I thought I was solving the 12VHPWR cable problem....

On today's edition of Test Nobody Asked For, I'm going to see if I can't turn this BTF 5090 Astral into a Matrix card for significantly less money because I know that's exactly what all of you were hoping to see today. So, all right, let's talk about the BTF real quick, which is back to front. I'm sorry, ASUS loves to call it back to the future. They started it with back to front and then they tried to rebrand it as back to the future because it's like a little pun on like hey this is the future spec. It's back to front. So that is where basically uh all of your connectors like on your motherboard are on the back side. And then for your graphics card it has to have a way to be able to um get power, right? So it's kind of difficult to see. We'll get some close-up shots here. Down inside the PCB there is a little plastic cover with some recessed pins. And that's where this guy comes in right here. All this does is extend out the length so that it can make connection with the motherboard and it gets its 12volt uh power and it sense pins through these big really a big power plane if you will versus the individual pins. And I feel like this would be a lot safer if it followed its way all the way down to the power supply, but it doesn't. It converts to a 12volt high power on the back side of the motherboard which then just passes straight through. But with the 4090 BTF, you had to choose, and it was 4080s. I think they only did it in 80 series and 90 series. But I digress. That's neither here nor there. On the 50 series, you have both the BTF connector and if you look right here, take this little cover off, you have a 12vt power right there. Whether it's 12 volt 2x6 or 4090, which was 12vt um high power. This is something new for the 50 series. Now, initially I was like when they talked to me about this months and months like early last year when they said that this card was coming, um I was like, "Oh, that's cool. " Because the 40 series you had to choose. Like if you weren't paying attention, you're like, "Oh, look, there's a 4090. There's one in stock. I have all this money burning a hole in my pocket because I run a cartel. " You could just like get it off the shelf and be like, "Cool. " But if you weren't paying attention and it was a back to front or, you know, back to front or BTF, it didn't have this connection back then. It was one or the other. So, I didn't even think about the fact that this is truly a dual connector card. Even though it's not dual 12volt connectors next to each other like on the Lightning and the Galaxy OC Lab OC and other cards that are now starting to run dual connectors, it really got my brain juices leaking out of my ears when I saw the Matrix and realized, oh, it's essentially the exact same thing. But on the Matrix card, if you have one or the other connected, you're limited to 600 watts. But if both are connected, you automatically get the 800 watt profile unlocked. You don't have to switch between them. The only thing you get to switch really on the BIOS is like the fan profile and such. So I thought to myself, could the Astral essentially be converted into a matrix matrixesque card for significantly less? Because at the amazing value of $3,300 MSRP, you could have that whereas this is a $4,000 card. Now, let's be fair. They are not identical because this cooler is not running uh the thermal it's like a hybrid. So, it's liquid metal/ther thermal paste. And I only know that because of Devour's tear down. Otherwise, we just assumed it was liquid metal. But that's good though because the thermal paste is designed to hold it in place whereas liquid metal can just kind of flow wherever it wants. Um it also has the oxygen seal around the core. that way less oxygen can get to it which would cause less corrosion and less issues with thermal or liquid metal. This is a better cooler like the solution that's on here. There's more fan blades. If I turn this around, you can see there's more fan blades and obviously there's a better TIM or thermal interface material which means this card even with the 800 watt profile and the fans maxed out doesn't leave the 50s in temperature. Now, that's crazy if you think about the fact that 800 watts is more than total system power used to be for a high-end build just a few years back. To allow 800 watts to come out of one component is kind of nuts. Now, you might be asking yourself, well, Jay, if it's still limited to 600 watts, cuz the Astral is, what's the whole point in that? Well, I'm going to flash the XOC BIOS on this. And it makes me wonder now if stable power or conditioned power both I don't have a power conditioner which could be like a UPC or a high-end UPC that allows that smooth signal to come from the wall like ugly signal and then smooth out of the UPC sent over to the system. Does that mean they would be potentially a better overclocker with two power plugs? I think so because if you look at the latest uh you know Port Royal and Speedway and um what's the other one? Steel Nomad. All of those high-profile like or high power limit profiles that have been loaded on the cards cuz they've been leaked. Whether it be the XOC BIOS or the Matrix or the Lightning, they're all up there on the

top. Now, here's the thing. It just tells you what manufactured is because that's what the BIOS identifies as. I don't know if those are the actual cards that are being run, but all the cards that are at the top are dual plug cards. So that makes me think as you go higher on the power limit, does that mean you can get better, smoother power to the core, which could lead to better stabilities? Now, we won't be doing that today. I'm just going to see whether or not this is going to work. Now, we know I cannot take the matrix BIOS and put it on the Astral Black card, but you can take the Matrix BIOS from the Matrix and put it on the white Astral. You might be going, Jay, why does the cooler color matter? Well, because there was kind of a revision that happened with the white card too where this card is only a dual fan channel card even though there's four fans. Like these two operate together and then these two the flowthrough operate together. The matrix and the white Astral have triple fan profile or fan um layout in terms of the circuitry and the matrix looks for that fan profile on the Astral. It won't allow the driver to initialize if it doesn't recognize those fans. Ironically, it works on other brands. So, it's kind of like because it recognizes, you know, what is it? Uh, Snoop Dogg said, gangster recognize gangster. That was so bad. I want to punch my own face right now. But I do have the secret sauce BIOS from back when we were doing XOC stuff. And I want to know um, first of all, it should work. And I say it should work not the BIOS but the circuitry because it should be identical as to what the matrix is doing in terms of the fact that both of the connectors are on the same power plane. They are connected in the same way. They have to be that there would not be two completely different ways of getting power to the core like two completely different paths. No, they're going to bridge somewhere. So that should allow me to just basically use this adapter which so many of you have asked me about when I hate that it's chrome. It should be black. This is chrome is just ugly. But what this allows me to do is because I don't have a BTF board to put that extension on there and then it converts it to a 12volt high power as you can see or 12 volt 2x6 whichever it is. So this is pretty unique. The downside is because it sticks so far down at the bottom of the card, you can't slot it in like standard motherboard. Um, a lot of vertical mounts will allow it because the vertical mount usually stops like right past the socket or the slot, but that's something that a lot of people have asked me about like, "Jay, where'd you get it? Where did you get it? Where'd you get it? " Well, I reached out to ASUS directly to get this. I don't know if this is just an engineering thing. I have no idea if this is ever going to exist, but I think this is something that should be made available to the public. At the very least, if you're running an 80 tier or a 90 tier 50 series card from ASUS that's a BTF, although it's ugly and the cable would run along the back plate to get to here, I'd rather split the power among two power cables than and running 300 watts each under full load than having a single cable. Even if it was a 50 or 5080, which is what 400 watts or 420 watts or whatever, and split that in half, the lower power that you the lowest power that you can get through the cable, the better. So, here's what we're going to do. I'm just going to show you right now how this works and then we'll take it over on my XOC test bench. So, this is the BTF connector right here. One, it's recessed. You cannot get your fingers on this. You can't, I guess, very aggressively pull it up like that. But here's the other problem. The space between that connector and the back plate. And I love that Deb Bower called this out. It is absolutely too tight for this adapter. Like, this adapter will wedge itself between Wait a minute. Wait. It's a better fit on the astral field than it is on the Matrix. Hold on. That's a bunch of — Last time — at Band Camp — I did this. It wedged in there so tight I used pliers and it just pulled the guts out of the adapter. So I'm like I don't know why I just put that back in there. So what I had to do to get this out was like take this and then kind of like wedge the back plate like that. Oh, it's starting to come up though. Hold on. Like their Bower even called it out. He's like, "This is so bad to wait there. " Okay, it is legit a better fit on this. And I do have an extra one if it were to break cuz the BTF cards come with this adapter. Obviously, the one that came with the Matrix I ruined. Um, but yeah, that's the way it's supposed to be. Look at that. Okay, so that slots in like that and then that's what you get. So, because you can see though how far it hangs down below the slot, that's why it won't work in a motherboard normally. All right. Well, let's do the first test. We'll just take it over to the Intel station and we'll just wire both plugs up and then we'll see from there. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going have to use an adapter because the PMD

only has one 12vt high power output. So, let's just figure out first how we're going to monitor the power to make sure it truly is splitting it. Cuz if it's not, then this video is over. So, Phil said just plug in one into the PMD and then if we see that it's only pulling 300, we know it's good. I was like, nah, stay. We're going to go ahead and just put the PMD. We're going to stress it. Uh, it's fine. It won't stress it that much, though. We'll still only see 600 watts. Cuz if I had the matrix hooked up. Yeah, it's not. Look, the problem with the way that Elmore Labs made this is everything comes out the sides. Have everything go in one side, make it wider, and everything go out the other side, and I wouldn't deal with this squid of a thing. Um, okay. So, I got my PCIe 5. 0 riser cable on here. I've got my connector on the back that's going through technically only three, but that's okay because of the fact that we should only be splitting the power, not putting 600 through this. 590s typically come with a four PCI Express 8 pin to 12vt. But I'm running three on here cuz if I was to run this adapter that has four and I leave one unplugged, one of the sense wires will become disconnected. So, you can't actually do that. You can't leave one disconnected. It's by design because of the way it's wired into the sense wires. So, just wanted to point that if you're wondering why I'm only doing three. Okay, with that said, wow, did you notice that the card didn't turn on and it went right to zero watts? The system booted. Okay, let me unplug one cable now. If I unplug one, or it could just be the PMD. The PMD may be like, "Dude, what do you freaking want from me right now? " Right? Or I just silently murdered the card. Hm. Um, we'll be back. Uh, card's fine. There's Yeah, like I said, there would be no reason why plugging both in should hurt it, but I think it might be something to do with the PMD right now. Maybe wired weird or whatever. So, I'm going to try and figure this out. I'd love to actually be able to monitor. Worst case scenario, I'll just pull out the Wire View Pro and hook it up to one cable. And if it's 600, do the main one. Then we know one's not being pulled. If it's showing 300, we know it's splitting. So, I think that'll be the easier way to do it. Why waste time on the PMD? I'll figure that out later. Okay. Same thing on here. We're only getting one watt when both are powered like that. It gates somehow. I don't know enough about circuitry to understand how that's possible cuz it works on the Matrix. Like I said, the white 5090 you can run the matrix BIOS on because it's the triple has the three fan um circuitry logic. I should do some research real quick and see if the BTF is that way. If it is, then I could put the matrix BIOS on there and then it might work if it's a BIOS thing. But now just to just sanity check here, undo the wire view cuz you already saw it was working a moment ago. So, I love how that is also showing though. Like the red light is on saying there's no power. Now the fans are turning. You can't really there. See? — Oh, — okay. Let me do a little research right now and figure out if the 5090 BTF shares similar circuitry to the white Astral. Man, that's too bad. Like, I thought for sure because the Matrix works that way that this card could work that way circuitry-wise. It's almost like they gated safety because I think that would be a good thing. All right, let me see if this is possible. If not, this video was about can I do it? So, if it doesn't work, that's still an answer. It's just less fun of an answer. Come on, Jesus. Let's have fun. — Okay, so I've downloaded my uh extracted BIOS off of my Astral, so I called it Astral BTF. You want to do that? Here's a quick tutorial. Open up uh GPUZ, and then you click the little square. It will stop the driver. You can save the file and then boom, that's how you extract it. Um, and then I downloaded the matrix file by literally going and doing matrix BIOS download tech powerup VGA BIOS collection. And then there it is right there. Uh, a little correction earlier though. I don't remember if we if this made the edit or not. Um, I said it will like not work amongst its own brand. That has nothing to do with it. It has to do with the fact that it's looking for cards that have a triple fan header in the circuitry. And if it doesn't, then the driver won't initialize. So, there's a list of graphics cards that have them and don't. Eigor's Lab even puts that list up on his review of the Matrix saying which cards work, which cards don't because of that. But, I've heard of people saying you can force it. I don't know how, and I haven't been able to figure out how. I can't find any definitive um data on whether or not the BTF card has three fan headers. Cuz if the white Astral has three fan headers and the black Astral doesn't, it doesn't seem outside the realm of possible that the BTF might have three fan headers. I don't know why there's that circuitry change between

the color of the PC or cooler. It just sounds like maybe that's an ASUSM. I don't know. I It seems like a good idea to have three fan headers, but whatever. I digress. Okay, so let's copy that location. We do cmd. We're going to go run as administrator. We are going to go there. We're going to clear that because I'm I don't like cluttered things. All right. So, we're going to do nvy flash 64. exe space- 6 and we're going to call it matrix. ROM. Oh my gosh. Okay. So, it disabled the driver. It's now going to say there's a mismatch. Uh oh, they're almost identical. That's the first time I've seen that be different. Let me just so tell you what. It doesn't match the ID, but you can see 104. 3. 8 A or 8A61 versus 104 1043 8A3C before when I tried this on the other major uh Astral. And I'm trying to get my hopes up. The last four were very different. So, I'm hoping maybe this is close enough. Anyway, yes, let's break it. Are you sure? Yes, let's go. Fingers crossed. Okay, the driver is still not initiated. So, before I even worry about hooking up the second connector, isn't it funny how I chose to disconnect the easy one? It's a BTF back to an adapter to use this cable, which I could have just plugged in there — and a PCI riser to use the adapter so that you use the cable that you could have just plugged in right there. — This is a representation of my life. Okay. — Dumb but works. You get it. You get me. Dumb but works. — That is all of us. — I think I got that award at my old job once. Here's the dumb but works award. — I mean, all the fans are turning. Just recognize that stupid. I don't think it's going to though. It would have done it by now. Boo. — Wait. Holy. Nope. It didn't do it. It tried. I have no control panel. Windows stop this device because it has a problem. I want Let me see this real quick cuz it if it is a firmware thing that is stopping one of them from working that wouldn't like it would still allow both to work this way, right? Cuz the driver won't initialize because the card is like, "Hey, something's weird. " But if it was stopping a hardware thing from happening, this would at least answer the question. But I don't have any expectation right now that this is going to work. Man, that's so disappointing. I thought we were going to do something cool today. Yeah. One watt, no power. Darn. I thought maybe it would have been fun to use this card if this worked as an XOC to then be like, check it out. I'm back on high up on the leaderboard without running any of these stupid, you know, $5,000 cards and such. But think you should try the XMC BIOS, but — Oh, wait. Does it not flash to that card because it's — No, it will. But if the card physically isn't allowing two power connectors, what's the point? I could flash that BIOS to one of the regular Astrals and have the same result. — You're right. — Yeah, cuz the driver isn't even initialized at this stage. — Yeah. So, it doesn't matter. I'd still be pulling the power through one cable. Now, I was going to say what would be neat is if somebody came up with an adapter cuz we know that this power plane, like we've talked about this, this power plane in there is way beefier and it would be neat if somebody was able to make that fork out into two or three connectors, right? And then you're splitting the load coming in and then cuz it's got the I mean look at the size of the PL the contact area for the 12vt and the ground right the small wires the small traces are the sense wires. Those do nothing but create a ground to tell how much power is available to the card. Um those are some big fat power planes that exist on both sides. That's a lot of contact area. So that'd be neat to have them create one of these that branches into like two 12vt high powers right there. That would be a solution potentially. Okay, so we actually answered some questions. One, the little cover that comes with this is what you're supposed to use to remove this adapter. So, we'll put this back on the matrix card, which was a very tight fit as you can see. And then you can easily pull it out just like that. Yeah. So easy. — Hey, Dervower, did you know that too? We just found this out. Of course he knew that if he if he said he didn't. He's just trying to make me feel good. Anyway, two. Yeah, 5090 Astral BTF does not support two cables even though ASUS basically said in a press release like on stage I dropped my ego. Hold on. on sta on

stage that uh it's something they're looking into like when they talked about BTF 2. 5 which is what the latest standard is called that they're looking into it for potentially like oh yeah this could potent this could allow us to unlock more power limits and potential for overclocking purposes and such and they delivered on that promise. It was a four $4,000 promise. Um, the issue with the 5090 VTF is there's no load balancing. And that's exactly what the Matrix has to do to be able to have two power sources like that. So, they're being load balanced and then they're merging down the power plane later on for smooth power delivery. If there's no power balance, you can get all kinds of ripple and crazy things that can happen, which would actually lead to more instability and other power issues. So, that also explains why the PCB is different on the Matrix. Although, if you take the cooler off on the surface, it looks almost identical. But their Bowerer did a side-by-side comparison and they absolutely are different. I have never taken the cooler off this card as much as I want to for XOC purposes because I don't want to lose that um that installation of the hybrid liquid metal. So, I'm going to order some hybrid liquid metal though so I can start using it with other things. I'm probably going to take the liquid metal off my 5090 water cooled card at home um simply because I don't have an oxygen seal around it and I don't want it to start causing problems. Even though I did do a full um sealing of all the SMDs around the core, that's all nice and sealed off. So, there we go. The question I wanted to know is what happens when you plug in two connectors to the 5090 Astral BTF? And the qu the answer is nothing. It detects that there's two power sources attached to it and it doesn't even initialize the power delivery system to protect itself from uh load imbalance. I think that's something honestly that ASUS should consider doing in the future, but it also explains why this adapter is probably never going to come out in the public and this is more of an engineering adapter. Anyway, all right. I'm a little disappointed. I thought we were going to have some fun today. I'll do some more investigation to see what we can do to figure out uh to have some more fun with it. I think what I want to do actually is maybe get the 1000 watt MSI BIOS. Although I don't know if I want to do that because if you saw my video about the Matrix versus the Astral versus the FE versus the Lightning, the Lightning was going to astronomical power levels for no benefit whatsoever. And the Matrix was beating it at much, much lower power levels. So, I don't want that logic installed into the Matrix. All right, thanks for watching, guys. Give us some uh some ideas of stupid experiments you want us to do and uh maybe we'll consider doing it. I still want to come up with maybe some sort of an XOC um system that I saw years ago which was all held in a vacuum chamber so that you didn't get um condensation buildup that would allow for some very long overclocking sessions without deal cuz that's what kills our overclocking sessions is condensation buildup. we have to dry out the card and start again. And every time you do that, you redo the mount, which means you could potentially have a bad mount, which means you're not going to have a good overclocking session, which means lots of condensation build up again while chasing the fact that you're instable and then having to take it apart and dry it off again. And by that time, you're high because of all of the freaking fumes and LN2 displacing oxygen.