NVIDIA may have already killed off the 12-pin power connector on the RTX 3070 Founders Edition

The plot thickens for the RTX 3070 Founders Edition (FE) and its power connector. The RTX 3070 FE, like the FE versions of the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, utilises NVIDIA's new 12-pin power connector. Theoretically, the 12-pin power connector provides the power of dual 8-pin power connectors in one more compact connector, but that is not the case with the RTX 3070 FE.

NVIDIA's current budget Ampere card only requires up to 225 W of power, of which it draws 75 W from the PCIe slot. That leaves the RTX 3070 FE needing 150 W, and NVIDIA does not need to utilise all 12-pins to distribute this amount of wattage to the card. Instead, as TechPowerUp has demonstrated, NVIDIA has only populated the 12-pin adapter for the RTX 3070 FE with 6-pins.

While we are neither here nor there on NVIDIA including a 12-pin power connector on the RTX 3070 FE, a recent tweet from NVIDIA GeForce suggests that it has replaced it with an 8-pin connector. As the photo above shows, NVIDIA GeForce has been promoting the RTX 3070 Founders Edition with an 8-pin power connector, not a 12-pin one. The company still advertises the graphics card with a 12-pin power connector on its website, though.

Sadly, the RTX 3070 FE remains out of stock, so we cannot see if NVIDIA has begun shipping 8-pin versions of the card. Oddly, this is not the first time that NVIDIA has confused fans about the power connector on the Founders Edition model. In September, the topic arose on r/nvidia, in which the original poster demonstrated marketing images with both types of power connector. No review units had 8-pin power connectors though, so it seems odd for NVIDIA to begin marketing it as such again.

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