Palit Cuts RTX 4060 PCIe Connector in Half

Tweet from @fpsojisan_yt Palit has reportedly cut the physical size of its PCIe connector in half for its RTX 4060 graphics card. This change makes some sense, as the RTX 4060 is only wired to use the 8-lane PCIe connection. At the same time, the RTX 4060 ranks among the best graphics cards, but that’s mostly due to his Nvidia’s cheapest Ada Lovelace architecture GPU.

While the AD107 GPU (and the AD106 on the RTX 4060 Ti) only uses 8 lanes of connectivity, all RTX 4060 cards seen so far feature x16 physical PCIe connectors. The remaining 8 lanes are not electrically connected and are there for stability. These cards from Palit are the first we’ve seen of his RTX 4060 with a cut-down PCIe connector and in fact this is among the graphics cards with anything other than a x16 physical connector, the RX 6500 XT and even the RX A rare bird. The 6400 he uses only 4 electrical lanes and usually has a x16 connector.

Commonly, a neutralized PCIe x8 interface is used to reduce manufacturing costs and shrink the physical size of the actual chip. External interfaces are generally not scalable at all on new process nodes, so reducing from 16 to 8 to 4 lanes saves die size. Most graphics cards don’t take full advantage of the x16 interface, especially at Gen 4 speeds, so this is useful on low-end GPUs such as the 4060.

The problem is that changing the physical connector to an x8 connector might allow the card to fit in an x8 motherboard slot, increasing the flexibility of the card, but in reality, consumer motherboards with x8 slots It’s almost non-existent. Almost all motherboards choose to offer a physical x16 slot, even if the slot only has 4 or 8 lanes of connectivity. There are even more workstations and server boards with x8 slots, but they probably don’t use RTX 4060 cards in the first place.

In (very) rare cases, the x8 connector on these cards could be beneficial for users installing the RTX 4060 as a secondary graphics card in their machine. You may have an older PC with only x8 physical slots…maybe. However, Micro-ATX motherboards and often even mini-ITX motherboards have at least one physical x16 slot.

For consumer use, a short x8 connector can also compromise stability. While the RTX 4060 doesn’t need the massive coolers seen in GPUs like the RTX 4090 and 4080, the card is still long enough that providing x16 connections allows for more near the edges of the card. A lot of support is provided. As such, over time, these Palit cards may become slightly saggy.

The benefits of x8 connectors are very specific to most consumers and gamers. Nearly all modern desktop motherboards feature a full-sized x16 slot, with the primary slot directly linked to the CPU for better latency and speed. Installing the RTX 4060 in a slot that isn’t directly connected to the CPU can degrade performance, and his PCIe 3.0 or 2.0 slots on older PCs will impact performance as well. However, if you have a system with only PCIe x8 slots (let us know in the comments what board you’re using!), Palit’s RTX 4060 card might help.

While most users won’t benefit from the physical 8-lane connector, Palit’s unique design allows niche users to install the RTX 4060 in a x8 slot if desired.