What Journalists Got Wrong about Intel's ATX12VO Standard

[WYP]

There's a lot of bad takes surrounding ATX12VO. Let's address some of them.



Read more about the problems facing ATX12VO's adoption.

 

[meuvoy]

Let's face it, ATX 12VO PSUs will be more expensive, even if they're cheaper to produce, and the fact that it's easier to achiever higher efficiencies will only allow for manufacturers to get away with components of lesser quality. Yes, they might become cheaper with time but at least on the first betchea they will be more expensive, and eventually we'll be buying PSUs of lesser quality and the same 80plus rating as before. Simply because the given 80plus rating can be achieved with lesser components and ofc manufacturers will try to profit from this.

 

[grec]

Let's face it, ATX 12VO PSUs will be more expensive, even if they're cheaper to produce, and the fact that it's easier to achiever higher efficiencies will only allow for manufacturers to get away with components of lesser quality. Yes, they might become cheaper with time but at least on the first betchea they will be more expensive, and eventually we'll be buying PSUs of lesser quality and the same 80plus rating as before. Simply because the given 80plus rating can be achieved with lesser components and ofc manufacturers will try to profit from this.

Niche or early products are usually more expensive, but they are basically just stripping out a normal PSU, should drop quickly (Most major OEMs already take this approach with Home Desktop PCs anyway). With 80 Plus it won't bump say a traditional ATX PSU up a tier just from these changes, particularly as most 80 Plus ratings don't consider anything below 20% load, where this new system has its largest gains, but it should make it easier & cheaper for manufacturers to hit higher tiers in new designs, particularly the Titanium class with its 10% load requirements

 

[fadingfool]

Hmm you don't get something for nothing in this world. Shifting the 5V and 3.3V conversion to the motherboard isn't particularly special and there is no reason this couldn't be done in a PSU itself instead of on the mother board (i.e. shift these circuits back into the PSU). The efficiency gains could be made by the PSU (though it would cost more to produce) and there would be no need to change form factors.

 

[grec]

Hmm you don't get something for nothing in this world. Shifting the 5V and 3.3V conversion to the motherboard isn't particularly special and there is no reason this couldn't be done in a PSU itself instead of on the mother board (i.e. shift these circuits back into the PSU). The efficiency gains could be made by the PSU (though it would cost more to produce) and there would be no need to change form factors.

Nahh doing it within the PSU will always be less efficient, (I^2)R losses are significantly reduced with higher voltage transmission (x^2 relationship of course, eg 12V DC transmission has ~13 times lower I2R losses than 3.3V for the same power), so for optimal efficiency you want the DC-DC buck modules outputting the lower voltages needs to be as close to the loads that need them as possible, sending high current 3V3 and 5V power over 30cm+ cables as you have to do if you have them in the PSU is a big part of the losses in the old approach.

If you do the conversion in the PSU it would usually still be more efficient to just use the old common method of direct AC-DC conversion over separate rails for each voltage anyway so you don't get any compound losses with the multiple stages of AC-DC and DC-DC as with the new method, but then you still have the issue of underloaded rails at low power use. The old method can only use this technique while trading off some mid-upper power use efficiency, with the new method two stages are required for the 5V and 3.3V outputs anyway and the losses are offset by the reduced transmission losses.

Some other advantages of this method includes physically smaller(or higher power for same size) PSUs being possible, and the possibility of external PSUs being much more viable, IE using a standard external 12V AC-DC power adaptor as the PSU connected via a typical DC barrel jack plug or similar, particularly for lower power builds ofc. This makes things like mITX cases that require/fit no internal PSU much more usable, as well as formats like Sub-Flex ATX.