12V-2x6 Pin Current Census: Measured Amps Per Pin

A 16-pin graphics card connector carries its whole 12 V load on six pins. Intel’s design guide rates each of those pins at 9.2 A and the connector at up to 600 W, and at 600 W the six pins share 50 A, so an even split puts 8.3 A on each. That leaves under one amp of room per pin.

Nothing in the connector makes the split even. It depends on how well each pin seats, and until recently an owner had no way to see it. Some hardware now measures every pin. ASUS puts a sensor chip on its ROG Astral cards, Thermal Grizzly sells an inline meter that logs each pin, and owners post their six numbers in forum threads and issue trackers, one card at a time. A search in September 2026 turned up no dataset that collects those readings and sets them beside the cable they came from.

This page opens that census. One row is one connector on one card, read once under one load. The data, the field definitions, the validator and the report form live in the open repository: github.com/iBlessi/techfuelhq-census (CC BY 4.0).

If you are here because a connector looks or smells wrong, shut the machine down first. The symptoms of a failing supply are on the PSU failure symptoms guide.

How results are reported

The census publishes distributions. For each cable type it gives the number of readings, the median ratio of the busiest pin to the average pin, the lowest and highest ratio, and how many readings had a pin at 9.2 A or more. The sample size sits beside every figure.

It publishes no verdict on a card, a cable or a power supply. A reading describes one connector as it was seated on one day, and the same cable pulled out and pushed back in can read differently the next, which is why every row records how many months the cable has been in the card.

What one row records

A row is one connector on one card, read once under one load. Of its 31 fields, you fill in 13, the reading fills in 13, 3 are worked out from the row and the maintainer sets 2.

Cable types

Load bands

The band comes from the total current in the row.

The 6 A floor follows astral-hwmon’s reference measurements. Its notes record that the sensor reports current in 20 mA steps, that the pin shares scatter at low current for that reason, and its own share figures use samples at 6 A total and above. I took the same floor.

How to take the reading

1. Put the card under a steady load for at least a minute: a game you play, a benchmark loop, or a render.
2. Read the six pins while the load runs. A log is better than a glance, because it holds every sample.
3. Note which cable carries the power, what sits between the cable and the card, and how many months the cable has been plugged in.

A log is summarised over the part of it that was under load. If 20 or more samples sit at 25 A total or above, the row uses those; otherwise it uses every sample at 6 A or above, or the whole log when fewer than 20 samples reach that. Peaks are kept apart. The highest single reading anywhere in the log is recorded beside the means.

Send a report

Sending needs a GitHub account, because the report is filed as an issue. No account? Copy the report and email it to contact@techfuelhq.com.

What has been published

Current count: 0 reports. No group has rows yet, so nothing is published.

A cable type publishes once it holds five readings taken at 6 A total or more. Below that it is listed as collecting, with its count and no figures.

Limits of this data

• Reports come from people who chose to send them. An owner who saw a worrying number is more likely to report than one who saw nothing. The figures describe the rows in the dataset.
• Only owners of measuring hardware can report. That is mostly ROG Astral cards, so the census says little about other cards until inline meters add rows.
• The readings are as good as the sensor. ASUS’s guide to Power Detector+ gives no accuracy figure for it.
• A reading at or above 9.2 A is counted and reported as a count. What it means for that connector is between its owner and the maker of the card and cable.

Use the data

The dataset is one file. submissions.csv holds one row per reading, in the field order above, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Attribute it as “TechFuelHQ open census” with a link to this page.

To size a supply for a card like these, the PSU wattage calculator works from the parts in the build. The coil whine census and the GPU sag census are the sibling datasets.

Change log

• 0.1.0 (2026-09-29): fields, load bands, report builder, validator and intake form. The census opened with 0 rows.