Modded RTX 5090 ditches 16-pin power for triple 8-pin connectors — draws up to 900W and hits 3,400 MHz

TecLab, a YouTube channel, has developed the world's first RTX 5090 graphics card that utilizes traditional 8-pin PCIe connectors instead of the usual 16-pin power connectors. The modders successfully powered the Galax GeForce RTX 5090D HOF OC LAB XOC, a high-end model featuring a large cooler and dual 16-pin power connectors. The mod consisted of removing the entire graphics card and its power connectors, leaving just the bare PCB.

They then installed three 8-pin power connectors at the rear, soldering each directly to the power regulators on the PCB using heavy-gauge cables. The sense pins needed to be reconfigured to allow the card to reach its maximum power load without any restrictions. The team used a liquid cooling system to manage heat.

During a live stream, the modders tested the GPU by incrementally increasing the power draw, starting at 400W and eventually reaching 900W with three 8-pin power cables. At its peak, the modified RTX 5090 drew more than 120A, with clock speeds hitting 3,400 MHz. The mod was limited to hardware changes, with no software or BIOS modifications.

The team also tested the card with two and one 8-pin cables, maintaining clock speeds of 3,200 MHz and 3,100 MHz, respectively, while dropping the power draw to 66A and 65A. Despite the PCI-SIG revising the 16-pin power connector (12V-2x6) for improved reliability, reports of overheating GPU connectors persist, especially among high-performance models of Nvidia RTX 50 and RTX 40 series GPUs, and some AMD Radeon graphics with the 16-pin connector.

This experiment suggests that GPU manufacturers might reconsider the 8-pin connector and evaluate its viability for high-end graphics cards.