When the acronym ATX crosses our mind, we are referring to two things, on the one hand, a type of motherboard, and on the other hand, the power supplies for our PCs. Well, the new ATX 3.0 standard is designed for PC mounted power supplies where we are going to see the next generation of graphics cards for gaming, which will have a huge increase in consumption. What caught our attention?
Up to 2400W with ATX 3.0!
Now moving on to what interests us, Intel has released the specifications for ATX 3.0 power supplies, specifically how the power transmitted by the power supply will be distributed among the various components of the system. Well, starting with the CPU, it is expected that among the 275 and the 300 W of consumption goes to the processor,
If we switch to graphics cards, we can have different consumptions, we will not look at the consumptions of 75 to 300 W, which are those that are possible with the current PCIe power connector, but rather in the consumption of 450 W and 600 W which will only be possible with the new 12-pin connector. If we look at the table that accompanies this section, we will see a last table where it is written Total Power, we will see figures that reach up to 2400 W of consumption, a ridiculously high figure for what is a power supply for a home computer. . Let’s not forget that a few days ago, the new 1600W power supplies seemed exaggerated to us.
The logic behind the next generation of power supplies
What is Intel’s approach to power supplies under ATX 3.0? Simple, that the power supplied by the power supply must be greater than that specified and be able to increase consumption to double. So a source of for example 1200 W must be able to give this power for 100% of the time, but if it delivers 1440 W then it will do so for 100 ms of time, if it goes up to 1920 W it will have to maintain it for 10 ms, at 2160 W 1 ms, and already at 2400 W for 100 microseconds.
This means that the 1200W power supply must in fact be a 2400W power supply, as it must have the capability to transmit the manifested level of power. Which is surprising at a time when everyone seems obsessed with climate change and the energy consumption of different devices.
Motherboards will be much more expensive
The ATX12VO is a standard based on eliminating the rest of the voltage rails that exist in power supplies under the ATX standard. The idea is therefore to provide a single base voltage and to pass the rest of the voltages through different converters located around the motherboard.
Thus, under the ATX12VO standard, the 3.3 V, 5 V, 5 VSB rails for Stand-By and the -12 V rails have been removed and changed from a 24-pin connector to a 10-pin connector which provides three lines with a voltage of 12 V and another of 12 VSB. Explained in another way, with the ATX120VO standard, some of the functionality that the power supply itself previously had in terms of power distribution has shifted to the PC motherboard.
The ATX 3.0 standard brings with it version 2.0 of the ATX12VO and brings some new features, including the fact that the nominal voltage is now 12.2 V, which can cause problems in equipment sensitive to surges. Especially the parts that work with extremely low voltages and that will need a greater number of voltage converters on the plates, which makes the analog circuit of them more complex, as well as its final cost to the user .