Cable-Less Asus RTX 4070 BTF Graphics Card Now On Sale in China

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Asus' new RTX 4070 cannot be purchased as a standalone item for obvious reasons

Asus RTX 4070-O12G-BTF
(Image credit: Asus)

Asus' first production-ready cableless graphics card is now available for purchase in China. Known as the RTX 4070-O12G-BTF, the card features a hidden HPCE power connector that replaces the 8-pin/16-pin for supplying supplemental PCIe power to the card. Due to compatibility restrictions, Asus' cabless 4070 can only be purchased in a bundle with either a compatible motherboard or with a motherboard and a compatible case.

The new RTX 4070 is part of Asus' new "Back To Future" (BTF) product stack that prioritizes experimental designs that enhance system aesthetics above everything else. Part of Asus' new design philosophy incorporates hidden power connectors that are completely hidden from the front of the system, thus promoting a cleaner and "more minimalist appearance."

The RTX 4070's full name is the Tianxuan TX Gaming-RTX4070-O12G-BTF. The card sports a big triple-fan cooler design and is painted in an Anime-inspired white and light blue color theme. Of course, the card's party trick is the lack of supplementary power connectors on the side. Instead, it gets all of its supplementary power from a small HPCE power connector located right behind the PCie x16 slot that plugs into a reciprocating HPCE connector on the motherboard.

(Image credit: Asus)

The RTX 4070 comes bundled with a Tianxuan TX B760-BTF motherboard, which supports Intel's latest Alder Lake and Raptor Lake CPUs. The board shares the same Anime-inspired theme as the graphics card and features a 12+1 power delivery system as well as WiFi 6 support. The board also comes in a standard ATX form factor and features a black PCB, but most of it is covered by plastic, similar to Asus' ROG motherboards. Like the RTX 4070, the B760-BTF features an HPCE connector behind the primary x16 slot for powering HPCE-compatible Asus graphics cards.

(Image credit: Asus)

The card is available for purchase from one of Asus' official online retail outlets in China, and it isn't clear if or when the card will debut on North American shores. The RTX 4070 costs 5289 Yuan (~$727 USD) as a standalone item, but it can also be bought as a bundle with either a compatible motherboard or a compatible case plus the motherboard. The case is an Asus GT502 BTF chassis designed to work with Asus' hidden EPS and 24-pin motherboard connectors installed at the back. The graphics card motherboard combo retails for 6998 Yuan (~$962 USD), while the full bundle featuring the GPU, motherboard, and case can be bought for 8297 Yuan (~$1141 USD).

It's unknown if any of these Anime-inspired Asus BTF components will make their way to the United States or any market outside the Asian region. However, Asus has already demoed its hidden power connector designs in other BTF components using TUF-branded components, so we should products brandishing the HPCE power connector in other markets soon.

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Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • hotaru251
    idea? cool.

    however the unknown longevity of the standard means u have little to no resale value.
    Reply
  • YouFilthyHippo
    Its a good idea, except for the fact that you can't do it with a 450W card unless you want to cut a big hole in the mobo and install a mile long port. This is going to make tracing very complicated. It's a great concept, but in practice I think it will mostly be a niche thing
    Reply
  • PEnns
    hotaru251 said:
    idea? cool.

    however the unknown longevity of the standard means u have little to no resale value.

    We could say the same about every new idea or invention!
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    PEnns said:
    We could say the same about every new idea or invention!
    not really.
    USB, wifi, etc are agreed up on standards.

    they get backing by big players before they exist.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    So, the basic question is: should slots go cable, or cables go slot? Evidently evolving the current hodgepodge of mixing both doesn't seem very sensible.

    While I think slots are preferable in many ways, they really are a bad fit for the basic flexibility of PCIe lane allocations, causing all kinds of underuse or overprovisioning that is turning costliner with each generation.

    Clearly using cables for each set of 4 PCIe lanes CXL style makes a lot more sense, especially as it allows for very precise trace lenghts using the 3rd dimension... at the cost of perhhaps even pricier connectors.

    But mostly they'd allow to allocate those precious lanes wherever they are actually needed instead of tieing them to a slot, that might be covered by a GPU far too wide or need less (or benefit from more) lanes than a given slot provides.

    Of course mixing a few lines with hundreds of Watts and hundreds of others with tiny voltages over anything shared is always a challenge for any single form factor that might have started with 5 Volts and 5 Watts on NMOS, so some functional and physical separation is dictated by laws of nature.

    Asus here obviously went for the better looks, but I'll freely admit that this would be the very least of my cares so as far as I am concerned they have gone in the wrong direction here.

    But then few things have been as aggravating, as difficult to diagnose and fix as cable errors and defects, especially when they creep in on you as you re-arrange things and known-good configurations suddenly fail...

    Robust, flexible, reliable, high-performance and cheap never seem to mingle easily...
    Reply
  • PEnns
    hotaru251 said:
    not really.
    USB, wifi, etc are agreed up on standards.

    they get backing by big players before they exist.

    And.....you know that somebody had an idea about those and then it was agreed upon and adopted. None of your examples just appeared out of thin air!

    Just like in this case, the big players might adopt it, just your examples.
    Reply