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

[Nathanpete]

6 minutes ago, biohazard918 said:

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 (went zen 3 and the next gen gpus launch) to use 12vo. 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.

Yeah I thought they said something about it, but I was also not paying a ton of attention till the end of the video bc I was multitasking. I didn't bother to go back, so my bad ig. 

[Luscious]

This "idea" from Intel will end up as dead in the water as their BTX initiative. Transferring power conversion circuitry from the POWER SUPPLY to a motherboard opens up a can of worms when it comes to troubleshooting and expansion. How will you cater to users who need 12 hard drives, for example? Are you going to daisy chain multiple Y connectors off your motherboard to do that? And how difficult will it be to replace an entire motherboard if the 3.3V or 5V goes out, especially if the chipset or CPU is even as little as 6 months out of production. Sourcing a replacement mobo just to fix a DC power issue is going to be a huge backward step at that point, never mind on a system that would otherwise be working fine 3+ years down the road with just a conventional PSU swap.

 

Yeah, SI's won't be having that headache, they will always have ample spares on hand, but we're talking about consumers now - that's a completely different audience. Unless the goal is also to screw consumers over who buy SI boxes and lock them out of hardware upgrades with "proprietary" standards. Thanks Dell/HP!!!

 

If efficiency really is the goal we should be moving away from antiquated 120V AC to 240V AC used in countries like Australia. Already in the US 240V connections are standard in households that use washers/dryers. In the data center it's not uncommon to find 400V AC being routed to massive UPS units that in turn convert that to run 208V/240V server power supplies. Many server power supplies in fact REQUIRE 208V minimum in order to deliver their rated capacity, or run a box that's "fully loaded" such as a 4U GPU server.

 

Efficiency can also be met with alternative energy. The simple addition of solar can offset daytime energy consumption from the grid dramatically. And with many utilities now investing in giant battery tech alongside wind energy the power can continue to flow when the sun goes down as well.

[The Torrent]

5 hours 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.

 

This is what the video should have talked about not waffle waffle waffle like they did

[Tieox]

You disappoint me Linus.

 

1. You didn't take it apart for literally no reason

2. You didn't add RGB.

 

But most importantly, you didn't add watercooling.

[xnamkcor]

"But why?".

 

"Regulatory Bodies".

 

I still don't have a low flow toilet. I like my poops actually flushing.

 

Edit: If you don't convert to 5 or 3.3v on the PSU itself, the PSU can have better specs and pass regulations even though it still wastes power eventually on the motherboard. Genius!

[Nathanpete]

59 minutes ago, Kierax said:

You disappoint me Linus.

 

1. You didn't take it apart for literally no reason

2. You didn't add RGB.

 

But most importantly, you didn't add watercooling.

I understand this is a joke, but never ever take apart a power supply unless you are an actual electrician and know what you are doing. The PSU holds power on the circuit board for a long time after you unplug it, and if you take it apart and touch the wrong bit you will be seriously electrocuted. 

[xnamkcor]

18 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

I understand this is a joke, but never ever take apart a power supply unless you are an actual electrician and know what you are doing. The PSU holds power on the circuit board for a long time after you unplug it, and if you take it apart and touch the wrong bit you will be seriously electrocuted. 

I took a class in high school. I think I passed. I took apart about 5 PSUs. I think I'm still alive.

[Hunter259]

1 hour ago, Nathanpete said:

I understand this is a joke, but never ever take apart a power supply unless you are an actual electrician and know what you are doing. The PSU holds power on the circuit board for a long time after you unplug it, and if you take it apart and touch the wrong bit you will be seriously electrocuted. 

Unless you bought a pile of garbage no they really don't. Any reputable one should drain within seconds.

[Nathanpete]

Just now, Hunter259 said:

Unless you bought a pile of garbage no they really don't. Any reputable one should drain within seconds.

Hmm well maybe my high school taught me incorrectly. But I don't really care about opening a PSU anytime soon so idc. 

[Elvara]

The capacitor can hold a charge after unplugging the PSU but usually trying to boot your pc unplug will drain them for sure. AS far as I remember even 10 years ago a PSU will drain the capacitor pretty quickly within 15 seconds, I would have no problem opening a PSU but I guess with my knowledge in electricity I would still be careful. But I really don't see why you would open a PSU, I guess if something was wrong but a lot of them have pretty long warranty, my Corsair HX650 bronze had a 7 years warranty, I bought it in 2010 so if you don't buy something from very cheap you would be fine.

 

For the PSU in the video I only see that standard working for companies like Dell or HP when they sell 100's of computer for office work where they don't need that 5V or 3.3V and not making the motherboard replace the psu for it. But for home user I don't see the point.

[atxcyclist]

This is just more failure points on already crowded motherboards, and people with older boards getting kneecapped down the road sucks, too. Small efficiency gains are not worth rolling-out a completely incompatible standard to what we've had for multiple decades, this would be like Ford making all their new combustion-engine cars run on 16 volt batteries; Just more trouble for the end user when they have to deal with it later.

[QuestionAsker]

11 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

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.

Have you seen any VRM on your motherboard or GPU that brings down the voltage to 3.3V or 5V ? So if I put DC-DC converter inside the PSU for 5V and 3.3V rails where that specific redundancy is coming from ? If 3.3V or 5V were needed on any component in your PC that component will just use what PSU is providing ! I will provide an example, the ALC1220 chipset from realtek which is an audio chipset on my motherboard takes 3.3V on its first pin as VDD there is also an AVDD which takes 5V as input. Now how do you think my motherboard is providing this VDD and AVDD ? It converts down the 12V to 5V and 3.3V to power this chipset ? No ! there is no down converter on the board, it just uses the direct 3.3V and 5V that comes from PSU. I want to know about an example that a DC to DC converter inside PSU would be redundant. Show me a single component on motherboard or on a graphic card that needs a 3.3V or 5V and the board is using a down converter for that.

[mariushm]

2 hours ago, QuestionAsker said:

I will provide an example, the ALC1220 chipset from realtek which is an audio chipset on my motherboard takes 3.3V on its first pin as VDD there is also an AVDD which takes 5V as input. Now how do you think my motherboard is providing this VDD and AVDD ? It converts down the 12V to 5V and 3.3V to power this chipset ? No ! there is no down converter on the board, it just uses the direct 3.3V and 5V that comes from PSU. I want to know about an example that a DC to DC converter inside PSU would be redundant. Show me a single component on motherboard or on a graphic card that needs a 3.3V or 5V and the board is using a down converter for that.

Actually, there's a high chance the motherboard will use a LDO (low voltage drop linear regulator) to produce 3.3v or 3.6v from 5v, in order to give a smoother voltage (less ripple, noise etc)

 

Anyway, there's still voltages like 2.5v used by network card and sound card ICs, also often generated using LDOs from 3.3v or 5v rails. 

3.3v is still present in pci-e slots so it will exist for a long time and it's also in m.2 connectors now .... and 5v will continue to exist for a long time due to being default usb voltage. 

But, it can be make sense to have the 5v and 3.3v generated on the motherboard instead of the power supply. 

 

For example, think office pc with maximum 2 sata ports and 4 usb ports - the manufacturer could optimize the 5v dc-dc converter for let's say 6A, with peak of 10A ... two mechanical sata drives will use around 0.6A each, 2-3 A for usb devices plugged in ... and the rest for chipset and onboard stuff.

If there's no m.2 devices plugged in, and there's no cards plugged in pci-e slots, the bios could command the 3.3v dc-dc converter to turn off, or if there's low power consumption it could switch it into different operating modes to increase efficiency. 

 

It's a shame intel didn't go a step further and make it 20v instead of 12v , with option to fallback to 12v - 20v is usb voltage just like 12v ... so we potentially could have had ITX or low end motherboards run directly from usb type c connector with the help of a power delivery negotiation chip similar to the ones already used in laptops (chip could query power adapter and ask to switch to 12v or 20v)

20v would have also allowed reducing of wires, ex use 4 awg16 wires to power cpu ... an awg16 wire can carry 10+ amps, so 2 pairs of 20v x 10A = ~ 400 watts, about as much as the EPS 8 pin connector.

[Peter Starzynski]

Speaking of threads, this thread is bought to you by glasswire.

[Ater]

One thing I would love to see, Using a good ordinary ATX power supply 12 V in a system den a dedicated DC 12 V to DC 5 and DC 12 to 3.3 V as a DIY protect and see how good one could make it with a plan and off the shelf parts.

[spartaman64]

19 hours ago, xnamkcor said:

"But why?".

 

"Regulatory Bodies".

 

I still don't have a low flow toilet. I like my poops actually flushing.

 

Edit: If you don't convert to 5 or 3.3v on the PSU itself, the PSU can have better specs and pass regulations even though it still wastes power eventually on the motherboard. Genius!

i found the way to make sure those flush is to hold down the handle

[Vishera]

No thanks,i need a lot of SATA power cables...

[sydh]

There is no way that PSU's will become cheaper on a new standard. Nor will Motherboards not take advantage of the increased required components to increase the price.

[mariushm]

8 hours ago, Vishera said:

No thanks,i need a lot of SATA power cables...

Well, look at it this way ... the space on the back of a power supply that would be reserved for "peripheral" outputs can now be used for 6/8 pin pci-e outputs, so you'll have a power supply with 10+ 2x4 pin connectors in which you can plug cables with 1 or 2 pci-e 6/8 pin at the end  (even the optional 6 pin connector that goes into motherboard is pci-e 6pin)

 

You'll be able to easily buy a modular cable that plugs into one of those 2x4 pin connectors and has a dc-dc converter on it to generate 5v and then have 5+ sata connectors on the cable. The 12v will be pass-through directly from the power supply.

 

For example here's the seasonic x-650 i own :

 

Here's a crude ms paint example, with the 10 pin connector for motherboard, 6 pin connector for optional pci-e 6 pin for extra power to mb (could be 8 pin i guess) and everything else is 8 pin pci-e :

The psu can have 4 pairs of 12v+ground or stick to 3pairs + 2 ground wires for pretty cables , i'd prefer 4 pairs because it helps when both pci-e 8 pin connectors on a cable are used.

You could have AT LEAST another 2 rows of connectors, maybe even 3 (depending on fan thickness and length of psu)

  

[Spotty]

On 8/14/2020 at 7:28 AM, Spotty said:

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.

 

[...]

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.

Meant to add this sooner. Cybenetics has a testing report for the Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 650W.

https://www.cybenetics.com/index.php?option=database&params=1,0,12

ftp://members.cybenetics.report/PDF_Reports/d/cybenetics_dfQ.pdf

 

At 10% load the PSU sees 84.546% efficiency (115VAC). Significantly higher than the 50-60% efficiency figure quoted in the video.

 

 

It's not just 80+ Gold PSUs either. The Corsair VS650, a budget 80+ Standard power supply, is above 79% efficient at 10% load. Still way above the efficiency figures quoted in the video.

 

[InvalidUUID]

I had a system which was running an i3-2130 (LGA1155) way back in the day where the 3.3v and the 5v was actually handled by the motherboard, the system was a Lenovo M82 ThinkCenter, It had a very non standard power delivery system, here's a picture of the motherboard (picture is from newegg) where you can see that the main power connector actually has 14 pins, next to it are two 4 pin connectors which supplied power to HDD's and other components like Disc Drives.


This video reminded me of that old system and I wondered why they stopped doing this, especially in OEM systems, but we've been seeing more of it lately.

I actually still have this board laying around somewhere and this is what the two 4 pin connectors that went from the motherboard to the other components look like.

[Loote]

My PSU has lived through 4 motherboards, it is still going strong after over 10 years of usage. For me having those converters on MOBO would mean significantly higher cost just because I plan for my PSU to outlive them. I am planning on getting a new one, but I want it to live for 10+ years too and with motherboard it's highly unlikely.

[mariushm]

22 minutes ago, Loote said:

My PSU has lived through 4 motherboards, it is still going strong after over 10 years of usage. For me having those converters on MOBO would mean significantly higher cost just because I plan for my PSU to outlive them. I am planning on getting a new one, but I want it to live for 10+ years too and with motherboard it's highly unlikely.

Well, if you get a 12v0 power supply, you'll simply have to get motherboards that use the 12v0 standard, just like the motherboards now support standard atx.

So just like your old psu, you should be able to use this new standard through 4 motherboards or more, if the standard lives (BTX was a thing and failed)

 

The VRMs on motherboard won't add significant cost, you'll save maybe 10-15$ on the price of the psu by not having those dc-dc converters in the psu, and the motherboard will cost 5-10$ more.

In theory power supplies should cost even less, because you reduce the number of different components (different connectors on the power supply and on the end of the cables), now there's only 2 different header connectors on the psu case (10 pin + 6 pin + 6/8 pin for pci-e) instead of 24, peripheral, pci-e, eps etc

They don't have to buy sata and molex connectors anymore and custom make chains of connectors, now they can mass produce only 3 different cables (10pin , eps 8 pin, pci-e 6/8 pin)

They don't have to add -12v regulator (for the serial ports)

They can use simpler protection chips because they don't have to monitor 3.3v and 5v anymore and have over voltage undervoltage, over current, under current...

 

Think of it as economies of scale, volume purchases ... a mid-high end motherboard uses 8-16 power stages for the cpu core power (or hi-side mosfet + lo-side mosfets), 2-4 power stages for the SoC and / or integrated graphics part, and 1-2 power stages for the memory controller ... so you could have 20+ power stages or 20 x (1 hi + 1-2 lo mosfets) ... tens of mosfets or power stages chips per motherboard.

A typical dc-dc converter in a power supply has 2-3 phases and outputs up to 20A of current, and you'll typically have 2-4 mosfets per voltage (3.3v and 5v), so 4-8 mosfets in total.

A motherboard manufacturer will get one price when it orders 500k mosfets, and a power supply manufacturer will get another price when it orders let's say 100k.

It wouldn't be that much more expensive to reuse some of the power stages or mosfets used for the cpu vrm or soc vrm or just upgrade the vrm controller from a 2 phase for memory to a 5-8 phase.

Basically, there's already at least 3 dc-dc converter circuits on a motherboard, adding another one that can use the same components will be cheaper

 

The downside is more ewaste, because you'll keep using the psu for 10+ years, but Intel (and maybe amd if they become too successful and go bad) will force you to upgrade the motherboard every 2-3 years if you want their latest cpu.

[xnamkcor]

3 hours ago, mariushm said:

The VRMs on motherboard won't add significant cost, you'll save maybe 10-15$ on the price of the psu by not having those dc-dc converters in the psu, and the motherboard will cost 5-10$ more.

Putting the hardware on the MB won't add significant cost, but for some reason taking the hardware out of thje PSU will save you money?

And there's no guarantee that the PSU price will actually go down. That's up to the seller.

[Loote]

10 hours ago, mariushm said:

Well, if you get a 12v0 power supply, you'll simply have to get motherboards that use the 12v0 standard, just like the motherboards now support standard atx.

So just like your old psu, you should be able to use this new standard through 4 motherboards or more, if the standard lives (BTX was a thing and failed)

Oh, I didn't think motherboards would be unavailable, just more expensive. Even the numbers you provided over 10 years it comes to $10-$15 on psu and $20-$40 on the motherboard(multiplied 4 times) side. I fully understand that economies of scale play a huge part and if suddenly everything becomes 12V0, automatically that option is the cheapest(as long as supply keeps up with demand and the ATX doesn't get oversupplied which would make prices take a dive), but I guess we'll see.