Taking 396 diesel engine connecting rod as a research object, the die forging forming process for the connecting rod formed on the die forging hammer with a relatively small blow energy of 30kN was analyzed, meanwhile, the connecting rod die forging forming results on 30 kN and 50 kN die forging hammer were analyzed and compared separately. Through optimizing forging die design ( including optimizing the design of die forging process，pre-forging hot forging，finish-forging hot forging，punching the skins of pre-forging and finish-forging，pressure concave skins and flash gutter), the experiment results show that the quality rate of  connecting rod die forging is improved from 94% to 98%，the production cycle of 300 pieces of die forging is reduced to 6 days at least,the efficiency of die forging is doubled, and the cost is reduced by 40% at least.