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The 75-watt power limit of the PCI-Express slot has been a staple of PC building for two decades, but Asus is now exploring a way to finally break past it. According to a recent report, the company has unveiled a new concept design for a modified PCIe slot that could deliver 250W of power directly to a graphics card, potentially eliminating the need for separate power cables on entry-level and mid-range GPUs.
As explained in this bilibili video (via ITHome), the concept involves a physical modification to the PCIe connector itself. Asus has reportedly redesigned the five 12V power pins on the card's connector, making them significantly larger, thicker, and more conductive to handle the increased current. To supply this extra power, the motherboard would feature an additional 8-pin PCIe power connector located nearby, feeding the power directly through the board to the beefed-up slot.
Image credit: bilibili (via ITHome)
While 250W is not enough to power a high-end GPU, it's more than sufficient for the vast majority of entry-level and mid-range graphics cards. A 250W slot could easily power cards like AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT (160W) or RX 9070 (220W), enabling truly cable-free, clean-looking builds for the mainstream market.
Before we get too excited, it's important to remember that this is just a concept. The biggest challenge it faces is that it's a proprietary modification of a universal industry standard. For it to succeed, Asus would need to convince not only other motherboard manufacturers but also every single graphics card partner to adopt their new design, which isn't as simple as it may seem. This is likely why Asus is also pursuing its proprietary BTF standard for high-power cards in parallel.
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KitGuru says: The path for this to become an industry standard is a long and difficult one. For now, this remains a concept from Asus R&D labs, but it's a good one that we certainly would like to see adopted.
