This is NOT a normal power supply... - ATX 12VO

[nicklmg]

 

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[The Torrent]

Why do i have a feeling this is gonna follow the same garbage quality of all your recent videos? Please restore my faith with LTT. 

 

EDIT: 11:16 shows the planning that went into the video. TL;DR. some dudes make power supply that only goes to 12v then mobo does rest just so u save like 30 watts at idle. Few negligable points about power loss in wires which is nothing when we are talking milliamps. (Powerloss = I^2R).

[wall03]

28 minutes ago, The Torrent said:

Why do i have a feeling this is gonna follow the same garbage quality of all your recent videos? Please restore my faith with LTT. 

 

update:

[Parideboy]

7:50 my bad, didn't get the wattage right lol

 

I don't see how a traditional psu couldn't be used the same way. Just plug in all the 6/8 pins and you're done (by jump-starting the 24pin of course, and giving for granted availability of some sort of adapters)

It wouldn't be as efficient, but it will still be an improvement compared to the standard since there will be no load on the other rails, right?

 

This is without considering the "now I'll have to buy a quality motherboard to pair with the quality psu" argument.

 

BTW there you go Linus, 2 google results

HP1-P650GD-F12S

[Guest]

Welcome to 2019, Linus.

 

 

[Toby4213]

But why?? That's so stupid to have the dc to dc converter on the motherboard! Power supplies are very functional and long lasting as they are right now, no need to change them. What benefit would a 12V only PSU bring? Yes except for the very minimal power savings which won't happen because I'm betting the conversion circuit on the mobo will be of much less quality than that of a high quality psu. It doesn't save space on the motherboard, on the contrary. The connectors are as big as the old ones and the 12V to 5 and 3V3 converter circuit is added and wastes a lot of space...

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Toby4213 said:

But why?? That's so stupid to have the dc to dc converter on the motherboard! Power supplies are very functional and long lasting as they are right now, no need to change them. What benefit would a 12V only PSU bring? Yes except for the very minimal power savings which won't happen because I'm betting the conversion circuit on the mobo will be of much less quality than that of a high quality psu. It doesn't save space on the motherboard, on the contrary. The connectors are as big as the old ones and the 12V to 5 and 3V3 converter circuit is added and wastes a lot of space...

It should be MUCH MORE efficient.  The DC to DC in the PSU used for +3.3V and +5V has to be more robust than it needs to be for 75% of customers out there because they don't want people overloading it.  This makes them less efficient.  If the DC to DC is "purpose driven" (i.e. Asrock makes the board to support four SATA drives, for example), they can make the DC to DC less powerful and more efficient.  

 

The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is the opportunity to make the PSU smaller.  Though it looks like High Power didn't take advantage of that since the PSU in Linus's hands looks to be the same size as their usual 650W.  My guess is this isn't a production unit and they just took their off the shelf 650W and yanked the DC to DC out.

 

And finally, the biggest advantage is the ease of assembly and quick/clean build.  This is why SI's like it.  This is why HP, Dell and Lenovo all already have 12V Only motherboards on the market.  Problem with them is they're not interchangible (Dell, HP and Lenovo use different motherboard power connectors).  All Intel is doing with ATX12VO is standardizing it so we don't have such a hodge podge of different connectors and incompatible parts.

 

[SteelSkin667]

23 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

It should be MUCH MORE efficient.  The DC to DC in the PSU used for +3.3V and +5V has to be more robust than it needs to be for 75% of customers out there because they don't want people overloading it.  This makes them less efficient.  If the DC to DC is "purpose driven" (i.e. Asrock makes the board to support four SATA drives, for example), they can make the DC to DC less powerful and more efficient.  

 

The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is the opportunity to make the PSU smaller.  Though it looks like High Power didn't take advantage of that since the PSU in Linus's hands looks to be the same size as their usual 650W.  My guess is this isn't a production unit and they just took their off the shelf 650W and yanked the DC to DC out.

 

And finally, the biggest advantage is the ease of assembly and quick/clean build.  This is why SI's like it.  This is why HP, Dell and Lenovo all already have 12V Only motherboards on the market.  Problem with them is they're not interchangible (Dell, HP and Lenovo use different motherboard power connectors).  All Intel is doing with ATX12VO is standardizing it so we don't have such a hodge podge of different connectors and incompatible parts.

 

For repair shops and end users this will make sourcing compatible parts way easier as well - that is as long as SIs also settle on a standard form factor for their PSUs.

[akio123008]

I like the video, but I'm really not sure it was actually the power supply that caused the improvement and not the different mobo used. I guess there's really no way to be sure.

 

Edit: I don't see how having a DC-DC converter on a motherboard is any different from having it in the PSU when it comes to efficiency.

 

Edit 2: I just found out the answer to the above in @jonnyGURU's post.

[mariushm]

Oh Jesus.... that mistake is so bad you guys should probably remove the video before others complain

 

At 8:05 

 

The computer consumes 60 watts or so ... doesn't mean the psu is 9-12% efficient because it's a "650w power supply" ... that's stupid statement.

 

The psu may very well be 90% efficient, taking in 60 watts and giving 55 watts to components, the meter just measures how much energy the power supply takes in, you're not measuring how much each component consumes to calculate the efficiency.

And considering you're only dealing with one voltage (12v dc) , shame on you guys for not grabbing a clampmeter to measure the current and actually getting the efficiency measured.

 

 

At 11:34

 

You're saying computer power supplies convert AC to DC multiple times, for each voltage.

That's another stupid statement, come on Linus, did you even bother to read the text before speaking it or this video was actually sponsored by Intel and you had to say these ridiculous statements.

 

The conversion from AC to DC is done once, and then you even have a Active PFC circuit which boosts 110v..230v rectified to ~400-420v DC, and then you have high voltage to 12v DC and then there's high efficiency dc-dc converters producing 3.3v and 5v

Just ONE AC->DC conversion.  Multiple DC-DC conversions.

 

At 9:30 ... you're wondering why the 8 pin and 6 pin ... why not mention that the 6 pin is OPTIONAL, the 8 pin has 2 12v wires  just like the 24pin connector and a 12v standby wire:

 

 

For an office PC motherboard or low profile desktop where they mean to use integrated graphics and never have separate pci-e card, the 6 pin connector may be missing completely

[RejZoR]

You know what also helps efficiency? Not using 120V power grid... Just look at the charts of ANY PSU at 120V and 230V. The efficiency on 230V power grid is so much higher just for being a higher input voltage. Apparently.

[Moonzy]

when will we start seeing mITX board accepting a 12V barrel plug in the rear IO as power input?

it's like a pico-psu, but built into the motherboard

[SteelSkin667]

9 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

when will we start seeing mITX board accepting a 12V barrel plug in the rear IO as power input?

it's like a pico-psu, but built into the motherboard

That kind of exists - "Thin Mini ITX" motherboards have a 19V barrel plug on the back and onboard power headers for SATA and the like.

[Aravir]

23 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The computer consumes 60 watts or so ... doesn't mean the psu is 9-12% efficient because it's a "650w power supply" ... that's stupid statement

They never said that the 9%-12% represent efficiency. They said in the video that at idle power less than 20% or the rated wattage, the efficiency is allowed to be less than 80%. The 9%-12% are a percentage of power draw with respect to rated wattage. They even go on to say that at a small load like this, the efficiency could be as low as 50%-60%.

29 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Active PFC circuit which boosts 110v..230v rectified to ~400-420v DC

I'm no expert electrical engineer but I know enough to read the simplified schematic on wikipedia and see that the 400V after the PFC part is still AC (No transformer) and that there is a big transformer after that part with multiple separate secondary windings for 12V, 5V and 3.3V.

[samcool55]

So if I understand this correctly, the reason why it's more efficient is because the 5V and 3.3V rails are basically crap because they can't deliver anywhere near the wattage a typical 5v and 3.3v rail can deliver in the average 650w psu.

 

Also the components that use 3.3v and 5v on a normal motherboard are probably replaced as much as possible by 12v components which makes sense.

 

I'm happy there's some improvement but the motherboard is going to have even more cables connected to it and you'll have a lot less complete sata and molex connectors. But that makes sense for SI's tbh...

 

RIP mini-itx tho.

 

[QuestionAsker]

I just registered here to say I wasn't able to understand why 12VO PSU is going to make any difference in efficiency. I will talk about some sentences from the video with timestamps :

 

11:22 - "converting from AC to DC power is extremely inefficient and conventional power supplied do it multiple times for the multiple voltages that they need to supply"

 

Yes it is true and they do it because it is cheaper than having a AC to 12V DC converter and then a bunch of DC-DC converters but as you also said in the video some power supplies actually have that DC-DC converter inside them so this sentence can not be considered as a benefit of 12VO PSU.

 

11:58 - "to meet upcoming energy efficiency standards (some examples) intel and their partners went a step further that is why the 12V down conversion is taking place here on the motherboard rather than in the power supply because the higher the voltage the less conduction loss we are going to deal with over the runs of wire"

 

This might actually be true but the difference is just nearly zero, I just used a multi meter to measure the resistance of a 50cm wire from my power supply and it was around 0.002 ohms and it is even funnier to know that the wire loss will actually get higher on full load and in idle it is just under 1 Watt.

 

13:02 - "So it works"

 

No it doesn't ! I can easily see that the conventional PSU that you have used is not efficient not because it is not 12VO just because there is no DC-DC converter in it.

 

So what actually bothers me is the unmentioned cost difference. The cost of that DC-DC conversion circuit on the motherboard is a lot higher than the whole Seasonic PSU you were using. AC to DC conversion is only optimal at a specific current/load and when you replace multiple AC to DC conversions with one AC to DC and then multiple DC to DC ones you get a lot higher efficiency at wider range of load specially idle.

 

For those who actually care about efficiency, the future is for HVDC power grids. With high voltage direct current, the loss will be minimized in long wires and no low efficiency conversion is needed. Other solutions like 12VO PSU is just for annoyance of customers and nothing else.

 

And in the end 12VO PSU just reminds me of a laptop power brick, it comes with a single DC voltage isn't it ?

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, CircleTech said:

Won't this be a huge problem for PC system builders though? Think about if you are trying to do something a little weird like build a NAS. Now you're gonna need a DC-DC 12v to 5v and 3.3v buck converter (which will be a seperate expense) just to run your hard drive array. That or HDDs need to switch to be 12v only as well. 

ATX12VO doesn't replace ATX12V.  Intel expects the two standards to co-exist.

 

39 minutes ago, Aravir said:

I'm no expert electrical engineer but I know enough to read the simplified schematic on wikipedia and see that the 400V after the PFC part is still AC (No transformer) and that there is a big transformer after that part with multiple separate secondary windings for 12V, 5V and 3.3V.

That's actually an old school group regulated design.  Current ATX PSUs ARE ALREADY +12V only with a buck converter on the output side for +5V and +3.3V.

17 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

So if I understand this correctly, the reason why it's more efficient is because the 5V and 3.3V rails are basically crap because they can't deliver anywhere near the wattage a typical 5v and 3.3v rail can deliver in the average 650w psu.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion.

 

Current ATX12V PSUs convert AC to DC, then DC to DC.  The conversion to +5V and +3.3V has to be "overkill" to prevent backwards compatibility issues.  When you're building PSUs for a DIY market, you have to take any combination of parts into consideration.  This, unfortunately, makes the DC to DC less efficient and more expensive than it needs to be for those people that only need 10 or 15A on the +3.3V or +5V and not 20A or 25A.

8 minutes ago, QuestionAsker said:

11:22 - "converting from AC to DC power is extremely inefficient and conventional power supplied do it multiple times for the multiple voltages that they need to supply"

 

Yes it is true and they do it because it is cheaper than having a AC to 12V DC converter and then a bunch of DC-DC converters but as you also said in the video some power supplies actually have that DC-DC converter inside them so this sentence can not be considered as a benefit of 12VO PSU.

Yes, and no.  Most PCs use mostly +12V now any way.  Just the motherboard, graphics card, etc. already have buck converters on them to bring that +12V down to the voltages that are actually required.  So for the most part, the DC to DC in the PSU for those lower voltages are mostly redundant and relatively inefficient.

 

16 minutes ago, QuestionAsker said:

11:58 - "to meet upcoming energy efficiency standards (some examples) intel and their partners went a step further that is why the 12V down conversion is taking place here on the motherboard rather than in the power supply because the higher the voltage the less conduction loss we are going to deal with over the runs of wire"

 

This might actually be true but the difference is just nearly zero, I just used a multi meter to measure the resistance of a 50cm wire from my power supply and it was around 0.002 ohms and it is even funnier to know that the wire loss will actually get higher on full load and in idle it is just under 1 Watt.

That was a poorly crafted sentence on the LTT staff's part. You are right.  The drop in voltage along a PSU's DC cable is negligible.  What should have been said is that it's easier to meet the 2% efficiency requirements if you're only dealing with one voltage, not because of wires, but because even if you're only loading the +12V rail in a standard ATX12V PSU, you're still sending power through the DC to DC circuits even if they're not used.  Inside a PSU, there's so many points of loss.  PCB, caps, coils.  Way moreso than simply the drop in voltage through a 650mm length of wire.

 

24 minutes ago, QuestionAsker said:

So what actually bothers me is the unmentioned cost difference. The cost of that DC-DC conversion circuit on the motherboard is a lot higher than the whole Seasonic PSU you were using. AC to DC conversion is only optimal at a specific current/load and when you replace multiple AC to DC conversions with one AC to DC and then multiple DC to DC ones you get a lot higher efficiency at wider range of load specially idle.

 

Actually, the Seasonic Focus he was waving around as an example DOES use DC to DC for the +3.3V and +5V.  And the cost of those D2D cards in that PSU are more expensive than the D2D circuits on the motherboard.  

[Kisai]

15 minutes ago, QuestionAsker said:

 

 

And in the end 12VO PSU just reminds me of a laptop power brick, it comes with a single DC voltage isn't it ?

Except to have a 1200w power brick, it would be 5" thick, 12" long and 6" wide and require 5 barrel connectors each delivering 240w. What I just described is 5 dell 240w power bricks stacked on top of each other. You would need wire of 2-6AWG wire depending on how long the wire is. 4WG is your typical car battery wire. So imagine a barrel connector with jumper cable thick wires. It would be pretty darn big.

 

Really the solution requires something less elegant but more specific:

The base power supply should be 200w, enough to run low-power 35w CPU's and all the parts other than the GPU. Then an Auxiliary PSU is used for the rest of the power and redundancy, so that entire power supply can be switched off when there is no load for it. The MB has to generate all these other voltages for USB anyway, that's why it makes the most sense for the MB to do it.

 

It might be nice to be able to operate a 12VO motherboard straight off a 12V DC power source without the AC-DC-AC-DC conversion on a UPS.

 

[samcool55]

9 minutes ago, jonnyGURU said:

Not sure how you came to that conclusion.

 

Current ATX12V PSUs convert AC to DC, then DC to DC.  The conversion to +5V and +3.3V has to be "overkill" to prevent backwards compatibility issues.  When you're building PSUs for a DIY market, you have to take any combination of parts into consideration.  This, unfortunately, makes the DC to DC less efficient and more expensive than it needs to be for those people that only need 10 or 15A on the +3.3V or +5V and not 20A or 25A.

I probably owe you an explanation in that case.

 

While what you are saying is true, and makes a lot of sense. That's not the route my thoughts went.

 

I was more thinking of. The connectors on the motherboard are for SATA, and probably not a lot of them.

If you could connnect 4 sata connectors in total to the motherboard, that would make sense. 4 is probably plenty for most people.

 

But if you look at the average 650w psu, you get like, 6-8 sata connectors and probably 2-3 molex connectors as well.

That's a LOT more than you get on one of those 12vo motherboards, especially molex because that can connect to ancient stuff that could use quite a lot from a 3.3v and 5v rail and I doubt you get molex at all on those 12vo motherboards.. And more connectors mean more power which means more powerful rails.

[Guest]

Just now, samcool55 said:

I probably owe you an explanation in that case.

 

While what you are saying is true, and makes a lot of sense. That's not the route my thoughts went.

 

I was more thinking of. The connectors on the motherboard are for SATA, and probably not a lot of them.

If you could connnect 4 sata connectors in total to the motherboard, that would make sense. 4 is probably plenty for most people.

 

But if you look at the average 650w psu, you get like, 6-8 sata connectors and probably 2-3 molex connectors as well.

That's a LOT more than you get on one of those 12vo motherboards, especially molex because that can connect to ancient stuff that could use quite a lot from a 3.3v and 5v rail and I doubt you get molex at all on those 12vo motherboards.. And more connectors mean more power which means more powerful rails.

Correct.

 

But most people don't need that many SATA just like most people don't need a 20A +5V rail.

 

That goes back to what I said earlier:  ATX12VO isn't meant to replace ATX12V. They're meant to co-exist for different customers.

 

[Nathanpete]

This video wasn't that good. For the love of god leave it to SIs only. And I don't want this standard coming anywhere near the DIY market. At least parts of the enthusiast market is moving away from SATA, but it will still be around for a long time because I still expect low cost pre-builts to be running 7200RPM HDDs for years to come. Besides the budget gamer is still going to go for a SATA SSD. This standard will wreck the DIY market and then make it easier for SIs and computer repair shops. I kinda want them to co-exist, but really I just want it do die like BTX and for 80+ Bronze become the standard minimum for everyone. I get that the 80+ program is voluntary, 

 

If only SIs didn't cheap out on PSUs by not even getting a 80+ (white) unit. At least the PCIe connector is the same. 

[GDRRiley]

GN looked at 12VO systems months ago. Common Linus didn’t think tech Jesus would beat you too it? 
board are already in OEM systems. It maybe the first DIY pc board. 

[Nathanpete]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

GN looked at 12VO systems months ago. Common Linus didn’t think tech Jesus would beat you too it? 

Sauce?

[Spotty]

At around 8min is mentioned that (according to Intel) at around 9-12% load a PSU would only be 50-60% efficient. Which is way off. The seasonic PSU shown in the video is likely to be at or above 80% efficient at those loads. Even 80+ standard power supplies would see more than 60% efficiency at 10% load.

I'm not sure if this was just Intel spinning bullshit in whatever brief they provided or if it was poor diligence on LTTs behalf - probably a little of both.

There are places that test PSU efficiency at more loads than the 20, 50, and 100% loads tested for 80+ certification. Cybenetics is a good place and they test from 10% up to 110% in 10% load increments, as well as more detailed low load testing.

 

New efficiency targets will see >70% efficiency at 10W for PSUs 500W and lower and 70% efficiency at 2% load for PSUs above 500w. There are already PSUs on the market that achieve these efficiency targets at low loads.

The ATX12VO power supplies might help make it slightly easier for some PSUs to meet those goals, but standard ATX12V power supplies can and do meet it.

 

 

I'm really curious as to why there was such a variance between the power draw measured at the AC between the two power supplies. 60-80w on the seasonic PSU at idle then 30-35w on the ATX12VO PSU. The gap is too big to make any sense, especially as the seasonic PSU it was being compared to is already rather efficient even at low loads.

One guess would be the different hardware (motherboards) used between the two tests may have played a role. To properly test efficiency it should be on a load tester not a system, that way you can guarantee the same load on both PSUs for a fair comparison. That's not really practical if you don't already have the equipment, but at the very least measurements for the output should have been taken to actually have an idea of how much power the systems were consuming and how efficient each PSU was. See Mariushm's comment regarding current clamps on the cables for measuring the output.

 

There's too big of a difference between the two systems for it to be efficiency between the two power supplies. There's no way both systems had the same power draw. If the two systems were both drawing 30W that would make the ATX12VO PSU almost 95% efficient at those loads while the seasonic PSU would have needed to have been 37-50% efficient to have 60-80w power draw for a 30w load.

 

The load from the systems must have been different between the two tests to get those results. You can't compare the two.

 

I'm worried people are going to see this video, which the video mentions is some of the first and only coverage of the new ATX12VO standard, and they'll think that ATX12VO power supplies are vastly more efficient [at low loads] due to your flawed testing, bad information, and wrong conclusion presented ("we just cut our idle power consumption in half!").

Edited August 13, 2020 by Spotty

[biohazard918]

1 hour ago, Nathanpete said:

This video wasn't that good. For the love of god leave it to SIs only. And I don't want this standard coming anywhere near the DIY market. At least parts of the enthusiast market is moving away from SATA, but it will still be around for a long time because I still expect low cost pre-builts to be running 7200RPM HDDs for years to come. Besides the budget gamer is still going to go for a SATA SSD. This standard will wreck the DIY market and then make it easier for SIs and computer repair shops. I kinda want them to co-exist, but really I just want it do die like BTX and for 80+ Bronze become the standard minimum for everyone. I get that the 80+ program is voluntary, 

 

If only SIs didn't cheap out on PSUs by not even getting a 80+ (white) unit. At least the PCIe connector is the same. 

Did you some how miss the part where the motherboard supplies 3 and 5 volt power for your sata devices?

 

Anyway, I'd kinda like my next system (when zen 3 and the next gen gpus launch) to use 12vo, although I don't really expect that to be an option. Especially if the reduction in idle power consumption is that dramatic. It doesn't sound like that much at first glance but if you run your system 24/7 you're talking 100s of kw hours per year in reduced consumption for more or less the same upfront cost. Hopefully we will see at least some support for this in the DIY scene eventually.