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oodles2do on 30 June 2016
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Pemalite said:
oodles2do said:

I agree with waiting for 3rd party cards, this PC is the first that I've custom configured and I don't really know much about motherboards. What do I need for dual PCI-E power? Is that simply from the power supply? The board that I've had to go for (to stick to the configurator on the website) has 1 PCI-E slot for GPU's.

GPU's are allowed to draw up-to 75 watts of power from the PCI-E slot on the motherboard.

The rest comes from the PCI-E 6/8-pin power cables from the power supply unit, 6 pin PCI-E power cables will provide an extra 75w of power, whilst the 8-pin (Which are actually 6+2 these days) power cables can do up-to 150 watts.

Polaris thus draws upwards of 75 watts of energy from the PCI-E slot on the motherboard and another 75 watts from a 6 pin PCI-E cable... It's a power wall that could potentially limit overclocking.
There are some PSU's that also benefit from a GPU having two 6-pin PCI-E cable support rather than a single 8-pin due to load balancing of multiple 12v rails.

Your motherboard should be all good either way.

Thanks for explaining :).

Apparently the 480's are drawing more power than they're supposed to, violating the terms of PCI-E and the 6 pin power supply.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4qfwd4/rx480_fails_pcie_specification/