MSI\'s new X870 motherboards tackle the next-gen power crunch with supplemental PCIe connector

MSI has officially announced its next-generation AM5 motherboards, the X870 series, which are compliant with the ATX 3.1 standard. The standout feature here is the “Supplemental PCIe Power” feature – it’s a neat new power connector that'll pump extra wattage right to the motherboard.

Now, the usual 24-pin connector gives about 168W of power to things like graphics cards, fans, and all that RGB lightning. But with hardware getting more and more power-hungry, especially those top-tier GPUs, a better solution is needed to address this power crunch.

This is where the X870 motherboards comes in, MSI has introduced an 8-pin power connector that can dish out up to 252W of extra power. That means the motherboard's total power capacity jumps from 168W to a solid 420W—talk about a 150 percent boost.

The supplemental power connector is designed to work in tandem with the primary 24-pin connector, giving some extra power when it’s crunched. This could really help out folks running setups that guzzle power, such as those featuring the rumored Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series "Blackwell" graphics cards, which are rumored to need at least 500W.

MSI even threw out a hypothetical scenario where a GeForce RTX 4090 pulls 165W from the PCIe slot, while the fan headers and RGB header take 132W and 36W, respectively. That totals up to 333W, which is too much for just a single 24-pin connector to handle.

The supplemental PCIe power connector looks a bit like an 8-pin PCIe or EPS power connector, but it’s got a different pin setup to handle these higher power needs. This should give gamers and creators the room to really push their high-end gear, including running a second GPU for heavy AI tasks.

MSI's X870 motherboards will be available on September 26, though the company has not yet revealed the pricing.

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