MSI Shows Off GeForce RTX 5070 Ti With Hidden 16-Pin Connector To Thwart Meltdowns
At Tokyo Game Show 2025 last week, MSI was proudly showcasing a new GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Ventus model with a unique feature: a rear-mounted 12V-2x6 connector that's inverted, facing downward, to minimize cable flex caused by the side of your case. This could, in theory, prevent the poor connections that cause melted graphics cards.
If you've built a PC with a discrete graphics card in the last few years, you've probably felt this pain. The graphics card is simply too tall, and the case's side panel is too close, so to get the power cable connected, you have to shove it down, often bending the cable at an awkward angle. This is bad even with the old PCIe 6- and 8-pin connectors, but it's particularly dangerous with the 12VHPWR and 12V-2x6 plugs because they have less tolerance for bending.
The consequences of these poor tolerances are well-understood by enthusiasts already: smoke, melted connectors, damaged hardware, and potentially, fire. So how to avoid this problem? The most important step is to make absolutely certain that your 12+4-pin power connector is very securely seated in the socket. But the next most important step is to make sure it doesn't bend too much too close to the connector.
MSI's solution seems to be to mount the 12VHPWR connector on the back of the card underneath a magnetic shield that will prevent the cable from flexing too much before it reaches the bottom of the heatsink, where it comes out near the motherboard for efficient and attractive cable routing. This isn't the first such graphics card we've seen with this kind of routing, but it is the first one from MSI.
The card was showed off by a charming young lady in the MSI booth at the Tokyo Game Show 2025, and captured in a video by @harucan5492 on YouTube in a vertical video, which we've embedded above. No details on pricing or availability, but hopefully this kind of thing becomes standard, because frankly it's a much more sensible way to route the cabling.
Thanks to Uniko's Hardware for the spot.
