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Intel Power

How Intel is Changing the Future of Power Supplies With Its ATX12VO Spec (pcworld.com) 188

Posted by EditorDavid from the railing-against-rails dept.
"We don't often talk about power supplies, but Intel's new ATX12VO spec — that's an 'O' for 'Oscar,' not a zero — will start appearing soon in pre-built PCs from OEMs and system integrators, and it represents a major change in PSU design," reports PC World.

"The ATX12VO spec removes voltage rails from the power supply, all in a bid to improve efficiency standards on the PC and meet stringent government regulations. But while the spec essentially removes +3.3-volt, +5-volt and -12-volt and +5-volt standby power from the PSU, they aren't going away — they're just moving to the motherboard. That's the other big change..."

Long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool explains: If those voltages are required, the motherboard is expected to supply it by converting 12V power. Removing those two rails will shrink the connector from 24 pin to 10 pin.

One of the main reasons is increased flexibility for future needs. That dependence on these separate rails has been reduced over time but current power supplies must dedicate a fixed amount to those rails. The example given is that a current 600W PS may only need 15% (90W) of total power dedicated to those rails but a decade ago may require 25% (150W). Switching to the MB supplying the power means more 12V power.

A benefit is power supplies will be cheaper to make and also more power efficient. With two fewer rails, there is fewer connectors and parts and power supply makers can focus on efficiency of just one rail.
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How Intel is Changing the Future of Power Supplies With Its ATX12VO Spec More

How Intel is Changing the Future of Power Supplies With Its ATX12VO Spec

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  • With two fewer rails, there is fewer connectors and parts and power supply makers can focus on efficiency of just one rail.

    I hope it was the person describing the difference and not someone from PC World.

    • From the perspective of the power supply makers, less rails means fewer internal and external parts for them and reduced costs. For example, removing those rails reduces the main connector from 24 pin to 10 pin. That makes it cheaper to manufacture. It also means that PS makers can focus on power efficiency of 12V power instead focusing on all the rails that were removed.

      • Am I being cynical that I'm expecting the price the end user pays for power supplies to say the same (or effectively even go up as higher power PSUs will be the norm at the price of the older PSUs at the same power rating) while the cost of a motherboard will climb 20% for the extra components?

  • Moving the problem does not get rid of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Rizz ( 1319 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @12:45PM (#59830286)

    So, they're talking about how much more efficient it will be without the rails on the power supply - the one thing in your PC that is completely specialized in power conversions.

    Now, instead, they're putting it on the motherboard, a highly complicated component that is very unlikely to be as efficient at doing the power conversion.

    On top of that, the already often overcrowded motherboards have to find space for even more components and connectors? Wonderful.

    This is a good idea why, again?

    • Re:Moving the problem does not get rid of the prob (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @12:48PM (#59830298)
      Raises the value of motherboards, where Intel gets a cut of every sale, and lowers the value of power supplies, where Intel doesn't.

      • That's not how it works. Intel gets a cut for the Intel components, the rest is fixed priced regardless of how much you sell the board for.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          You'be been astroturfing this thread pretty hard so far. It's quite obvious in this case that intel stands to benefit from this, as its board partners will be willing to pay more as they can charge more for additional components and benefit from reduced MTBF rate forcing customers to replace motherboards more often instead of a cheap PSU.

    • What was the "problem", exactly?

      • A specification that over designed powersupplies to cater for lowest common denominators leading to massively inefficient power conversion at the 5V and 3.3V rails in addition to extra hardware and cables connecting the two all presenting a non-zero cost.

        Given that most devices in computers already provide a level of voltage conversion to suit themselves it doesn't make any sense for the PSU to dedicate 5V and 3.3V to the motherboard.

    • More flexibility. Today a 600W PS may only be 600W total not 600W 12V power as the PS must allocate a portion to the other rails when it was designed and built. The trend the last decade has been less power needs for other rails especially 3.3V. Also motherboards now have varying needs of the different voltages with high end systems requiring more than budget builds. The idea is that a 600W PS in the future could supply both use cases adequately. Both systems were going to require different MBs anyways so s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by The Rizz ( 1319 )

        And how exactly is moving all of that to the motherboard any more efficient than having the power supply take care of power balance? Why can the PSUs not be designed to properly balance power to the different rails?

        • And how exactly is moving all of that to the motherboard any more efficient than having the power supply take care of power balance? Why can the PSUs not be designed to properly balance power to the different rails?

          What you are asking is that the PSU be far more intelligent. It will require circuitry, maybe specialized chips. Current PSUs only supply power and a fixed max amount of power. That's all they are asked to do. In the future the PSU will do exactly the same but with fewer rails. Asking the PSU to regulate power to different rails is something that MBs do now especially with VRMs.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            There is no reason the PS can't be built to provide it's entire capacity to the 12V raul internally and use it to power supplies for 5.5v and 3.3v internally. Those switching supplies would have a lot more room and so better cooling. The result is a PS that balances the power itself, no intelligence required abd the world doesn't have to change around them. For bonus points, that could be a module swappable by someone of modest skill.

            Of course, with all of that, you still need to have an always-on 3.3v supp

        • It's more efficient because the higher the voltage at which power is transferred from the power supply to the motherboard, the lower the losses in the cable between the PS and the MB. Also, regulation is improved.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            Technically, that's more efficient, but the losses over the size of even a large server are miniscule.

        • PSUs can't balance rails dynamically. There's fixed limits for everything, and presently the rails provided to the motherboard are massively overspec'd for what the board requires thanks a lot to legacy requirements. Then there's the wiring issue which at present is a clusterfuck of voltage rails, connectors are larger and more expensive, and if the motherboard took care of the requirements for power it can be designed to meet it's requirement, not some silly older standard leading to lower loads on 5V and

    • Re:Moving the problem does not get rid of the prob (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:12PM (#59830356)

      To be fair, the motherboards are already in the business of having to step up/down voltage. Processors haven't run at 3.3V for a long time. PCIe cards when running for real are fed 12V (max 75W through motherboard, the rest comes in directly at 12V), and receive 3.3V for standby power (no more than 10W/adapter). USB does use 5V, but also may have to switch to 20V for USB-PD depending on the circumstances.

      In short, there is very low power demand for any voltage other than 12V and plenty of voltage regulation already required on the board because they pretty much stopped adding to the ATX spec after 3.3V and started moving voltage regulation downstream. It's a redundant situation now with overly complex PSUs that don't save the board designers from having to deal with the problems anyway. Sure, some stuff may move onboard, but the PSUs had to oversize the low voltage rails 'just in case', which the motherboard is in a better position to know how much they need to size for their embedded components, so they may be able to go with a more appropriately sized solution depending on how much expansion they support and what components they chose for their board.

      • CPU and RAM can operates at voltages as low as ~0.4V and more typical 1.2V because high speed switching can be faster and less noisy at very low voltage.

      • Now
        Problem: "My PC is occasionally hanging with mysterious device errors."
        Solution: "Try swapping the PSU. It might not be delivering voltage within spec."

        Future
        Problem: "My PC is occasionally hanging with mysterious device errors."
        Solution: "Buy a new motherboard. It might not be delivering voltage within spec. This will require you to remove the CPU and RAM, unplug all your drives, remove any add-on cards you might have such as a GPU. You'll need to scrape the thermal paste off the CPU and clean

    • So, they're talking about how much more efficient it will be without the rails on the power supply - the one thing in your PC that is completely specialized in power conversions.

      Not really. Much (if not most) of the power conversion in a PC is already happening on motherboards, where the adjustable 1.X volt source that is needed by the CPU is created by a DC-DC converter. This is just expanding that concept to cover all the miscellaneous voltages needed by the system.

    • When the power is required by the motherboard, it can size its on-board power converter to suit its needs, allowing the on-board conversion to operate near the peak efficiency of the selected converter (i.e. high in its power band). Conversely, when done in the power supply, the rails must be over-sized, and so spend most of their time operating in their less-efficient low-power regime.

    • So, they're talking about how much more efficient it will be without the rails on the power supply - the one thing in your PC that is completely specialized in power conversions.

      There's nothing specialised about power regulation in the PSU. In fact the single most specialised rail regulation is already on the motherboard, Vcore, the one that converts 12V at hundreds of W for a processor which presents incredibly transients loads to the regulators. The other specialised conversion is on the GPU which is the same. A shitty ATX powersupply by comparison is nothing more than utter garbage and many on the market could be designed by 1st year engineering students (though there are some g

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sneftel ( 15416 )

      Sweetie, the motherboard already has a number of voltage regulators. That's how, for instance, it uses a 12V supply to power the CPU. Voltage regulators are not particularly complicated compared to most other things on a motherboard, and running a 12V supply would be more efficient than running 3/5V from the PSU because resistive losses are proportional to current.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It IS more efficient.

      Firstly you only need one high power AC to DC converter. They tend not to be very efficient at very low power (sleep mode) so by putting it all on one converter it improves efficiency a bit by raising the minimum load.

      Secondly it moves the regulation to where the power is used, reducing losses in the cables and traces. Motherboards already take 12V and regulate it down to voltages they need because hundreds of watts over 50cm of cable at 3.3V will require extremely thick wires and have

  • If you are going to redesign the spec so deeply then why not set the DC voltage at 20V. This would be the highest voltage also seen in USB wall-warts for high speed charging. Lots of low-power PCs could then skip the internal power supply altogether without needing a separate spec.

    • There are still a number of components that cannot and will not use 20V power so directly getting from the wall is not a great move.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Compuser ( 14899 )

        But you are already going to put the step down circuitry on the motherboard by design, in this new spec. So why not up the voltage in, allow 100W in via standard commodity USB-C supplies with standard connectors which will drop in price a lot with economies of scale?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by vadim_t ( 324782 )

          Stepping down requires components for it, and costs efficiency. If you can use 12V for some things, then you can skip having to stepdown that part. Your input is 12V, and you have stepdown stages for 5V and 3.3V. If you use 20V then you have to stepdown everything, and need an extra 12V stepdown bit.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Compuser ( 14899 )

            Efficiencies of 99% are possible and available.
            https://www.allaboutcircuits.c... [allaboutcircuits.com]
            If you can source 100W and deliver 99W via a cheap commodity 20V, 5A supply then that is far superior to sourcing 60W and delivering 59.4W via a 12V, 5A supply. notice, that USB-C connectors (which are commodity, cheap and understood by consumers) are small and upping the current in them is unlikely in the future, so 5A is where it is at.
            The difference in power makes a qualitative difference in actual computing. 60W PCs are rare

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Compuser ( 14899 )

              A lot of people have ancient tech in their heads where losses on buck converters were 5% or even more. Today, 98% efficiency is common:
              https://www.digikey.com/en/art... [digikey.com]
              and 99% efficiency is very possible. Conversion efficiency is an important design consideration but it is no longer the determining factor for choosing the operating parameters for the spec.

              • Why don't you talk to Intel about your ideas? I feel that they can tell you exactly why your ideas won't work as you don't seem to be accepting the logic of others here.

      • With modern chips you could negotiate the voltage between 2.5 and 25V, which would cover any usage scenario and eliminate waste. The problem is that your wires size according to voltage. Higher voltages require less thick wiring per watt but also more waste when conversion is necessary. Most of the power hungry and electrically noisy components are already at 12V (video cards, hard drives, fans) so you really don't want those lines passing through the motherboard

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Compuser ( 14899 )

          I am not following the logic here. You get 20V, 5A in via a USB-C port. You have buck converters in a dedicated area of the motherboard. And then you run it wherever it is needed. What's the problem?
          And yes, the whole point is to run power via thinner lines and smaller commodity connectors (namely USB-C). The whole point is to enable laptops, dumb terminals, TV boxes, regular PCs, TVs, and monitors to use the same power supplies and connectors and take advantage of the economies of scale for commodity PSUs.

    • An excellent question / point. Twenty volts would be a great standard if designing a new solution from scratch. But I believe 12 V is a more practical solution given that 12 V is passed through PCIe. A non-trivial amount of power will be used at 12 V and one wants to have a system that minimizes the number of DCDC converters needed to get to the final output voltage. So generating 12 V from the input AC power lines will probably make for more efficient systems.

    • If you are going to redesign the spec so deeply then why not set the DC voltage at 20V.

      They aren't redesigning the spec that deeply which is precisely why they standardised on the existing most highly loaded rail required in a PC. Moving 5.5V and 3.3V regulation to the motherboard is minor compared to changing the entire power distribution system within a PC. You'd be looking at a redesign of every single PCI device on the market, and redesigning regulators for CPUs, and GPUs, both of which have built an industry around standardised power MOSFETs finely tuned to 12V > ~1.2V conversion. Red

    • Tons of stuff runs at 12V or converts from 12V. It has a rich legacy in PC, automotive and UPS electronics. Choosing that voltage means not redesigning everything at once.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ... to move the rest of the PSU onto the mainboard too. Probably along with the next Intel "standard" where the rails move into the CPU as a chiplet! :P

    And then the chiplet can expand until it contains all peripherals and former cards. And since it will be quite small and the primary component left we could add 5G functionality and call it a "phone mainboard".

    Of course with all the lock-down of monolithic integrated ... final ... "solutions" ... for the freedom question.

    Am I the only one who wants MORE modu

  • More points of failure on the motherboard (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:17PM (#59830372) Journal
    In my opinion as someone who has worked in electronics for over 35 years, and who has worked with electronics longer than that, this is a move backwards. Power supply circuitry fails more often than the electronics it supplies, and being able to swap out a bolt-in unit like a PC supply makes dealing with that point-of-failiure relatively cheap and easy compared to having to replace an entire motherboard that works otherwise, but that has a supply rail failing. Even if they use all solid-state filter capacitors (like ceramic caps, or even tantalum caps) in their onboard switching regulators (instead of the cheap electrolytics more commonly used) any circuitry that handles the wattage that a power supply circuit handles is more prone to failure than what it's supplying. I'm not sure what they're thinking here, but it seems to me that in the long run there'll be more motherboard failures requiring replacement that otherwise wouldn't have to happen. Honestly, it makes me wonder if they're trying to build in more planned obsolescence so motherboard manufacturers sell more motherboards more often.
    Additionally there's this: I used to work for Intel. I've seen some really shitty onboard switching regulator circuits. A shitty switching regulator can cause all sorts of strange problems. I really think they might be fucking up with this move. PC power supplies are a mature technology and the only real differencees between one brand/model and another is the attention to detail and quality of components used. Why shake this up now? Like I said above: perhaps more planned obsolescence?
    • ... Power supply circuitry fails more often than the electronics it supplies, ... --- Does Intel make motherboards or does Intel make power supplies?
      • You're missing the point entirely: if a supply regulator fails on your motherboard, you replace the entire motherboard, and that's going to be more expensive than just replacing the PSU. You may have to replace your processor and memory at the same time because the motheboard you end up buying as a replacement doesn't support them. On the other hand if your PSU is failing it's a relatively cheap bolt-in replacement, quick and easy, and you're back to working again.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • its about Intel trying to force the standard away from their competitors

        Errr Intel's competitors will be completely unaffected by this change as Intel's competitors as well as Intel themselves already run on common designs with their own dedicated voltage regulation all over the board. . Intel's partners will adopt it as will the industry given it's a completely open standard, and their competitors will just shrug as those same partners of Intel are also partners of the competitor and they are ultimately re

      • It also requires more real estate on the MB, generates more heat, and without careful layout of the PCB itself, causes more noise that can affect even LVDS at the speeds signals are running these days.

    • Well with your knowledge you should also understand that now all powersupply regulation fails equally. The most sensitive and stressed out components in a computer PSU are and will remain in the future the 240V to 12V conversion, done at high power. The 5V and 3.3V systems are comparatively weak, far simpler, and far more reliable. You typically never see a PSU fail in the 5V or 3.3V rails for this reason and the load on them is so low that PSUs run passively when their 12V rails aren't heavily loaded.

      Compa

    • I'm having a difficult time finding statistics on causes of computer failure, but this 2016 paper gives an indication that agrees with my initial suspicions: Alas, the slashfilter rejects the URL as too long. Look for "Analyzing the Reliability of a Personal Computer System using Fault Tree Analysis" on researchgate.net.

      The primary cause of computer failure is hard drive failure, with power supply failure almost as common. PS failure is 2 to 3 times more common than motherboard failure.

      Also, a poor power su

    • WTF modded troll? Fuck off mods, -1 isn't for "wrong" or "I disagree".

      For what it's worth, I think you're wrong.

      In my opinion as someone who has worked in electronics for over 35 years, and who has worked with electronics longer than that, this is a move backwards.

      Yes and? Thing is this doesn't materially change that. By far the most power hungry components (CPU, RAM and GPU if you have one) already use 12V for the main power and have local switching to drop down to much lower, usually variable voltages. 1

  • Only makes sense with buck converter modules -- I'm actually okay with having a motherboard that has some sockets for a LM2596, XL4015 or similar. But they must be socketed (or soldered by the four ends) so that they can be easily replaced and carried across motherboards.

  • Flaw #1... (Score:3)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:24PM (#59830398)
    ... that's an 'O' for 'Oscar,' not a zero ... --- Intel should at least have titled the spec so that the name does not need to be explained.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • We have had 15 years of Intel trying to introduce new form factors along with new power supplies and all of them ended up dead on arrival. Not another BTX or FlexATX please.

  • Power supplies will be more expensive and it will be a pain to find the right one. Thanks Intel.

  • This makes sense for small form factors (ITX, Intel's NUC, and similar), where there is little internal components, except maybe a GPU. Motherboards already have voltage converters for CPU and RAM, and storage in these devices usually come in the NGFF m.2 SSDs.

    However for a full tower PC / Workstation with multiple full sized HDDs, usually needing specialized cards, and multiple fan controllers, 12V only would not be enough. The motherboards are already fully cramped even in eATX configurations. In that cas

  • Redesigned - it makes the PSU unusable and useless without the mass of a co-motherboard. It avoids high voltage to escape export restrictions as a munition.

  • 1.) Too bad they did not go to the other well stablished standard: 48Volts. plenty of componets to handle that, inherited from telco and telco datacenter tech (and soon automotive too).

    2.) I hope that Mobo vendors bring back daughter cards for power regulation functions (at least in desktops, servers, workstations and all in ones).

  • What part of their shiny new spec will they claim a patent on, to keep AMD from using the same power supplies?

  • 12V? (Score:5, Funny)

    by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @05:31PM (#59831010)
    12V? Americans! Why not use the metric 10V standard?

  • Still too many Amps through the cables, video cards need multiple parallel cables, high end cpus also. Make it 24v at least.

    • 12V is perfectly fine. The reason we have so many cables is due to the choice of connector on the far end and the way we use them. Let's talk about your video cards:
      Did you know you can run high end video card just fine with only one of the two connectors without any worrying temperature rise?
      Did you know of the 8 parallel cables in the PCI-e power connector, 2 don't carry any current what so ever?

      Let's talk about high end CPUs:
      Did you know that nearly no motherboards on the market actually need more than 1

  • PSU's 4, motherboards : 0 (Score:3)

    by PinkyGigglebrain ( 730753 ) on Saturday March 14, 2020 @07:13PM (#59831226)

    In the last ten years I've had 4 PSUs burn out and need to be replaced, total cost US$30-50.
    In that same time I have had 0 motherboards fail, Total cost US$0. (have replaced 1 MBs for upgrades but not failures)

    Time it has taken to replace dead PSU's: 15-20 minutes each (most of that spent just moving stuff on/around computer to get to it).

    Time to replace a MB, ~1-2 hours including loading all the drivers that Windwos needs and possibly having to reactivate Windwos. (Thank Gods I use Linux so driver support is much easier to setup and no activation BS.)

    I'll take a pass on MB's with an integrated PSU for as long as I can, much easier, cheaper, and faster to have the PSU as a separate module.

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