While most high-end custom graphics cards already have a rather massive and high-quality VRM part in order to get the best possible overclocking potential, it appears that ASUS is working on a rather interesting piece of hardware that will be called the ASUS Power Card, and which should give those extreme overclockers just a bit more juice for those record breaking overclocking feats.
Gigabyte and EVGA already had similar pieces of hardware for quite some time and it appears that ASUS will have a similar piece of hardware soon. While some ASUS custom graphics cards already have quite a hefty 14-phase VRM, these are still limited due to warranty issues but external VRM card, the ASUS Power Card, should fix those issues for extreme overclockers.
According to details posted by
a well known overclocker Elmor over at HWBOT forum, this is still an experimental project done by ASUS, and now features single 8-phase output with 0-2.5V voltage output and up to 500A current output, on board voltage control and monitoring, six hotwire connectors for auxiliary VRM and is firmware upgradeable. With current firmware, the ASUS Power Card allows you to set and monitor output voltage, offset switches and current, has a safety switch which limits output voltage to 1.4V, has VRM temperature monitoring, load-line calibration and hotwire setting and monitoring.
The future firmware update also promises profiles and auxiliary output voltage sense.
ASUS has apparently only sent a few test samples to overclockers and is now working on their feedback and tweaks and currently ASUS has no plans to make it into a retail product, but it will be surely interesting to see how much more overclocking potential can overclockers get from such a external VRM card.
Source:
HWBOT.org.