Making a GPU with an 8 pin work with a 6 pin power

Recently I had to swap my good old power supply for a spare one. However, I needed an 8 pin GPU power connector and the spare PSU had only a 6 pin. Turns out 6->8 pin conversion is not that hard to do.

Looking at a pinout of both connectors, it occurred to me that a modification should be quite simple.

Power connector pinout

Grounding the “Sense B” pin tells the GPU that an 8 pin had been plugged in. So my thinking was that I could plug in the 6 pin, and then just bridge the remaining two pins.

However, I didn’t want to do any modification to the GPU itself, and I didn’t have any 8 pin connectors. What I did have was this chopped off 6 pin

Spare 6 pin connector

and with a bit of sawing, sanding and soldering, my jumper was born.

2 pin jumper

I dabbed a bit of glue on the side and glued it to the 6 pin connector on the PSU, then plugged it into the GPU and hoped for the best.

DIY 8 pin conversion

DIY 8 pin conversion

The GPU recognized the 8 pin and works fine.

22 Comments

Add yours

  1. how can i get it?

    • Hi, what do you mean?

    • I have read your writings and I have read articles on this topic in several articles from other sources. I got a lot of information from your writing, is there any other suggestions you can convey regarding the theme of your writing? so that I can get more and more complete information. I certainly thank you for writing this article well, hopefully it will become a reference in journals or other scientific writings and can help many people. thanks.

  2. Faisal Hawatmeh

    April 29, 2020 — 12:08 am

    Thank you very much for posting this! I am trying to use an older GPU that I have ( a 670 4G) and found that it requires a 6 pin AND an 8 pin (and my PSU only has 2 6 pin connectors). I will try your method in the morning. Meaniwhile, do you know if the ground and sense connectors are always the lest two towards edge of the GPU?

  3. Will this work on an AMD card where the two pins are in between the two 6 pin connectors?

  4. What are the dangers of doing this long term?

  5. Will this work for just a one 8 pin like me hooking a 6pin into it and the jumper thing

  6. So good it work

  7. Will this work for just a one 8 pin like me hooking a 6pin into it and the jumper thing

  8. Would it makes the graphic card using 1 less ground input(only 2 ground wires is used for power) while handling 3x12V input?
    Should the pin 8 be connected to pin 6 too?

    • Preferably it should be connected, however on a less power hungry GPU (like the GTX980 I have done the mod on) it doesn’t really matter. I would perhaps not do the mod in this fashion on something like a RTX3080

  9. YOU JUST SHORTED THE 12V TO GROUND!

    • That’s not actually correct, the sense pin should be grounded and not carry 12V. The purpose of it is not to carry any current, but rather allow the GPU to detect that the plug is indeed connected

  10. Hi there, would this work with a RTX 6600

  11. It seems there is even an adapter for this that presumably does exactly what you did: https://www.rm-computertechnik.de/Shop/7826_PCI_Express_6_PIN_Kupplung_auf_8_PIN_Stecker_Adapter.html

    But I’d rather make my own thanks to your suggestion. Good thinking! Thanks!

  12. Howdy! I just woud like to give you a huge thumbs up foor your great info you’ve got here on this post. I’ll be coming back to your site for more soon. is there a special schedule for posting ?

Leave a Reply...