Intel Hopes for ATX12VO PSU Standard to Take Off with 12th Gen Core “Alder Lake-S” Motherboards

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It was previously rumored that Intel would be making a push for the adoption of its new ATX12VO power supply standard by encouraging manufacturers to implement it on motherboards designed for its upcoming 12th Gen Core “Alder Lake-S” processors. While it isn’t clear what level of enforcement Intel had originally considered, a snippet shared by VideoCardz seems to confirm that blue team is definitely hoping to leverage the hype behind Alder Lake-S to get ATX12VO onto a broader market and into the hands of more enthusiasts. The timeline seems to suggest that the first batch of ATX12VO motherboards, which would utilize the new 10-pin power connector and grant higher power efficiency, wouldn’t be...
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Is this the same one that nvidia is pushing?
 
I don't see it. It's It's wrong time to market. You need motherboards that can do both and honestly that's going to be costly.

As it is getting a decent power supply is almost as difficult as getting a current Gen video card. Imagine needing one built to a new spec? No thanks. Either the power supply would need to work for either spec... further hampering availability. Or be available if and when a motherboard and cpu are available to power. Let alone a video card.

Plus you think quality problems happen now with motherboard. Just wait for the shorts and fires from these motherboards made to the lowest cost.
 
I agree, it's a challenging time to try to push something like this to market. Well, computers have sold well recently, but most of that was Stay-At-Home, and that's over. We ~might~ be due for an uptick in commercial / office spending though, as people start to come back to the office.

Intel is hardly in a position of strength though. AMD is crushing it, and the GPU shortages are keeping the DIY'ers out of the loop (not that they were a huge fraction of the market)

That said, Intel still has a lot of muscle with the OEMs... if they can get the likes of Dell / HP / etc on board, everyone else will follow.

I do tend to think a 12V only PSU would be a net benefit though - you already have a good deal of voltage conditioning on the motherboard, it wouldn't be a stretch to simplify that down to one voltage - should help keep wire clutter down a good bit and make PSUs simpler and more efficient without adding a lot to motherboards. GPUs are already almost 12V only anyway, and they can pull more power than the motherboard itself - so it's not like the tech to be 12V only with good regulation isn't out there or would have to be developed out of thin air.
 
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I see the adoption and market challenges, but in general, I don't see this as being that hard of a thing. Most PSUs are mostly 12v at this time which means that adapter cables will be easy to build and that should ease the transition.

Also note that Google has been doing this for around a decade with their own servers. The technical challenges have been overcome, and I see a transition to 12v as helping to significantly simplify much of the cabling inside PC cases.

Now if we could just do something about the mess of fan / pump / RGB standards and a move to USB4 / Type C ports everywhere!
 
There will still be water pumps, fan and RGB controllers, SATA drives, etc. that don't use only 12V. Is the format going to require an external voltage converter for accessories?
 
OEM's will lead the way on adopting this. After that it will come to DIY.
 
hubaduba said:
There will still be water pumps, fan and RGB controllers, SATA drives, etc. that don't use only 12V. Is the format going to require an external voltage converter for accessories?
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Sure, but those are already on everything anyway, right?
 
hubaduba said:
There will still be water pumps, fan and RGB controllers, SATA drives, etc. that don't use only 12V. Is the format going to require an external voltage converter for accessories?
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Give it a year and all that stuff will jump over too. Many of that is already 12v, and nvme drives won’t need external power
 
Brian_B said:
Give it a year and all that stuff will jump over too. Many of that is already 12v, and nvme drives won’t need external power
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When you realize that most 'desktop' users need the equivalent of a mid-range laptop in terms of performance along with one drive, it tends to make more sense to simplify the power plane. Even "cooler" would be the result of fanless systems that are good up to 45w - that's enough for eight cores these days, and with Intel and AMD both offering potent 'APUs' that trade off benefits*, that's really enough for a modern 'desktop terminal'.

*[Intel has decidedly better driver support outside of games, whereas AMD obviously is a better fit for gaming, to the limits of what they're willing to shoehorn into and APU]
 
hubaduba said:
There will still be water pumps, fan and RGB controllers, SATA drives, etc. that don't use only 12V. Is the format going to require an external voltage converter for accessories?
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If I understand correctly, the MB would be responsible to deliver power to 5v devices, not the PSU.
 
Stoly said:
If I understand correctly, the MB would be responsible to deliver power to 5v devices, not the PSU.
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I can only imagine the PCB space that would require on an ATX board that already seems crowded, not to mention mATX and mITX.
 
I see the future of a single cable coming off of the power supply destined for the motherboard with a series of "splitters" that take some of the current to put to fans, RGP, Pumps, and so on. There by undoing all of the good work of the original super clean vision.
 
Grimlakin said:
I see the future of a single cable coming off of the power supply destined for the motherboard with a series of "splitters" that take some of the current to put to fans, RGP, Pumps, and so on. There by undoing all of the good work of the original super clean vision.
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This stuff's already on the board though. 5v for the things that still use it exclusively is just one conversion, but there aren't many of these left IIRC?
 
LazyGamer said:
This stuff's already on the board though. 5v for the things that still use it exclusively is just one conversion, but there aren't many of these left IIRC?
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The PCI spec does call for 5V and 3.3V pins, but motherboards already have ~massive~ VRM space allocated to dropping 12V down to variable, adjustable voltages. So I don't think that's a problem really nor do I think it would eat up much, if any, more PCB space.

Externally, SATA and IDE drives are about the only thing I can think of really, and that could be handled with a small dongle-type attachment on the power port really.

Fans and pumps are already 12V. RGB does it's own thing on it's own header, so idk what that is, but I can't imagine it would be hard to convert to pure 12V either.

If you are afraid of PCB space on the motherboard, just look at how much space the current ATX24 connector and all the aux power connectors eat up... and realize this would cut that in half, and that's likely about the same footprint the VRMs would need to expand by to compensate for lack of 5V/3.3V from the PSU.
 
Part of the intention by the new spec IS to pass off the difficult bits (voltages other than 12v) to the motherboard. PSU's will then see a big jump in efficiency and simplicity.
 
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