ASUS has been working with Thermaltake and Silverstone to produce a new standard for GPU power which involves no cables and instead uses another motherboard connection. This new design was revealed back at Computex and new information reveals that the first of the design will be launched on September 15th in China.
ASUS BTF GPUs Launch September 15th
ASUS China shared on their Weibo.com page (Via VideoCardz) that their first Back To The Future (BTF) GPUs will be launching in just two days. These GPUs make use of a 12V PCI-style connector named GC-HPWR and are capable of delivering 600W of power. This connector also requires a specific motherboard meaning that you’ll be locking into an ecosystem unless the whole idea catches on as a standard. Cable-less designs have been growing lately with several companies dabbling in the idea mostly with reversed motherboards with their connections on the back. The ASUS BTF website shows off one of these reversed motherboards in the form of the TUF B760M-BTF WIFI which is a rather nice-looking board being a fan of the TUF design language. This motherboard doesn’t actually feature the GC-HPWR connector but the TUF Gaming Z790 Concept motherboard also showed does under “Advanced BTF” which doesn’t appear to exist yet making the GC-HPWR GPU useless on its launch day although there is the claim of a BTF TX B760 motherboard that launches a day after which I presume is different from the B760M-BTF.
Could This Catch On?
Personally, I like the idea of a cableless design although changing a standard and getting a high adoption rate of a new technology will be a challenging task although it may be easier with China acting as a sort of Guinea Pig for the technology.
Do you think this will catch on? Let us know your thoughts.
