#POWER SUPPLY WITH 3 8 PIN CONNECTOR MANUAL#

When you plug in two PCIe power cables from such a PSU, you’ll draw power from each rail separately. But you won’t get that setup’s intended benefit unless you have a power supply with more than one 12V rail for a graphics card to pull electricity from. You can still use two cables-it works fine, too. Rolling along with one cable is still possible in both scenarios, but you’re now taking on higher risk. You can also err on the side of caution when you’ve got high ambient temperatures and a card that’s extremely power hungry or prone to sharp power spikes, and you don’t want to risk your PSU’s power cables becoming too hot (or more than just hot).

#POWER SUPPLY WITH 3 8 PIN CONNECTOR MANUAL#

When is it less okay? Well, primarily when your power supply’s manual (or warranty) states explicitly to use two cables, which is generally based on your card’s power draw.

For this 3-connector GPU, we’d use at least two cables. Check your PSU to see if separate cables are recommended if not, just make sure you’re not surpassing how much power a single cable can provide. The principle behind using a single PCIe cable for a graphics card still applies for models requiring more than two connectors, like the EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra. You’ll see one or two frames fewer per second with the single cable setup, if you see any difference at all. In our tests, we’ve found a negligible difference in framerate output between using a single cable with two daisy-chained connectors, or using two separate cables (one for each connector).

Power supply with 3 8 pin connector