockets are supplied via a cable with two sockets, then 300 watts and more can also meet here. Ultimately, of course, it depends on the design of the cables, which power they can transmit.

Apparently, Antec has now been forced to issue a corresponding recommendation. one refers to the current generation (“Recently, the power consumption of high-end GPUs has increased.”), as high-end models not only have a power limit of 450 watts, but that can exceed its climax of pregnancy even further. Similar behavior is expected for the next generation GeForce and power supply manufacturers are preparing accordingly. MSI even advertises resilience in the face of these peak loads.

Back to Antec Recommendations: On a graphics card with a TDP or power limit of 200W, Antec recommends using a PCIe power cable for each additional power delivery on the card. With two connections, two separate cables must be used from the power supply – with three, three of them.

This is similarly recommended by many power supply manufacturers. However, this is not always explicitly indicated, and in practice the user will not often ask if it is better to use two or three separate cables even from a certain performance limit, with two 6 + 2 connections on the cable from their graphics card.

It is not known if Antec power supply units are having increasing issues with provisioning graphics cards. However, there would be a reason for Antec to now post the instructions in this form.