I also would prefer lower-power GPUs but at least until the AI bubble doesn’t just pop but actually dies screaming, I don’t see that happening, and I don’t know if that will even ever happen.

Beefier wires and connectors is certainly one way to go. The other direction this could reasonably go is different power supplies. The ATX 12V standard is very, very old at this point. The only thing better than a universal standard is more of them (/s) but at this point with the power levels that some components like GPUs are reaching, maybe it’s genuinely time for a 20VDC, 24VDC or even 48VDC standard to appear.

Higher voltages mean you can safely send significantly more power over small wires with less heat, as long as they are well-insulated for that voltage and you have switching options that are capable of cleanly cutting that voltage when needed. This is already taken advantage of by standards like PoE (power over ethernet) or USB PD charging standards, which already use this technique. PD goes up to around 20VDC as far as I know (laptops generally use 20V adapters also)

48VDC is about as high as you’d reasonably want to go. Phone systems used to use this (in the olden days, they had to ring a physical bell over the phone lines, it needed quite a lot of power compared to how thin the wires were) not sure if they still do. I think pro audio equipment also uses 48VDC extensively and maybe PoE too? I forget. Anyway, the general point is we definitely seem to be in a world where consuming more power with our computing is going to be a thing, and I think they’re eventually going to figure out that higher voltage makes more sense (and is cheaper) than thicker wires.

Even the highest-power AMD GPU (Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X) with 420W (nice) just uses 3*8-Pin PCIe port. So just use an AMD GPU. NVidia won’t back down.

Yeah they just need to switch to AC outlets