Makes sense to me. The system knows more about what minor voltages it needs (5v and 3.3v) than the PSU. Also the 24 pin ATX connector is mostly dead space and is long overdue to be replaced.
Now to just define some new form factors that actually make sense
Looking at this board I can't see that much space saved. It just looks more spread out. Unless it's replaced by a single smaller connector, just spreading cables throughout the case doesn't do us many favors.
Mini-ITX boards won't work with this at all. In the photo of this board, everything to the right of the RAM slots and above the chipset heatsink is all DC-to-DC conversion circuitry. That's like a quarter the surface area of an mITX board. And the 16+4 connector with a gap between takes up roughly the same amount of space as a 24-pin connector, so no savings there.
Intel is only claiming that they can fit all this on an mATX board. ITX is probably impossible without sacrifices or some sort of daughterboard sticking up off the mobo.
I disagree. A properly designed Class D buck regulator does not produce significant heat. Yes, there will be need for two extra regulators, but the board real estate will be much smaller than the ~300 square mm saved by the 14 pins eliminated by the connector.
And I'll bet you're still paying $1000 for a 1080p Blu-Ray player. /s The cost of PSU hardware is significantly decrease:
"One power supply maker told PCWorld that the move to ATX12VO should make PSUs 'drastically' cheaper to build. Jon Gerow, director of research and development for another PSU maker, Corsair, agreed costs should go down while efficiency goes up."
I have zero idea why Anandtech, Gamers Nexus, etc., genuinely believed ATX12VO was relevant only to prebuilts/OEMs. OEMs already dropped 5V/3.3V PSU-based conversion years ago, i.e., every proprietary Dell PSU. The formalization of 12V-only is absolutely intended as a industry-wide shift, thus the biggest changes will be felt in the custom PC hardware market (i.e., literally only motherboards and PSUs).
No serious OEM waited until Intel updated ATX in 2019. The custom PC hardware market is the one that's a decade behind (though a shout out to the SFF/mini-ITX crowd who've made big strides).
ASRock, Corsair, etc. buy-in means ATX12VO is coming to a PC near you, i.e., the Anandtech reader. This is a good thing. We shouldn't be "scared" to move the entire industry forward if a tiny niche of customers demand to upgrade their systems but want to maintain 24-pin ATX 2.4 PSUs.
Pro-tip: nobody is forcing you to upgrade to ATX12VO today. It'll be at least another 5 years, I imagine, before ATX12VO is truly ubiquitous in the custom PC hardware space, so nobody is losing anything.
This is a proper transition, with some motherboard models and some PSU models switching to ATX12VO.
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One of the greatest problems with the PC power supply going back to its inception is that it can only regulate using one of the several outputs. Having a single output fixes this problem. As for cost differential, yes there will be an initial increase, but it has the potential to fall drastically below the current cost of an ATX PSU. Realize that the only difference between this PSU and a plain jane 12V supply is the 12 VSB and PWR ON function which can be both optionally populated on a generic PSU PCB. This might be a game changer.
Makes sense to me. The system knows more about what minor voltages it needs (5v and 3.3v) than the PSU. Also the 24 pin ATX connector is mostly dead space and is long overdue to be replaced.
Now to just define some new form factors that actually make sense
Even worse than that. Almost nothing runs natively on those voltages any more. Virtually every device has to drop the voltage to 1-2v where they actually run, and it's more efficient to use higher voltages, so everyone just uses the 12v rail. Even worse is that most devices can adjust their voltages based on load. Can't do that with a fixed input.
Hmm: an 8-pin and a 6-pin at 200+ watts each. Why not use the existing ubiquitous 8+6 pin 12v PCIe connectors, which have an enormous supply-chain ecosystem?
The 6-pin connector *is* the same as the existing PCIe connector, from the screenshot of the datasheet: "This connector is the same as the PCI-E Graphics Card Connector."
It isn't an 8 pin connector. It is a 10 pin connector and it needs to handle things that a GPU PCIe connector doesn't like standby power, voltage sensing, power on request and power ok indication.
It is an open standard proposed by Intel as a replacement for ATX power. So nothing would stop anyone from doing it. The big question is will that get any significant adoption and just be one or two boards and psu and then disappear like every other attempt at form factor improvement.
So the PSU will be more efficient, which is nice, but if there are other voltage needs, will that not simply move the inefficient voltage conversions to whatever component is responsible for it until we completely settle on 12v?
well except for USB & 2.5" HDD/SSDs (5V) and M.2 SSDs (3.3V) practically everything runs on 12V these days. also the MB designers have more knowledge about how much 5V & 3.3V power is needed. so while it's conversion curve might be less efficient than that of a psu, in the end practical efficiency will likely be higher. for example : a mITX board with 4 sata & 4 usb ports might have a max output of 8A @ 5V with an efficiency curve of 75%-85%-80% while a standard atx psu might be designed to supply 20A @ 5V with a curve of 80%-90%-85%. => when drawing an average 5A @ 5V the mobo will be more efficient at 85% while the psu would be near 80% efficiency. even worst most consumers would likely only use a single M.2, a 3.5" HDD a unifying receiver and occasionally a thumb drive/usb disk so thats 1.5A @ 3.3.V and less than 1A @ 5V. at these power levels a regular ATX PSU will be below 60% efficiency.
While I agree with your overall points (ATX is horribly inefficient for low-wattage 5V/3.3V devices), there are *many* PC hardware parts that draw 3.3V/5V. PCIe slots alone will demand it'll be a long time until we lose 3.3V requirements.
-- all NVMe uses 3.3V -- all SATA, M.2, and USB use 5V -- all PCIe slots must provide 3A of 3.3V per slot -- all PCIe Mini devices (e.g., WiFi cards) use 3.3V -- most motherboard chipsets use 3.3V -- most Realtek/Intel audio chipsets use 3.3V -- some VRMs themselves use 3.3V (the "coronary arteries"; the electricity for the power plant) -- some SATA use 3.3V
I'm not surprised they weren't more daring with this, going to 20V and matching peak USB-C PD. That being said, it only feeds into my fantasy of having 100W USB-C PD from my desktop, which is largely unnecessary and my laptop already charges fine from the 36W (12V/3A) it delivers.
Because spreading out the power input points reduces the maximum power any given part of the PCB has to carry allowing them to use thinner copper layers for power/ground.
I don't know if it will catch up but I hope it does. The ATX standard is bulky and mostly pointless. It has huge 3V and 5V and 5VSB (and -12V) capacity that is largely unused or underused. Yes initially it will be more expensive but with volume that would change. The big question is will there be widespread adoption or will this just on the vine too?
it should replace the millions of similar proprietary implementations Dell, HP, etc are currently making. I suspect DIY adoption will be slow for the next few years.
Adapters to let us keep use old PSUs with 12VO boards will be trivial, other than converting a few watts of standby from 5 to 12v they'll just be passive pinout changers; but the biggest gain for our overcrowded mobos won't come until SATA is no longer a standard feature and they can stop providing legacy power headers for drives. (At which point anyone building a storage tower will need a card that does both SATA ports and SATA power.)
Just because CA's pathetic governing body wanted to impose limits on them just like their ridiculous ruling for the BOD personnel having on some bs political stint, Yay now we get this stupid arse power connector nonstandard and now Mobos will have to add the capacitors and other circuitry to supply the power to the removed power rails from the PSU.
So if the mobo fails on it's power supply due to a stupid capacitor choice on cost cutting because the Mobos already are crowded a lot, add the Gen 5 and the repeaters, extra VRMs for all these with extra PCIe lanes in the future Genoa and current Matisse this is a bad direction. We are already losing the I/O options on the motherboards for the loss of SATA from 8 to 6 and this is even worse. Especially so many are already using CLC cooling. This adds even more risk to the Computer machine.
I hope we do not get this bullshit standardized, Vote with wallet guys.
well you should certainly read a bit about how most power is distributed on mainboards these days... for instance the cpu circuitry exclusively draws 12V from the psu and converts everything it needs (3.3V, 5V) itself on the mobo. that's how things work today and why this standard actually makes technical sense (i don't care why we got this standard, it just makes sense...) besides, it's perfectly backwards compatible.... just design a beefier picopsu (288w @ 12V instead of just 160W)
I’m quite happy to lose lots of SATA ports. With nvme becoming insanely fast, raiding disks for speed is dead dead dead. CD drives died years ago. DVD drives are dying if not already dead - almost nobody still uses them on laptops or desktops. 99% of people need no more than 2 sata ports - one for a big spinning rust drive, and the other one for another spinning rust drive to back it up.
I’m in that 1% - I have 3x 4TB 2.5 drives in a tiny mITX case but I would be quite happy with just 2 x SATA ports. I’d rather have an extra nvme slot or 4 banks of RAM not the 2 banks I have at the moment.
Completely agree. I think two SATA ports would be perfect for legacy hookups or connecting archival storage (i.e., updating the firmware of an HDD from a Linux-based NAS in Windows).
The issue with nVME is the PCIe lane drought. Ideally with the next-generation chipsets & SSDs, I'd love to switch to x2 PCIe 4.0 and make two NVMe slots as the minimum.
The first time I heard of this new spec, "saving space with a smaller connector" was mentioned. I don't know how important a design goal was, but having to add back up to 2 6-pin and up to 2 4-pin connectors (plus not being able to get rid of the existing 8- and/or 4-pin ones for the CPU) kind of wrecks that idea. (sure, for motherboards that can get by without the need for those things it's a win, but I would think even cheap Dell motherboards will still need some of those extra connectors for the foreseeable future.
The base connector support 288W. Add in an EPS 8 pin connector and that is 588W total. I don't know many boards that need more than that. Sure the spec supports UP TO two additional 6 pin PCIe connectors but that would be for a main board which requires 1,164W of power. So yeah maybe in a quad socket server board.
OEM’s have been using proprietary versions of this for years in their efforts to meet power requirements regulations for government contracts. It was good for Intel to standardize it like the ATX format this borrows from. Neat that’s of all the brands ASrock is the first to get a consumer one to market. Hopefully they put out an mATX or an ITX version might be able to drop it into a bunch of old Dells I have kicking around.
Why a new 10-pin connector if we are going full +12V? Why not just make EPS12V-pin mandatory to power everything on the mobo, with a aux PCIE 8-pin on the mobo just for that 0.0001% of people who runs a OCed 9900K with a 75W slot powered only GPU?
You need more than just power pins. The 10 pin connector is 6 pins for power (3 +12V, 3 ground). It then has a pin to turn the PSU on, a pin for the PSU to indicate power is good, and a pin for standby power (which has moved from 5VDC to 12VDC). So that is 9 pins. The 10th pin is currently unused.
Of /course/ it's the madlads at ASRock first out of the gate! Though a bit disappointing it's an ATX board and not ITX: the SFF world has been clamouring for (and self-implementing with plug-into-the-ATX-connector boards like the KMPKT Dynamo and HDPlex DC-ATX) 12V only operation, and ASRock have been excellent to the SFF market with plenty of unique boards like the barmy X299 ITX, or the absolutely insane EPC621D6I that crams LGA3647 onto an ITX board.
Finally! I won’t pretend to understand the power delivery details in the article but the ATX PSU standard looks to me like a horrible dinosaur. It was perfectly suited to computers of 20 years ago but things have changed and it needs to die.
<Looks from giant ATX PSU to the tiny picoPSU units, laptop power units, and other mini PSU stuff lying on my desk>
Ok if you want a 750 watt monster then ATX PSU makes sense, but 99% of modern desktops don’t need that much power. I have an i3-6100 and nvidia 1060 and 12TB of storage running quite happily on a 150w PSU (I think- it’s been a while since I built it).
About time they do something, but it's still not enough.
Look at what Apple did with the power supply in the iMac Pro. Very thin and efficient, without giant pin connections everywhere. And they somehow manage to power 370w for cpu, 128GB ram, 4TB ssd, Radeon Vega 64 with 16GB memory, a 5k display, speakers, 4x 40x tb3 ports, BT, camera, and 4 usb ports.
No, you don't need giant cables going to separate parts of the motherboard or video card. You need a new standard, and this isn't fixing much.
coming back to this article as this needs to happen sooner! i'm crypto mining and recently acquired a used 1200w HP server power supply. It is just crazy good as it is tiny and efficient! It may have a small fan but it is quiet if not at full load. We need to reuse these perfectly fine and better PSUs for PC builds!
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shabby - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
"This also allows the power supply to be more efficient and compact, with a smaller connector."I'll bet it'll still cost more than regular atx psu's.
Operandi - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Makes sense to me. The system knows more about what minor voltages it needs (5v and 3.3v) than the PSU. Also the 24 pin ATX connector is mostly dead space and is long overdue to be replaced.Now to just define some new form factors that actually make sense
close - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
Looking at this board I can't see that much space saved. It just looks more spread out. Unless it's replaced by a single smaller connector, just spreading cables throughout the case doesn't do us many favors.Slyeyay - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
Which is why Mini-ITX boards will benefit from this the most.I mean have you seen how much space the 24 pin connector take from those boards?
Guspaz - Friday, August 14, 2020 - link
Mini-ITX boards won't work with this at all. In the photo of this board, everything to the right of the RAM slots and above the chipset heatsink is all DC-to-DC conversion circuitry. That's like a quarter the surface area of an mITX board. And the 16+4 connector with a gap between takes up roughly the same amount of space as a 24-pin connector, so no savings there.Intel is only claiming that they can fit all this on an mATX board. ITX is probably impossible without sacrifices or some sort of daughterboard sticking up off the mobo.
Guspaz - Friday, August 14, 2020 - link
Sorry, the 10+6 connector with a gap in between. It takes up almost as much space as a 24-pin due to the gap.rick_H - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
I disagree. A properly designed Class D buck regulator does not produce significant heat. Yes, there will be need for two extra regulators, but the board real estate will be much smaller than the ~300 square mm saved by the 14 pins eliminated by the connector.bernstein - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
at first probably, but in the long run it's going to be cheaper, because of less components & complexityikjadoon - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
And I'll bet you're still paying $1000 for a 1080p Blu-Ray player. /s The cost of PSU hardware is significantly decrease:"One power supply maker told PCWorld that the move to ATX12VO should make PSUs 'drastically' cheaper to build. Jon Gerow, director of research and development for another PSU maker, Corsair, agreed costs should go down while efficiency goes up."
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels...
I have zero idea why Anandtech, Gamers Nexus, etc., genuinely believed ATX12VO was relevant only to prebuilts/OEMs. OEMs already dropped 5V/3.3V PSU-based conversion years ago, i.e., every proprietary Dell PSU. The formalization of 12V-only is absolutely intended as a industry-wide shift, thus the biggest changes will be felt in the custom PC hardware market (i.e., literally only motherboards and PSUs).
No serious OEM waited until Intel updated ATX in 2019. The custom PC hardware market is the one that's a decade behind (though a shout out to the SFF/mini-ITX crowd who've made big strides).
ASRock, Corsair, etc. buy-in means ATX12VO is coming to a PC near you, i.e., the Anandtech reader. This is a good thing. We shouldn't be "scared" to move the entire industry forward if a tiny niche of customers demand to upgrade their systems but want to maintain 24-pin ATX 2.4 PSUs.
Pro-tip: nobody is forcing you to upgrade to ATX12VO today. It'll be at least another 5 years, I imagine, before ATX12VO is truly ubiquitous in the custom PC hardware space, so nobody is losing anything.
This is a proper transition, with some motherboard models and some PSU models switching to ATX12VO.
louisemunderwood - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
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One of the greatest problems with the PC power supply going back to its inception is that it can only regulate using one of the several outputs. Having a single output fixes this problem. As for cost differential, yes there will be an initial increase, but it has the potential to fall drastically below the current cost of an ATX PSU. Realize that the only difference between this PSU and a plain jane 12V supply is the 12 VSB and PWR ON function which can be both optionally populated on a generic PSU PCB. This might be a game changer.Operandi - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Makes sense to me. The system knows more about what minor voltages it needs (5v and 3.3v) than the PSU. Also the 24 pin ATX connector is mostly dead space and is long overdue to be replaced.Now to just define some new form factors that actually make sense
bcronce - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Even worse than that. Almost nothing runs natively on those voltages any more. Virtually every device has to drop the voltage to 1-2v where they actually run, and it's more efficient to use higher voltages, so everyone just uses the 12v rail. Even worse is that most devices can adjust their voltages based on load. Can't do that with a fixed input.Catalina588 - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Hmm: an 8-pin and a 6-pin at 200+ watts each. Why not use the existing ubiquitous 8+6 pin 12v PCIe connectors, which have an enormous supply-chain ecosystem?magila - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
The 6-pin connector *is* the same as the existing PCIe connector, from the screenshot of the datasheet: "This connector is the same as the PCI-E Graphics Card Connector."TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
It isn't an 8 pin connector. It is a 10 pin connector and it needs to handle things that a GPU PCIe connector doesn't like standby power, voltage sensing, power on request and power ok indication.SydneyBlue120d - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Do You think is it possible to build a Ryzen motherboard with this standard?TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
It is an open standard proposed by Intel as a replacement for ATX power. So nothing would stop anyone from doing it. The big question is will that get any significant adoption and just be one or two boards and psu and then disappear like every other attempt at form factor improvement.PeachNCream - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
So the PSU will be more efficient, which is nice, but if there are other voltage needs, will that not simply move the inefficient voltage conversions to whatever component is responsible for it until we completely settle on 12v?TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
That would be ideal but if you made a 12V only PSU and 12V only MB today then it would instantly lose all compatibility with all existing devices.bernstein - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
well except for USB & 2.5" HDD/SSDs (5V) and M.2 SSDs (3.3V) practically everything runs on 12V these days. also the MB designers have more knowledge about how much 5V & 3.3V power is needed. so while it's conversion curve might be less efficient than that of a psu, in the end practical efficiency will likely be higher.for example :
a mITX board with 4 sata & 4 usb ports might have a max output of 8A @ 5V with an efficiency curve of 75%-85%-80%
while a standard atx psu might be designed to supply 20A @ 5V with a curve of 80%-90%-85%. => when drawing an average 5A @ 5V the mobo will be more efficient at 85% while the psu would be near 80% efficiency.
even worst most consumers would likely only use a single M.2, a 3.5" HDD a unifying receiver and occasionally a thumb drive/usb disk so thats 1.5A @ 3.3.V and less than 1A @ 5V. at these power levels a regular ATX PSU will be below 60% efficiency.
ikjadoon - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
While I agree with your overall points (ATX is horribly inefficient for low-wattage 5V/3.3V devices), there are *many* PC hardware parts that draw 3.3V/5V. PCIe slots alone will demand it'll be a long time until we lose 3.3V requirements.-- all NVMe uses 3.3V
-- all SATA, M.2, and USB use 5V
-- all PCIe slots must provide 3A of 3.3V per slot
-- all PCIe Mini devices (e.g., WiFi cards) use 3.3V
-- most motherboard chipsets use 3.3V
-- most Realtek/Intel audio chipsets use 3.3V
-- some VRMs themselves use 3.3V (the "coronary arteries"; the electricity for the power plant)
-- some SATA use 3.3V
jeremyshaw - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
I'm not surprised they weren't more daring with this, going to 20V and matching peak USB-C PD. That being said, it only feeds into my fantasy of having 100W USB-C PD from my desktop, which is largely unnecessary and my laptop already charges fine from the 36W (12V/3A) it delivers.Alistair - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
It's a neat idea, but I really wish they had pushed the layout. Why not have CPU and Motherboard pins in the same area?DanNeely - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
Because spreading out the power input points reduces the maximum power any given part of the PCB has to carry allowing them to use thinner copper layers for power/ground.Dug - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
It's because of poor planning and placement. It's completely unnecessary.TheUnhandledException - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
I don't know if it will catch up but I hope it does. The ATX standard is bulky and mostly pointless. It has huge 3V and 5V and 5VSB (and -12V) capacity that is largely unused or underused. Yes initially it will be more expensive but with volume that would change. The big question is will there be widespread adoption or will this just on the vine too?DanNeely - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
it should replace the millions of similar proprietary implementations Dell, HP, etc are currently making. I suspect DIY adoption will be slow for the next few years.Adapters to let us keep use old PSUs with 12VO boards will be trivial, other than converting a few watts of standby from 5 to 12v they'll just be passive pinout changers; but the biggest gain for our overcrowded mobos won't come until SATA is no longer a standard feature and they can stop providing legacy power headers for drives. (At which point anyone building a storage tower will need a card that does both SATA ports and SATA power.)
Quantumz0d - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Just because CA's pathetic governing body wanted to impose limits on them just like their ridiculous ruling for the BOD personnel having on some bs political stint, Yay now we get this stupid arse power connector nonstandard and now Mobos will have to add the capacitors and other circuitry to supply the power to the removed power rails from the PSU.So if the mobo fails on it's power supply due to a stupid capacitor choice on cost cutting because the Mobos already are crowded a lot, add the Gen 5 and the repeaters, extra VRMs for all these with extra PCIe lanes in the future Genoa and current Matisse this is a bad direction. We are already losing the I/O options on the motherboards for the loss of SATA from 8 to 6 and this is even worse. Especially so many are already using CLC cooling. This adds even more risk to the Computer machine.
I hope we do not get this bullshit standardized, Vote with wallet guys.
bernstein - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
well you should certainly read a bit about how most power is distributed on mainboards these days... for instance the cpu circuitry exclusively draws 12V from the psu and converts everything it needs (3.3V, 5V) itself on the mobo. that's how things work today and why this standard actually makes technical sense (i don't care why we got this standard, it just makes sense...)besides, it's perfectly backwards compatible.... just design a beefier picopsu (288w @ 12V instead of just 160W)
Spunjji - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
This post comes across as genuinely unhinged.Tomatotech - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
I’m quite happy to lose lots of SATA ports. With nvme becoming insanely fast, raiding disks for speed is dead dead dead. CD drives died years ago. DVD drives are dying if not already dead - almost nobody still uses them on laptops or desktops. 99% of people need no more than 2 sata ports - one for a big spinning rust drive, and the other one for another spinning rust drive to back it up.I’m in that 1% - I have 3x 4TB 2.5 drives in a tiny mITX case but I would be quite happy with just 2 x SATA ports. I’d rather have an extra nvme slot or 4 banks of RAM not the 2 banks I have at the moment.
ikjadoon - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Completely agree. I think two SATA ports would be perfect for legacy hookups or connecting archival storage (i.e., updating the firmware of an HDD from a Linux-based NAS in Windows).The issue with nVME is the PCIe lane drought. Ideally with the next-generation chipsets & SSDs, I'd love to switch to x2 PCIe 4.0 and make two NVMe slots as the minimum.
1_rick - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
The first time I heard of this new spec, "saving space with a smaller connector" was mentioned. I don't know how important a design goal was, but having to add back up to 2 6-pin and up to 2 4-pin connectors (plus not being able to get rid of the existing 8- and/or 4-pin ones for the CPU) kind of wrecks that idea. (sure, for motherboards that can get by without the need for those things it's a win, but I would think even cheap Dell motherboards will still need some of those extra connectors for the foreseeable future.TheUnhandledException - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
The base connector support 288W. Add in an EPS 8 pin connector and that is 588W total. I don't know many boards that need more than that. Sure the spec supports UP TO two additional 6 pin PCIe connectors but that would be for a main board which requires 1,164W of power. So yeah maybe in a quad socket server board.Lakados - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
OEM’s have been using proprietary versions of this for years in their efforts to meet power requirements regulations for government contracts. It was good for Intel to standardize it like the ATX format this borrows from. Neat that’s of all the brands ASrock is the first to get a consumer one to market. Hopefully they put out an mATX or an ITX version might be able to drop it into a bunch of old Dells I have kicking around.StrangerGuy - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Why a new 10-pin connector if we are going full +12V? Why not just make EPS12V-pin mandatory to power everything on the mobo, with a aux PCIE 8-pin on the mobo just for that 0.0001% of people who runs a OCed 9900K with a 75W slot powered only GPU?TheUnhandledException - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
You need more than just power pins. The 10 pin connector is 6 pins for power (3 +12V, 3 ground). It then has a pin to turn the PSU on, a pin for the PSU to indicate power is good, and a pin for standby power (which has moved from 5VDC to 12VDC). So that is 9 pins. The 10th pin is currently unused.antonkochubey - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link
> The 10th pin is currently unused.Correction: in ATX12VO spec, it is used as optional voltage sensing pin (up to 10mA draw to prevent DC voltage offset)
edzieba - Wednesday, May 6, 2020 - link
Of /course/ it's the madlads at ASRock first out of the gate! Though a bit disappointing it's an ATX board and not ITX: the SFF world has been clamouring for (and self-implementing with plug-into-the-ATX-connector boards like the KMPKT Dynamo and HDPlex DC-ATX) 12V only operation, and ASRock have been excellent to the SFF market with plenty of unique boards like the barmy X299 ITX, or the absolutely insane EPC621D6I that crams LGA3647 onto an ITX board.Tomatotech - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
These ASRock Rack boards are amazing. If only there was an AMD version that cost around $150, not the $400 these boards seem to be at.If a B550 board comes out with 2x nvme and 4 ram slots, I will be very very tempted. I have more or less all the parts waiting to be built.
svan1971 - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
God help you if you need a warranty claim with AsRock, you've been warned.Tomatotech - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
Finally! I won’t pretend to understand the power delivery details in the article but the ATX PSU standard looks to me like a horrible dinosaur. It was perfectly suited to computers of 20 years ago but things have changed and it needs to die.<Looks from giant ATX PSU to the tiny picoPSU units, laptop power units, and other mini PSU stuff lying on my desk>
Ok if you want a 750 watt monster then ATX PSU makes sense, but 99% of modern desktops don’t need that much power. I have an i3-6100 and nvidia 1060 and 12TB of storage running quite happily on a 150w PSU (I think- it’s been a while since I built it).
svan1971 - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
So intead of 2 plugs to my board I now get 5. Great I bet it looks better with all those wires dangling too.Dug - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
About time they do something, but it's still not enough.Look at what Apple did with the power supply in the iMac Pro.
Very thin and efficient, without giant pin connections everywhere.
And they somehow manage to power 370w for cpu, 128GB ram, 4TB ssd, Radeon Vega 64 with 16GB memory, a 5k display, speakers, 4x 40x tb3 ports, BT, camera, and 4 usb ports.
No, you don't need giant cables going to separate parts of the motherboard or video card. You need a new standard, and this isn't fixing much.
Why is PC so frickin bulky?
Dug - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
And stop with the stupid ATX motherboard. So much wasted space and completely unnecessary.zodiacfml - Tuesday, April 20, 2021 - link
coming back to this article as this needs to happen sooner! i'm crypto mining and recently acquired a used 1200w HP server power supply. It is just crazy good as it is tiny and efficient! It may have a small fan but it is quiet if not at full load. We need to reuse these perfectly fine and better PSUs for PC builds!