Article First look at a 12VO Power Supply

[Stuka87]

We finally get a look at the first 12VO power supply. Not a production unit, its an engineering sample, same goes for the motherboard. But it gives us a good idea as to what to expect:

 

[VirtualLarry]

I disagree, I think that mobo was in fact a production unit. It's listed on ASRock's site, I believe, and it sure looked production. It's OEM-only though, which is kind of weird for a "gaming"-branded (actually, "Phantom Gaming") mobo, but whatever.

After seeing the idle power numbers, and coming to the realization that SATA is strongly on the wane (except for servers, with massive HDD arrays, which might have a daughter-card under this arrangement to take a 6+2-pin 12V or something from the PSU, to the daughter-card, and split it out into maybe 12 SATA power leads or something), I LIKE IT.

Lower idle power by 50% is nothing to stick your nose up at, and most BUSINESS DESKTOPs probably spend many of their hours mostly or partially idle (as opposed to gaming/mining enthusiast rigs, which would benefit far, far less from these standards, other than the reduced cable count, as most enthusiasts have moved on to NVMe storage for the most part).

 

[Stuka87]

Yeah, possible the motherboard was not an ES unit.

But I agree that we are nearing the point where this can really work. PSU will be more efficient, and probably cheaper to build. Motherboard prices may go up a bit.

 

[HerrKaLeu]

Would be good to get rid of 5V/3.3V on device level entirely. Then each SATA device just gets 12V and uses DC-DC for whatever they actually need (which probably is neither 5V nor 3.3V). While we are at it, just combine SATA data and power cable. That way you don't need those unwieldy SATA power cables (you know, with 5 plugs, but you only need one, but need to run a second string anyway).
And there should be one single plug for the mobo.

Unrelated to power, the case cables (reset, power switch, LED etc.) should be a single plug and cable (like USB/audio) and not the single plugs they currently use (where you need to use a good light and the manual to fiddle the plugs on).

That all would dramatically reduce installation labor, and de-clutter. hopefully it also would reduce cost somewhat. We wouldn't need modular PSUs (only need graphics plug, and single mobo plug), need much less cable management, have smaller cables.

 

[Stuka87]

Unrelated to power, the case cables (reset, power switch, LED etc.) should be a single plug and cable (like USB/audio) and not the single plugs they currently use (where you need to use a good light and the manual to fiddle the plugs on).

That all would dramatically reduce installation labor, and de-clutter. hopefully it also would reduce cost somewhat. We wouldn't need modular PSUs (only need graphics plug, and single mobo plug), need much less cable management, have smaller cables.

Yeah, it kind of boggles my mind that the case cables have basically not changed in over 25 years. It really does not make sense.

 

[HerrKaLeu]

Yeah, it kind of boggles my mind that the case cables have basically not changed in over 25 years. It really does not make sense.

Yeah, the HDD light was used when an HDD just took so long that the user needed a visual feedback if it does something at all. Nowadays with SSD, this is obsolete. Same with reset button. All PCs now re-start by pushing the power button. All we really need is the power and LED. Could be one 4-pin connector.

My fear with these 12V power supplies is, they require new mobo and PSU, but don't really resolve all the old problems at once. They should resolve all the problems at once. They could power SATA SSd from the mobo easily with the data cable. For HDD, which is a legacy drive these days, they could add the power from regular PSU SATA cable.

 

[Stuka87]

Yeah, the HDD light was used when an HDD just took so long that the user needed a visual feedback if it does something at all. Nowadays with SSD, this is obsolete. Same with reset button. All PCs now re-start by pushing the power button. All we really need is the power and LED. Could be one 4-pin connector.

My fear with these 12V power supplies is, they require new mobo and PSU, but don't really resolve all the old problems at once. They should resolve all the problems at once. They could power SATA SSd from the mobo easily with the data cable. For HDD, which is a legacy drive these days, they could add the power from regular PSU SATA cable.

SATA SSD's are becoming a thing of the past. I don't see them redesigning the storage interface for this. They definitely still have there place, but the cost of having two different styles of SATA drives (legacy and new) would make it a poor financial decision.

 

[A///]

Can't see this as anything but a money grab from companies. This doesn't benefit end users in any way.

 

[sdifox]

Horrible idea. People worry about VRM longevity and you want to throw DC stepdown transformers on the mb?

 

[aigomorla]

Yeah, it kind of boggles my mind that the case cables have basically not changed in over 25 years. It really does not make sense.

yeah they did... they kept adding 4.... thats after they changed from AT to ATX standard.

So before it was AT where the power switch was directly on the PSU...
Then it changed to ATX where the board now has a momentary switch.

Then the 20pin got upgraded to 24!
The 4 pin also got upgraded to 8 pin because people be ramping up those Q6600 to 1.5V.

The Introduction of PCI-E and PCI-E cards also made PSU's bring out the 6 and 8 pin...
At the very least, its a lot better how long it took to go from HDD -> SSD.

 

[Stuka87]

yeah they did... they kept adding 4.... thats after they changed from AT to ATX standard.

So before it was AT where the power switch was directly on the PSU...
Then it changed to ATX where the board now has a momentary switch.

Then the 20pin got upgraded to 24!
The 4 pin also got upgraded to 8 pin because people be ramping up those Q6600 to 1.5V.

The Introduction of PCI-E and PCI-E cards also made PSU's bring out the 6 and 8 pin...
At the very least, its a lot better how long it took to go from HDD -> SSD.

The ATX standard came out in 95.

Each time they added pins to something, it was still backwards compatible. 20+4 ATX plug, 4+4 CPU plug, 6+2 PCIe plug.

I know its very hard to change a long standing standard, but it really does need to happen eventually.

 

[mindless1]

We were already well past the point where this could work, but as the video suggested it is more about compatiblity vs volume sales, so introduction relies on large volume OEM sales.

Motherboards already had DC-DC for CPU and chipsets. HDDs already had SMPS circuit to step down voltage and similar for motor control. SSD and PCI/e were the main holdouts (except PCIe often one or more step down votlage regulations already), but I don't see it reasonable to put the stepdown circuit on NVME because you want those SMALL as possible (since typically a parallel board to mainboard, not perpendicular and let's not get into daughter boards to do it for consumer PCs), not extra real estate devoted to DC-DC and cooling that, and more slots if you want to do away with SATA.

Heh... they could solve that, by just taking NVME, and developing a standard... where it could be connected with... a cable... to mount it elsewhere.

Kidding aside, I like the idea of keeping some SATA ports unless it's a low end OEM PC.

 

[aigomorla]

Motherboards already had DC-DC for CPU and chipsets.

These are all on THIN-ITX setups using low wattage CPU's.

Lets put massive DC to DC components inside per say a TRX3 board, and see what hell / havok that can unleash when the 12V rail is pushing well close to 50A though it..

Oh yeah baby... (mike myers austin powers voice).

Well to be fair, most server psu's are 12V but the DC to DC is done though a separate component not built into the CPU but more into the case. Like this for supermciro.

I think if we do have a 12VO format, it would be better seen to have one of those on the case instead of letting the board handle all that amperage on the 12V rail. 50Amps is no joke... its not even funny when you need to think of how thick the board traces required for something like that. Amperage mostly determines how thick the required wire is, not voltage.

Its much easier to spread that ampere across 12v + 5v + 3v , or even 24v @ 25amps vs 12v @ 50a.

 

[DeathReborn]

I think they could use a new form of cable etc to replace SATA, maybe a 2x PCIe 3.0 (easier tracing than PCIe 4) cable that provides all the power and data on 1 cable.

 

[mindless1]

These are all on THIN-ITX setups using low wattage CPU's.

?? We must have a misunderstanding. DC-DC step down voltage regulation for CPU and chipsets is on practically every non-proprietary motherboard made in the last dozen+ years, not at all limited to thin iTX or low wattage CPUs.

Some of them were taking 5V or 3.3V rail and regulating that down to lower, but it is a fairly trivial change to take 12V input instead of 5V or lower and then output the same target voltage with practically zero board changes besides the inductor, a capacitor, and a couple resistor values.

 

[Stuka87]

These are all on THIN-ITX setups using low wattage CPU's.

Lets put massive DC to DC components inside per say a TRX3 board, and see what hell / havok that can unleash when the 12V rail is pushing well close to 50A though it..

Every ATX motherboard has a 12V DC to DC to step the voltage down for the CPU. This would not change as the CPU does not use the 3.3V or the 5V feeds from the 24 pin ATX connection.

5V is really only used for USB and SATA. 3.3V is used by the memory, but also relatively low draw compared to say the CPU.

 

[eek2121]

We need a new standard that kills all of the legacy stuff IMO. Kill off SATA, standardize modular PSU connectors, string the connector size, eliminate 3.3/5V, make the PSU itself smaller, etc. 12VO is nice, but it seems like OEM only and it doesn’t solve all the issues.

Fun fact: older CPUs were 3.3 or 5V back in the day.

 

[mindless1]

^ Why? On my desktop PC, it gains nothing to decrease the size a few cubic inches. It causes fewer issues for people to have the legacy support, and the cost difference is not much considering chipsets already have the functionality developed and supported.

Even if a modern CPU used the same voltage the PSU outputs, it still wouldn't work because the power state changes are now so fast, cause voltage droop, and a PSU compensation delay, so need to have a VRM in the immediate vicinity of the CPU with very low resistance instead of across wire.

If all other technology were to remain stagnant then we could expect some cost decrease but instead, the premium new tech is always going to demand whatever premium price that the market will bear. It's more about profit strategy than passing on savings to consumers.

Notice how bitcoin mining has helped to keep the price of video cards artificially high, while from a manufacturing perspective, producing and selling more of any (same) design should decrease the per unit cost.