ASUS Unveils ROG Loki PSUs Up To 1200W With A Native 16-Pin PCIe 5 Cable For Next-Gen GPUs
In what could be a boon for someone looking to build a high-powered, small form factor (SFF) gaming PC, ASUS has announced a new compact power supply line under its Republic of Gamers (ROG) division, and it's brimming with desirable features. Chief among them is a 16-pin PCie connector and cable to feed next-generation GPUs, as well as NVIDIA's recently announced GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.
NVIDIA unveiled its new flagship card during its CES livestream. We don't have all the details about the beastly card just yet, but the upcoming Ampere part will take its place at the top while we wait for Ada Lovelace (NVIDIA) and RDNA 3 (AMD) parts to arrive. According to NVIDIA, it will "crank out 40 TFLOPS for shaders, 78 TFLOPS for ray tracing, and a whopping 320 TFLOPS of AI muscle."
It's also expected to be the first graphics card to sport a 16-pin power connector (some custom models by NVIDIA's hardware partners might even sport two of them). ASUS already supports this on its Thor PSUs, but that comes by way of an adapter. The new Loki PSUs offer this natively, and come "bundled with a 16-pin PCIe cable that can pipe up to 600W of power to modern compatible graphics cards."
That's one of the selling points. Another is the range of wattage options. The ROG Loki series comes in 750W, 850W, 1,000W, and 1,200W variants. ASUS points out that the 1,200W model qualifies as the highest capacity SFX-L power supply on the market, which is no small feat.
"Heat is the largest challenge when designing small form factor machines, particularly at such high wattages. Since small form factor PCs rarely have as much airflow as their larger brethren, our engineers needed to find a way to dissipate the heat generated inside these power-dense supplies. After countless hours of experimentation, they were able to renew the PCB design and cooling system to provide the stable, reliable power we demand from our products," ASUS explains.
Part of the solution entailed developing a heatsink with twice the volume of traditional designs. Other features include dual ball fan bearings, modular cables, and low ESR Japanese capacitors that are rated to last twice as long as standard caps.
The top 1,200W model is also an 80 Plus Titanium unit, providing greater than 90 percent efficiency at full load. The rest are 80 Plus Platinum certified.
ASUS didn't say when the Loki PSU line will release to retail or what pricing will look like, but did note all four capacities will be backed by a lengthy 10-year warranty.
