Graphics cards are so demanding now there are devices with tiny screens that plug into connectors and monitor temperatures

Though the RTX 50 series line has just launched, plenty of gamers are still choosing 40 series cards, partially because the former is so hard to get a hold of. With increasing power demands for those still rather beefy cards, one company has put out a neat adapter with built-in fans, temperature and power consumption figures, and a little screen to display it—though it currently only works on the RTX 40 series of graphics cards.

Posted on Chinese shopping website TaoBao (via VideoCardz), company K.A shows off a 16-pin graphics card adapter for 229 RMB, which works out to just over 30 dollars. You can monitor power consumption and temperature from afar but it also actively cools the wires too.

It is a 180-degree adapter that effectively sits to the side of your GPU and has a screen for displaying the temperature and power consumption. The cables will be kept cooler with the adapters fans but it’s also just a nice addition to make sure your rig is performing as it should.

Of course, you will need to display your PC and have a seethrough side panel to actually watch the adapter but it could be a smart way of making sure everything is performing as it should.

This product goes some ways to solving anxieties that have popped up around the most power-hungry graphics cards of the last few years. When the RTX 4090 launched, some connectors were melting, partly down to the design of the 12VHPWR connector and also partly down to user error, as cables hadn’t been fully inserted. Companies like MSI have even put out adapter cables with a yellow tint to signify when you’ve fully plugged it in to avoid this user error.

However, despite the fact that many of these issues have already been mitigated, the best graphics cards have high TDPs and that power needs to come through wires. Heat is just part of the deal of using a high-end rig, and dealing with that heat can be important for long-term use.

However, it is worth noting that buying adapters or extensions for cables can be a dangerous endeavour, as a PSU expert recently told us. The smartest move when picking out your rig is to grab an appropriate power supply and use the cables the power supply manufacturer includes.

As this is a third-party adapter, and only for the RTX 40 series cards, we won’t see this entirely shake up the cable adapter market but it’s a neat idea, and one manufacturers could learn from as more customers get their hands on RTX 5090s, RTX 5080s, and even start to overclock RTX 5070 Tis. Instead of working this tech into an adapter, one can always hope for card and PSU with more monitoring built in.