MSI’s X870E Motherboards Are Fully ATX 3.1 Ready With Dedicated 8-Pin Connector Supplementing GPU Power Needs

MSI has detailed the use cases of the supplementary 8-pin power connector featured on its X870E motherboards, providing extra juice to GPUs.

MSI Has Dedicated 8-pin Connectors Across All of Its X870E Motherboards That Are ATX 3.1 Ready & Delivers More Power To GPUs

Last month, it was reported that MSI will have a dedicated 8-pin connector across all of its X870E motherboards. When MSI introduced its X870E motherboard lineup at IFA 2024, we expected to learn more about this dedicated connector and how it can be used but the information was very limited. Now, MSI has put up a new blog post that details how this connector can be leveraged.

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Referred to as a "Supplemental PCIe Power" feature, the dedicated 8-pin connector from MSI is built upon the ATX 3.1 standards and can sustain power excursions of up to 2.5x while delivering better efficiency and power delivery, directly taking the power to the necessary components such as GPUs, Fans and RGB accessories.

But the question remains, why was there a need for such a connector, & haven't all motherboards to this date had enough power fed to them already to sustain multiple hardware? The answer is that currently, the 12V 24-pin ATX power connector handles everything on the motherboard.

In some extreme cases, the PCIe lanes require more power such as multi-GPU instances in AI, content creation, and mainstream workstation setups. Considering everyone involved in AI is moving to at least two GPU setups, it has become necessary to dial up the power features on high-end boards.

The example given by MSI is fascinating which shows a single 12V ATX connector providing 14A / 168W of power alone which might be enough for basic tasks on a high-end setup such as a RTX 4090 paired with a Ryzen 9 9950X but as soon as you push everything to the limit, more power is required. The supplemental 12V 8-pin