Modified RTX 3060 Ditches Power Connectors, Runs on PCIe Slot Alone
A Chinese-built RTX 3060 draws all its power from the PCIe slot, but testing shows it loses roughly half its performance and trails older cards like the GTX 1060.
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A modified version of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 that runs entirely off the PCIe slot, without any 6-pin or 8-pin power connectors, has surfaced in China, according to reports from Tom's Hardware and TechPowerUp.
The card was shared by a Bilibili creator using the handle WestmereX and first spotted by UNIKO's Hardware. It features a single-slot, low-profile design roughly the size of a smartphone, with one HDMI and one DisplayPort output. Cooling is handled by a blower-style unit with a single fan that exhausts hot air out the back. TechPowerUp described the shroud as a thin metal sheet with no fin stack, no backplate, and only a basic heatsink in the middle.
The standard RTX 3060 (12GB), launched in early 2021, carries a 170W TDP. A PCIe x16 slot supplies up to 75W, so reaching that level reportedly required a shunt mod to trick the card's power-sensing circuit into accepting the lower limit. The RTX 3060 responds well to undervolting and can typically be brought down to around 100W with modest performance loss, but pushing it to 75W goes considerably further.
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