Asus announces the ROG Equalizer: a new cable aimed at making melting GPU power connectors a thing of the past

An image of the Asus ROG Equalizer 12V-2x6 power cable, against a gradient green background — (Image credit: Asus)

If you frequently haunt the usual social media channels for PC enthusiasts, you'll notice that nary a day goes by without someone posting an image of their expensive graphics card, replete with a melting power connector. Various efforts to combat the problem have yet to completely nix the issue, but Asus reckons it now has the solution: one seriously beefy power cable.

Called the ROG Equalizer, it looks just like any other premium 12VHPWR/12V-2x6 power cable, but there's more to it than meets the eye. Asus says that the new design "ensures balanced current delivery from PSU to ROG Equalizer" so that you shouldn't get situations where a single 12 V pin has to deal with the full 575 W of an RTX 5090, for example.

But for situations where things do go awry, each power cable is rated to 17 A of current draw (compared to 9.2 A as per the 12V-2x6 specification), and there's an additional cable integrated into the Equalizer, that you can plug into a little socket in Asus' ROG Thor 3 and ROG Strix PSUs.

At some point in the near future, GPU Tweak III (a software tool by Asus that works a bit like MSI Afterburner) will be updated to have a 'ROG Equaliser mode', which should give you a real-time monitor of current draw in each 12V-2x6 pin.

Asus isn't the only company to offer such a feature, of course, as MSI and ASRock have their own solutions, though this seems to be the first instance of creating a more capable cable that I've seen so far.

While there's no indication as to the ROG Equalizer's price tag, the good news is that you don't need to own an Asus megabucks PSU to use it (though you will be able to get the cable at a discounted price, if you do).

Since the ROG Equalizer uses standard 12V-2x6 connectors at both ends of the cable, it will work in any PSU that sports a similar socket.

In Asus' own words: "[It has] no specific model requirements. The ROG Equalizer is bundled with the 2026 ASUS ROG Thor III and ASUS ROG Strix Platinum power supplies, and is also compatible with power supplies (ATX3.1 with native 12V-2x6 connector) from all leading manufacturers."

I can foresee many an RTX 5090 owner eyeing a purchase right now.

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Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in the early 1980s. After leaving university, he became a physics and IT teacher and started writing about tech in the late 1990s. That resulted in him working with MadOnion to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its PC gaming section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com covering everything and anything to do with tech and PCs. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open-world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?

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