New PSU Standard Launching This Year: Intel’s ATX12VO Promises Better Efficiency, Lower Costs

Tsing

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Big changes are coming to the long-standing ATX (Advanced Technology eXtended) power supply standard. Custom PC has learned that Intel will launch its new single-rail power supply form factor “ATX12VO” later this year, which improves upon the original and its subsequent revisions (i.e., ATX12V 1.0, 1.3, 2.0) in various ways.



For starters, Intel has gotten rid of the 3.3V and 5V rails completely. This means that ATX12VO PSUs will strictly provide 12V of power to all internal hardware components, the conversion of which will be handled by the motherboard. SSDs and hard/optical drives will draw power directly from a new “side-mounted SATA power connector near the SATA data ports.”



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Image: Intel...
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So SATA power will be handled by motherboards if I read that correctly. Intel removes voltage reduction from power supply to "cut costs", motherboard oem's will now have to include voltage transformers on the motherboards now.... increasing costs.

Intel is shifting costs from one place to another. This reminds me of their decision to remove the pins from CPUs and go LGA... shifting the costs and hassle of the pins to the cpu socket. "Costs and hassle" being RMAs of CPUs with bent/broken pins, Intel now shrugs and says "Not our problem"

OTOH, perhaps it would simplify things to only have one voltage coursing through your computer's veins. But getting all the other component manufacturers to step in line and change everything to 12v will take years... if ever.

Let's see if the rest of the industry falls in line, or gives Intel the finger. One thing is for sure... it will suck if we wind up with 2 competing power supply standards depending on which socket you want to use. I for one remember the AT vs ATX days, eventually everyone gave up and went ATX but it took a while.
 
So.. are they going to have these system builders put this new power supply into a BTX case?
 
Didn’t google do something like this in their data centers?

I think net cost would be lower - fewer cables at lower amps from the PSU, and mobos already have VRs that step down to a bunch of various voltages, so not a stretch to add another.... esp with NVMe/PCI taking off, we could be seeing the end of SATA as a foregone inclusion on a mobo.
 
This looks so stupid to me. Maybe I am missing something but
Intel is shifting costs from one place to another. This reminds me of their decision to remove the pins from CPUs and go LGA... shifting the costs and hassle of the pins to the cpu socket. "Costs and hassle" being RMAs of CPUs with bent/broken pins, Intel now shrugs and says "Not our problem"
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Sounds exactly right.
 
My thoughts exactly. If you don't get the buy in from the consumer space with features that make a difference this will not catch on.
 
Brian_B said:
Didn’t google do something like this in their data centers?

I think net cost would be lower - fewer cables at lower amps from the PSU, and mobos already have VRs that step down to a bunch of various voltages, so not a stretch to add another.... esp with NVMe/PCI taking off, we could be seeing the end of SATA as a foregone inclusion on a mobo.
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There is a difference. Google installs rail cars built out of systems that they have custom built for them with no chassis. You can't say "because google did it.." They have massive infrastructure connectors they build into rail cars to bring all of the servers in it on line at once.

 
I think its usefulness depends a lot on how easy and cheap it will be to make these PSUs well. Or more precisely, how hard or pointless it will be to make them crap.

Right now dealing with assembly, you can have a flaky system because of a crap PSU and a good mother board, a crap psu and a crap motherboard, and a good psu and a crap motherboard. If it lowers the bar for getting a quality PSU and thus saturates the market with a quality PSU (for the given standard), then you get to focus on the quality of the motherboard a lot more.

Look at how the hardware review world had to shift hard due to increasing demands on PSUs and an increasing availability of **** PSUs. If it can make that whole area less sketchy and more consistently good, then it'll be a good idea. If not, it's garbage.
 
Hell no. More critical components for motherboards to cheap out on. No.
 
I still say this is a solution looking for a problem. And a bad solution at that. There's absolutely no reason to shove even more stuff onto a motherboard that is currently working perfectly in the PSU.

I think the person who said this is more about Intel trying to make motherboard makers a bit more happy with them. By forcing the extra circuitry onto the motherboard the motherboard makers would be able to increase motherboard prices and likely well beyond the cost, R&D as well as component, would indicate.

Increased cost is bad enough but the thought of the problems with moving this to motherboards definitely does not instill confidence in me.
 
Now we will have motherboard makers who just pass along current types and then makers of other devices building more robust power handling into them. Though for Sata drives and such your power and i/o could be bundled into one connection I guess.
 
Is there anything on a motherboard that still relies on the 3.3v or 5V rail?
 
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