EVGA PowerLink 52U for THE Kingpin
EVGA showcases how to deal with new Kingpin GPU power requirements.
The company recently announced its flagship RTX 3090 Kingpin graphics card will cost 2500 USD. This offer comes bundled with a 1600W power supply that supports as many as nine PEG power connectors for graphics cards. This power supply does not have native PCIe Gen5 16-pin power connectors that EVGA Kingpin model requires, which basically means it will only work with adapters.
EVGA figured that since their card needs as many as 6 cables, and power supplies with native connectors are still hard to find (practically impossible with two), therefore a special power adapter is needed. This is how PowerLink 52U was born, a special five 8-pin to two 16-pin adapter.
The EVGA RTX 3090 Ti has two 16-pin connectors, each technically requiring 450W of power. Therefore, three 150W 8-pin power cables are needed for each connector. It looks like PowerLink52U limits the requirement to five 8-pin cables (not six). One thing is sure though, the cable management should be a lot easier with the PowerLink 52U attached.
EVGA did not confirm whether their PowerLink 52U is ready for next-gen GPUs (RTX 40 series), it is advertised for RTX 3090 Ti Kingpin only. The remaining RTX 3090 Ti models from EVGA do not require two 16-pin power cables, thus, other adapters are required.
Given that RTX 4090 graphics card is rumored to have a TDP of 450W, it is almost certain that some next-gen custom models will have two 16-pin power connectors. Whether EVGA’s future cards will support this adapter, it is too early to say, but why make an accessory that only works with one card?