Report: Intel Pushing ATX12VO Power Connector for 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs

[Lightwreather]

Summary

VideoCardz today shared a snippet of a document claiming to show Intel's strong desire for motherboard vendors to adopt the ATX12VO power connector on future Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake LGA1700 motherboards.
 

 

Quotes

Quote

The ATX12VO is a 10-pin power connector that Intel has been pushing since a year ago to replace the conventional 24-pin power connector on modern motherboards. The connector ditches the 3.3V and 5V rails and only maintains the 12V rail. A more compact power connector minimizes power supply production costs, as well as cable clutter for the end user.

 

The flipside is that motherboard manufacturers would have to implement DC-to-DC converters on their motherboards to transform the 12V voltage down to usable 3.3V and 5V voltages, since there are still many components that use one of the latter.

Intel's own numbers show that ATX12VO specification is more power-efficient at idle or low power loads. With a 20W load, an ATX12VO 500W 80 PLUS Gold power supply offers a power efficiency of up to 83%, compared to an ATX 500W 80 PLUS Gold unit's 64%. Alder Lake features a hybrid combination of high-performance Golden Cove cores and low-power Gracemont cores so we can see the connection there. The chipmaker has gone as far as saying that Alder Lake offers the best performance per watt for a desktop processor.

 

According to VideoCardz's unnamed sources, Intel is very committed to the ATX12VO power connector. However, power supply and motherboard vendors aren't very fond of the idea. It's understandable since both parties will have to ultimately redesign their best power supplies and best motherboards to embrace the ATX12VO standard, which cost both money and time.

There's a very small window remaining to get ATX12VO-compatible power supplies and motherboards ready for the Alder Lake CPU launch, which is rumored to take place in late 2021 or early 2022. Power supply manufacturers need about four months to ready for mass production, and motherboard makers require anywhere up to four to five months to validate ATX12VO motherboards. What all this means is that OEM, ODM and LOEMs would need to be working hand-in-hand with both power supply and manufacturer vendors by the end of this month in order to have any chance of getting their products up in time for Alder Lake's debut.However, VideoCardz's sources claimed that entry-level motherboards and pre-built systems are likely the only candidates to leverage the ATX12VO power connector. High-end and workstation-grade motherboards should continue to utilize the 24-pin power connector that we all know. You don't necessarily need an ATX12VO power supply anyway, since most power supply vendors offer a ATX12VO adapter cable to plug into a standard ATX unit. However, you'll be losing out on the power savings, which is the point of the ATX12VO specification.

 

My thoughts

In my opinion, this is a rather good timing to be pushing a new standard. The reason I'm saying this is a good time to be pushing a new standard is because with newer CPUs and GPUs pulling more power, more people are likely gonna be upgrading their PSU and since this will concide with the launching of newer sockets, people are also gonna be buying newer motherboards. But whether we need a new standard is up for debate. Though, this new standard may introduce more points of failure but there's also the argument with regards to cable management. Well, whether the efficiency metrics scale and what they transalate to daily usage, we will have to wait and see.

Sources

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/report-intel-pushing-atx12vo-power-connector-for-12th-gen-alder-lake-cpus
https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-wants-atx12vo-standard-to-be-more-popular-with-cheap-alder-lake-s-motherboards

[jaslion]

I disagree with the part where people are going to be buying a lot of new psu's. The rtx3000 series singlehandily caused a huge amount of psu sales so I do no think people are going to be wanting to replace those new high end expensive psu's any time soon :p.

 

Edit: I also just dislike the fact that the motherboard now does most of the power redistribution. What used to be a simple point of failure or simple point of adding redundancy now became intermingled with one of the hardest parts to swap in a computer.

[Chris Pratt]

Not really all that surprising. The only benefit to the big.LITTLE design of Alder Lake is power efficiency, which is also the impetus behind 12VO. Seems to be a concerted move to position themselves as the choice for business machines in countries that are starting to enforce efficiency standards.

[Spotty]

You'll probably see it on prebuilts from major OEMs, Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, and the likes. Maybe on some of the other major system integrators. Doubt you will see it on motherboards sold separately or from more boutique/low volume system integrators.

 

Quote

Most high-end gaming boards for Alder Lake are unlikely to feature ATX12VO standards. We might however see a lot more entry-level motherboards for system integrators and pre-built system suppliers who are interested in offering the best power efficiency to meet strict government power regulations.

 

Many of the major pre builders use custom 12V PSUs anyway, the new standard just gets rid of the mess of proprietary connectors they use and standardises it across all of the brands.

[Levent]

Computer connectors needs to be changed all together. SATA will be particularly annoying when this becomes the standard, front panel IO and USB is shitty as is, SATA power being a massive 4pin 12v connector is not acceptable imo.

[Bombastinator]

The way to make that one work is to have AMD and intel both do it at the same time. This is one of the problems with duopoly though.  They can’t agree on anything because if the do it’s collusion.

[Kisai]

19 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The way to make that one work is to have AMD and intel both do it at the same time. This is one of the problems with duopoly though.  They can’t agree on anything because if the do it’s collusion.

I'm not sure about that. They agree on USB, they can agree on ATX12VO

 

At any rate it's far more likely to make an appearance in low-end systems first, ones where the CPU will be either soldered to the motherboard, or APU/SoC types on ITX/mATX boards.

 

What we should all be wary of is the sudden disappearance of the SATA power connectors. Since these boards will likely not support SATA drives just to save part costs.

 

HEDT systems might be next on the list, since they would benefit the most from more efficient power. However I don't see regular "high end" systems going this route first, it'll probably be the last hold out since PSU's last twice as long as the computers they're in.

 

 

[Sauron]

42 minutes ago, Levent said:

Computer connectors needs to be changed all together. SATA will be particularly annoying when this becomes the standard, front panel IO and USB is shitty as is, SATA power being a massive 4pin 12v connector is not acceptable imo.

I think you're confusing sata with molex?

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

You'll probably see it on prebuilts from major OEMs, Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, and the likes

Already was a thing, before the Intel 12VO standard. The number of HP desktop models that used custom power supplies and connectors, geeezzzzz. At least now this crap will work across HP to Dell etc rather than stupid custom PSU standard from HP not working with stupid custom PSU standard from Dell.

 

It's already frustrating enough that I can't put a HPE PSU in to a Dell or Lenovo server when they are all the same typical formfactor size and design standard. Only a personal used market peeve but one none the less.

[Elisis]

We're finally changing from the bloody ancient ATX standard! Should be something to look forward to. Cheaper/better on average PSUs for one, but needing thinner cables should also be really nice, from a consumer's pov, anyway.

[mariushm]

The standard is similar enough that you can make an adapter cable from 24 pin atx connector to 10 pin 12v0 connector. 

 

Basically, I think you only need to have a step-up (boost) regulator to boost 5v stand-by to 12v stand-by between the connectors, the other signals should be the same / compatible.

 

So it's not a big deal. If you have a power supply you trust, you'll be able to get adapter cables for it.

[Levent]

35 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I think you're confusing sata with molex?

Nope.

edit: linked the wrong page.

[Dabombinable]

27 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Already was a thing, before the Intel 12VO standard. The number of HP desktop models that used custom power supplies and connectors, geeezzzzz. At least now this crap will work across HP to Dell etc rather than stupid custom PSU standard from HP not working with stupid custom PSU standard from Dell.

 

It's already frustrating enough that I can't put a HPE PSU in to a Dell or Lenovo server when they are all the same typical formfactor size and design standard. Only a personal used market peeve but one none the less.

ATX connectors with wires swapped...or additional completely pointless power connectors that Dell boards need to function (my very old Antec PSU amazingly supports old Dell boards, even though it was included in cases that never saw any Dell branded parts)

[Spotty]

1 hour ago, Levent said:

Computer connectors needs to be changed all together. SATA will be particularly annoying when this becomes the standard, front panel IO and USB is shitty as is, SATA power being a massive 4pin 12v connector is not acceptable imo.

 

7 minutes ago, Levent said:

Nope.

edit: linked the wrong page.

I'm not really seeing the problem? Firstly that 4 pin connector is 12V and 5V. 12V is yellow and 5V is red. The 4 pin connector isn't 'massive' either? It's a smaller connector than the 4 pin CPU power connectors. You can see in the photos on the page you linked to that the connector is smaller than the connectors next to it.

 

Instead of plugging a SATA power cable in to the power supply it plugs in to the motherboard. I guess it might make the motherboard look more messy with more cables coming from it, but that's about it.

 

What exactly don't you like about it?

[Dabombinable]

3 minutes ago, Spotty said:

 

I'm not really seeing the problem? Firstly that 4 pin connector is 12V and 5V. 12V is yellow and 5V is red. The 4 pin connector isn't 'massive' either? It's a smaller connector than the 4 pin CPU power connectors. You can see in the photos on the page you linked to that the connector is smaller than the connectors next to it.

 

Instead of plugging a SATA power cable in to the power supply it plugs in to the motherboard. I guess it might make the motherboard look more messy with more cables coming from it, but that's about it.

 

What exactly don't you like about it?

What I'd like to see from 12VO boards are combined Sata+power connectors, that allow only a single cable to go to SATA drives. It'd cutback on shitloads of cable mess.

Also, I'd like to see the same connectors omit 3.3V as well. It'd allow some cheaper HDD to be used/rescued from their poorly designed enclosures.

[Spotty]

8 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Also, I'd like to see the same connectors omit 3.3V as well. It'd allow some cheaper HDD to be used/rescued from their poorly designed enclosures.

The new ATX12VO SATA power connectors are 12V and 5V only. No 3.3V on the SATA power connector.

 

 

If you go back to the photo Levent posted a link to there's only Yellow (+12V), Red (+5V) and Black (ground). You can actually see the empty space for the 5th wire that would have been 3.3V, I guess for that particular cable they were still using the same mouldings used for their other connectors.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

I'm not sure about that. They agree on USB, they can agree on ATX12VO

 

At any rate it's far more likely to make an appearance in low-end systems first, ones where the CPU will be either soldered to the motherboard, or APU/SoC types on ITX/mATX boards.

 

What we should all be wary of is the sudden disappearance of the SATA power connectors. Since he these boards will likely not support SATA drives just to save part costs.

 

HEDT systems might be next on the list, since they would benefit the most from more efficient power. However I don't see regular "high end" systems going this route first, it'll probably be the last hold out since PSU's last twice as long as the computers they're in.

 

 

The USB group has a whole lotta lotta companies in it including Apple. Intel famously recently dropped out of the usb consortium because they thought that the group was doing really really stupid things that wouldn’t work.  USB4 is basically thunderbolt3 and USB3 combined with reduced minimum manufacturing specs.  Thunderbolt4 is basically the same thing, is intel (and Apple interestingly ) only and instead has i creased minimum requirements. Intel thought USB4 would be a big PITA and a massive mess.  It’s not impossible that they are right.  We shall see what we shall see.  There are a lot of standards groups like the USB consortium.  They need more than two players generally though.  The problem with ATX is CPU wise (and also GPU wise) there are only two players.  Now if asus and MSI and gigabyte AMD whoever else makes motherboards (my memory is there are a bunch)  got together that could do it.  They’re not a duolopoly. Duopolys such as what is in place now only exist because of a very questionable court decision.  Before that decision the minimum number of companies in a given market was three.  The court decision set forth certain situations which were originally supposed to be very rare (it didn’t turn out that way) where the number could be reduced to two.  The three minimum is still in force.  There’s merely a limited set of circumstances (which apparently everyone attempts to arrange for now) where that number may be dropped by one.  The problem is that a group in a duolopoly is now locked into those limitations or they may find themselves on the wrong end of an antitrust prosecution.  

Edited May 16, 2021 by Bombastinator

[porina]

I think this change is long overdue. If you look at the evolution PSUs in the ATX era, you see more and more power delivered over 12V and less on the others, which is mainly for legacy reasons + USB. Transition might be a bit of a pain but that's only a pain point for self builders which is a tiny fraction of the overall market.

[Moonzy]

-looks at recently acquired PSUs-

-sighs-

 

Though if it's for the better, so be it

[WhitetailAni]

Well RIP.

I use so many SATA/Molex power connectors. Currently 7, though later it'll be 10.

Molex I'll be using 4. PSU only has 3 but I have 2 splitters, and one goes from Molex to SATA. The 2 SATA powers on there go to less important things, like my PCIe riser and side fan (once it's done).

 

I wonder if it will be possible to get "ATX12VO" PSUs that have the ATX12VO connectors but also produce 5v and 3.3v, for extra SATA and Molex power connectors? I can see them selling well.

[mariushm]

You don't HAVE TO power your sata devices from the motherboard. You can power them from other sources.

Your SATA hard drives or whatever devices you have don't know and don't care if they're powered from the power supply, or from the motherboard.

 

You'll be able to buy adapter cables that convert a pci-e 6 pin / 6+2 pin into  a chain of multiple sata connectors.

 

All you need is a dc-dc converter to convert 12v present in the pci-e 6/8 pin connector, into 5v, and now you have 5v and 12v required for sata.

 

Doesn't even have to be expensive, such dc-dc converter can be less than 2$, so overall you could buy a cable with 3-5 sata connectors for around 5-10$.

 

[HenrySalayne]

5 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

The only benefit to the big.LITTLE design of Alder Lake is power efficiency, which is also the impetus behind 12VO. Seems to be a concerted move to position themselves as the choice for business machines in countries that are starting to enforce efficiency standards.

Just a quick reminder: In 2016 a 6000 series Skylake build could easily idle below 10 W. Writing some stuff in Word or surfing the web was still close to this value.  And I don't mean the CPU itself, I'm talking about the entire system, measured from the wall outlet. I don't know why this changed in the last few years, but we were already there.

Now my computer is pulling 3.2 W while being shut down, because ASUS doesn't allow to turn off USB power in S4 for my motherboard. I not only had to disable quick start-up, USB power delivery in S5 is also enabled by default. Some useful default settings could probably reduce the energy consumption of hundreds of thousands of computers drastically.

We probably wouldn't need a new standard, if manufacturers would exhaust the currently available potential.

[AndreiArgeanu]

If this gets pushed towards business pc's then fine understandable, but I don't want to see this enter the DIY consumer space, and if it does I hope it faces backlash, since I can't imagine how much of a PSU shortage will be caused as people try to upgrade to newer platforms, not to even mention the potential mountains of e-waste created by old, incompatible psu's. The very least I expect if this is pushed upon the DIY space is adapters included with motherboards for older psu's at the very least. Maybe even a trade in programme that gives you a hefty price cut of a new PSU, and then the old PSU is taken away and properly recycled.

[Bitter]

5 hours ago, Spotty said:

You'll probably see it on prebuilts from major OEMs, Dell, HP, Acer, Lenovo, and the likes. Maybe on some of the other major system integrators. Doubt you will see it on motherboards sold separately or from more boutique/low volume system integrators.

 

 

Many of the major pre builders use custom 12V PSUs anyway, the new standard just gets rid of the mess of proprietary connectors they use and standardises it across all of the brands.

Which is why I'm excited for this, in a few years OEM stuff will be dumping onto eBay cheaply and having a single standardized PSU that'll work all the different OEM boards? Wonderful!!

[CerealExperimentsLain]

6 hours ago, jaslion said:

I disagree with the part where people are going to be buying a lot of new psu's. The rtx3000 series singlehandily caused a huge amount of psu sales so I do no think people are going to be wanting to replace those new high end expensive psu's any time soon :p.

 

Edit: I also just dislike the fact that the motherboard now does most of the power redistribution. What used to be a simple point of failure or simple point of adding redundancy now became intermingled with one of the hardest parts to swap in a computer.

I got a cheap nearly brand new but still used EVGA SuperNova P2 650w, a platinum rated PSU with a 10 year warranty, because the guy selling it was planning to get a 3080.  Now, that was in the fall and I have no idea how much luck he had in getting it, but I was building an UnRAID server and that's a great PSU for that purpose.  Highly reliable, long warranty, high efficiency, bring it on.