Mingxuan Earlier this month, we released a special variant of the iCraft Arc B580 12G graphics card with two M.2 slots. However, the company did not describe the card in detail or show off its internals. one of the members Bilibili The community has filled this gap by posting images of motherboards without cooling systems. The card has two M.2 slots for installing several PCIe 4.0 x4 drives and a powerful power supply.
Although the specific model of the Maxxun graphics card is not yet known, its design is based on the recently released iCraft Arc B580 12G. Both use the same PCB. The two M.2 slots at the end of the PCB of the current model already have free wiring, so Mingxuan only welds on the special model M.2 slots.
Although this idea Adding M.2 slots to graphics cards is nothing newThere is no doubt that the M.2 slot is the main selling point of Maxsun iCraft Arc B580 12G graphics card. These slots are on the back of the card, so the drive must be inserted into the slots and then screwed to the cooling system’s backplate. It seems that installing an M.2 SSD does not require removing the heatsink.
This arrangement is practical and the structure is relatively rigid, but it’s certainly an unorthodox way to secure an SSD in a socket. Typically, SSDs are connected to the motherboard on which they are mounted. Without a cooling system, the card looks like a fish with a long tail.
As the name suggests, Maxxuan’s upcoming iCraft Arc B580 graphics card is equipped with Intel Curved B580 Graphics processor (with 2,560 stream processors) and 12GB GDDR6 memory. Since Intel’s recommended motherboard power for its Arc B580 product is 190W, the card has two eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors that can theoretically provide up to 300W of power to its motherboard.
The 300W capacity may be a bit overkill for the GPU itself (which has a modest six-phase voltage regulation module), but considering that two high-end M.2-2280/22110 SSDs consume a lot of power, providing the extra power headroom ensures that both or the GPU and drives get enough power.
Since the Maxxuan iCraft Arc B580 12G is an affordable graphics card, it’s no surprise that it doesn’t come with a PCIe switch, which helps keep costs down. However, this means that the motherboard/CPU must implement PCIe fork, so potential buyers must ensure that their platform fully supports PCIe x8/x4/x4 fork.