After teasing its Pulse and Pure series, Sapphire is now showcasing its Nitro range. Occupying the brand’s top-of-the-range sector, the design and layout are obviously well thought-out. What’s more, this card comes with a hidden power supply connector for an even neater installation. However, the connector raises questions, as it stands alone. Is Sapphire going to put a 16-pin in there?
RX 9070 Nitro, the card finally visible!
On the programme, we find a massive card with a heatsink occupying a total of three slots in a PC case. The colour scheme may not be to your taste, as the brand has opted for a gold casing with a triangular pattern on the edges. Behind this is also a light bar, and it displays a Nitro logo as well as a RADEON logo.
Of course, there’s also a three-fan cooling system, which blows over a thick block of aluminium fins with copper heat pipes running through them. It remains to be seen how contact is made between the GPU/memory and the radiator. Will it be a steam chamber or a large copper base? It’s hard to say, with the brand opting for both solutions with the RX 7800 XT and RX 7900 XT(X).
However, what we’re wondering about here is the type of power connector used. While we know that it will be hidden under the card’s backplate, we also know that there will only be one socket. This suggests that Sapphire is opting for an NVIDIA-style 12V-2×6 connector.
It’s highly unlikely that this will be a single 8-pin PCIe, given that other custom cards use at least two or even three connectors, as is the case with PowerColor and its Red Devil version on show at CES. What’s more, other custom boards also benefit from this connectivity, such as ASRock’s Taichi model, also seen earlier this year at CES.
