Could desktop PSUs handle screen power ?

[JoW81]

Hi, I had this idea, which may be stupid, I'm not an electrician lol.

Why don't high-end PSUs offer the possibility to manage the power supply of our screens (or various other stuff like laptops, smartphones... but I'm going to focus my idea on screens) and thus take advantage a bit more of their impressive 80+ efficiency?
With dual or triple screens becoming commonplace and drawing more and more pixels, this seems like a good idea? With just a few ports (proprietary or otherwise) on the back next to the power input, and a plastic cover when not in use.
This will directly benefit screens whose power is managed by a power brick outside the screen, which is still not very rare (my two screens are in this case), but for screens whose power management is integrated, yes it's useless.
Like all regulations, this could lead to cheaper screens if all manufacturers follow suit, and to less electronics being manufactured in general.
In addition, it would push consumers to use more overspecced/sophisticated power supplies, which are often more efficient and durable, with better warranty periods and all sorts of benefits. The industry would thus be pushed into a virtuous circle.
And less use of power strips.
So I asked chatGPT about it and he said that PSUs couldn't handle that power, which I seriously doubt, and that it would require serious regulations and connections between the PSU industry and the display industry, which is true.
So guys, TLDR, desktop PSUs handle more stuff, less electronics manufactured overall, better efficiency so lower power bills and a happier planet. But it might be impossible, it's a huge task, the industry might never get along.
What do you think? And is there an expert to tell us if it's technically possible?

[RollinLower]

this used to be a thing on older systems:



you could plug your CRT right into the back of your system!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Its possble apple has done it in the past with ADC, but there are a lot of problms so no one uses it.

 

As far as making monitors cheaper by removing the PSU, this probably won't happen unless every device has the power adaptr built in. And a lot of device that can connect to displays like phones and laptops aren't really ready to provide extra power. You could only have it for lower power displays but there its annoying which display needs power and which has it included.

 

6 minutes ago, JoW81 said:

In addition, it would push consumers to use more overspecced/sophisticated power supplies, which are often more efficient and durable, with better warranty periods and all sorts of benefits. The industry would thus be pushed into a virtuous circle.

I doubt this would be a win. Extra large PSUs only really make sense if the monitor is using it. And how much extra power? A basic office monitor is like 20-40w, but a few HDR displays could be 1000w+, so this makes it much more complex.

 

 

[JoW81]

never heard of such displays, that sounds nuts, i hope you get blind for that much power

[8tg]

38 minutes ago, JoW81 said:

So I asked chatGPT about it

So that was your first mistake 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, JoW81 said:

never heard of such displays, that sounds nuts, i hope you get blind for that much power

There's many which already do, ones which support power and DisplayPort over USB-C, particularly ones designed for laptops that have such a port.

 

Unfortunately on the desktop both NVIDIA and AMD implemented then dropped USB-C ports directly on the GPU so this is more complicated and meant it never became a common feature of desktop monitors.

[mariushm]

LCD monitors consume usually under 100 watts. It depends on brightness, size etc ... a 1080p 24" could consume as little as 30-40 watts.  The basic LG 24" monitors recently bought at work came with 19v 1.2A adapters (around 25 watts) for example.

The built in power supplies are usually already over 85% efficient, they're switching power supplies like the computer power supply.

 

The led backlights usually run at higher voltages like 30-70v ... so quite high voltage, low current, which means efficient transfer of energy between power supply and led backlight.

 

If you power the monitor from a computer power supply, you'd have to send 12v from power supply to the monitor, and then you'd have to redesign the backlight circuit to work with 12v or use a step-up/boost regulator to boost 12v to 20v or more, whatever is needed. There's gonna be quite a few watts lost in the cable between the power supply/video card and the monitor

 

So it could actually overall be

 

[voyager_]

It seems like it would just over complicate things, the power supply makers would have to add the support along with display manufacturers. There would also need to be a standard put in place for everyone to use. At some point you would end up having to replace a perfectly working power supply because your monitor requires version 57.3 but your power supply only supports 57.2 or older. What happens if you want to hook up a console or laptop to the display but now your desktop needs to be on to power it. There is no reason to overcomplicate it and it would be such a niche product it would never be cost effective to produce and sell. 

[JoW81]

Of course, it would be messy and overly complicated at first. But look at smartphones, most of them no longer come with a charger and I'm pretty sure this has helped (at least a little) to move to mega chargers with 5+ ports and stupid amounts of Watts for usb devices and also to standardize everything (except for Apple who needed to have their hand forced by the EU), even if the choice to no longer provide a charger is still debatable, let's be honest, we already have plenty of chargers lying around our homes. It's kind of the same idea.

I imagine that the first players to try this will be in both sectors (PSU and display) and will do something proprietary, like Corsair for example, and if it's a success, more and more players will try it until it becomes a standard. At first, this will force manufacturers to provide our current way of doing things AND this, but once it's become a standard, they can switch to that completely, but as you said, once it's become a standard, that means you'll have to change everything to the new standard, which will make the change more expensive at first for consumers.
On the other hand Voyager, I rather imagined that the psu could deliver power with or without the computer turned on, but since there are screens of more than 1kw, I imagine they'll have to cap the maximum power delivered.
Finally,as Marius said ,that might be impossible because of the technical nightmare or straight up counterproductive. At least, i'm less dumb now. Thanks guys.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, JoW81 said:

Of course, it would be messy and overly complicated at first. But look at smartphones, most of them no longer come with a charger and I'm pretty sure this has helped (at least a little) to move to mega chargers with 5+ ports and stupid amounts of Watts for usb devices and also to standardize everything (except for Apple who needed to have their hand forced by the EU), even if the choice to no longer provide a charger is still debatable, let's be honest, we already have plenty of chargers lying around our homes. It's kind of the same idea.

I imagine that the first players to try this will be in both sectors (PSU and display) and will do something proprietary, like Corsair for example, and if it's a success, more and more players will try it until it becomes a standard. At first, this will force manufacturers to provide our current way of doing things AND this, but once it's become a standard, they can switch to that completely, but as you said, once it's become a standard, that means you'll have to change everything to the new standard, which will make the change more expensive at first for consumers.
On the other hand Voyager, I rather imagined that the psu could deliver power with or without the computer turned on, but since there are screens of more than 1kw, I imagine they'll have to cap the maximum power delivered.
Finally,as Marius said ,that might be impossible because of the technical nightmare or straight up counterproductive. At least, i'm less dumb now. Thanks guys.

The USB C for all phones works pretty well as all phones pull about the same power, with a pretty small range in battery capacities. But with monitors there is a lot more variance.

 

I think it often makes a lot more sense for a monitor to power the device as much of the time the monitor will move less than a laptop or phone, and likely the monitor would pull more power than a low power laptop. And this is getting kinda common on some monitors now. This doesn't work with high power desktops, but I'd guess that's a pretty small amount of the market compared to the low power business laptop/desktop market.

 

 

 

 

[Caroline]

8 hours ago, RollinLower said:

this used to be a thing on older systems:



you could plug your CRT right into the back of your system!

I'd still do that if my PSU had the female output. It's not powered by the PSU itself though, it simply outputs whatever AC input the PSU uses.

 

Dunno you but if I used an LCD I'd rather like an internal PSU rather than a brick, all the early CCFL backlit ones I've seen are like this, but the newer LED backlit aren't, so you have to deal with a brick... meh, better keep my thicc tube.

[JoW81]

Power bricks are a total meh, having a battlestation is already a cable nightmare. I left everything in a corner and try not to think about it lol.

[Motifator]

12 hours ago, JoW81 said:

never heard of such displays, that sounds nuts, i hope you get blind for that much power

Not hope, wish? Sadism is not good for your psychology.

AIO's exist.

Powering a monitor is such an easy feat, modern panels even UW, barely pull above 50-100W.

[Blue4130]

On 3/12/2024 at 4:24 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

The USB C for all phones works pretty well as all phones pull about the same power, with a pretty small range in battery capacities. But with monitors there is a lot more variance.

But USB-C is now also found charging laptops as well as phones, and they draw significantly more juice than a phone as well as having much larger batteries.