ASUS’s Connector-Less GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs To Go In Mass Production This Fall, White Variant Revealed

ASUS has announced that the company will begin mass production on the connector-less GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs this fall & will be available in white.

ASUS's GeForce RTX 4070 Without Power Connectors Is Coming This Fall, Available In White Flavor Too

At Computex 2023, ASUS unveiled its GeForce RTX 4070 connector-less design which we covered in our exclusive coverage here. The card is now expected to go into mass production later this year as confirmed by the manufacturer during the Bilibili World 2023 exhibition in Shanghai, China (via EIXA Studio).

During our ASUS HQ visit at Computex 2023, the company displayed a prototype unit of the RTX 4070 that didn't include a standard 8-pin or 16-pin power connector. The graphics card adopted a 2.3-slot design with a triple axial-tech cooling fan system. The company hasn't finalized a naming yet but it looks like the graphics card will be available in both black and white colored flavors which is great for customization.

You might be wondering how ASUS compensated for the exclusion of power connectors. The showcased prototype had a special slot connected to the PCB, where the power would be fed through alongside the standard PCIe Gen 4.0 x16 interface. ASUS compared the concept with AMD Radeon Pro products in the Apple Pro offerings. The connector can feed up to 600W of power and will be fed power through a 16-pin connector that will actually be located on the backside of a special motherboard.

While the ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 connector-less concept looks interesting, one aspect important to highlight is for running such a GPU, a specifically designed motherboard is required. ASUS also demoed a Z790 TUF Gaming motherboard with all power connectors at the back. The proprietary connector on the motherboard for the GPU was labeled as "GC_HPWR". At BW2023, the company also unveiled a new back-connector motherboard design, the TX Gaming B760-BTF WIFI which has a white and black theme and also features this proprietary slot.

ASUS plans to mass-produce the new components by this fall; hence we could expect the products to hit retail either at the end of the year or the beginning of 2024. ASUS says that such components will come at an increased cost, owing to the complex manufacturing process involved in making the products. In order to utilize the connector-less GPU, having a supported motherboard & casing will be necessary.

The concept from ASUS is intriguing, it eliminates the widespread connector issues and helps in cable management. The big question is whether consumers will pay the extra cost just to get features that do not affect a system's performance. We expect that ASUS will initially manufacture limited units to test the market's reaction toward such products.