Inno3D RTX 4070 Ti iChill X3 Review

We mentioned earlier in the review that it was interesting Inno3D included a triple 8-pin power adapter for the iChill X3. The Gigabyte Gaming OC ships with a dual 8-pin, and that card has a power limit configurable up to 340W, so a 20W increase versus the iChill X3 – yet it requires one less 8-pin power cable.

We asked Inno3D about this and we've copied their response verbatim:

‘For our iCHILL card, the power input is only from power dongle. Since each 8-pin connector supports max. 150W only, in total we need 3 connectors for TGP 320W. I think, the power input of another card is PCI-E (75W) + power dongle (300W). So It can meet the TGP 340W setting.'

Inno3D seems to be suggesting the iChill is not designed to draw any power over the PCIe slot, instead it takes all its power from the three 8-pin (or single 12VHPWR) connectors.

I decided to put this to the test, using Nvidia PCAT to measure power draw over all three 8-pin PCIe power cables and the PCIe slot so we can see exactly where all the power is coming from.

As it turns out, the PCIe slot still pulls about 27W, contrary to Inno3D's suggestion. We can also see that the first 8-pin power connector is doing very little, pulling just under 21W, with the other two each pulling over 100W.

As it turns out, the iChill X3 runs fine with one of its three 8-pin power cables disconnected! Here I used the same triple 8-pin dongle that came in the box, but just unplugged one of the 8-pin cables that was initially used.

As we can see, this did not cause any extra power to be drawn from the PCIe slot, as it still pulled 27W. All that happened was the second 8-pin pulled about 3W more, while cable 3 pulled about 17W more, while remaining under 150W power draw.

To me then, triple 8-pin adapters is just unnecessary. I did not experience any drop off in performance when running the card with just two 8-pins attached, and even when overclocking it still hit the same frequencies. It's hardly the end of the world, but why require an extra power cable when it's not necessary?

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