Intel's new ATX12VO computer-supply spec

[Winfield Hill]

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

lørdag den 14. marts 2020 kl. 20.48.45 UTC+1 skrev jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com:

On 14 Mar 2020 11:51:24 -0700, Winfield Hill <winfieldhill@yahoo.com
wrote:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf


With a 12v single prime power, a PC motherboard might just have a
wall-wart connector.

And maybe we'll see super-cheap power converter modules, like the
LTM-series from LTC, but a fraction the price.

Of course, 12 is the wrong voltage. It should have been 24.

yeh, but. I think most MBs are already designed to get most of
their power from 12V and there is a long way down from 24 to 1-2V

 

On 14 Mar 2020 11:51:24 -0700, Winfield Hill <winfieldhill@yahoo.com>
wrote:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf

With a 12v single prime power, a PC motherboard might just have a
wall-wart connector.

And maybe we'll see super-cheap power converter modules, like the
LTM-series from LTC, but a fraction the price.

Of course, 12 is the wrong voltage. It should have been 24.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:23:20 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
<langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lřrdag den 14. marts 2020 kl. 20.48.45 UTC+1 skrev jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com:
On 14 Mar 2020 11:51:24 -0700, Winfield Hill <winfieldhill@yahoo.com
wrote:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf


With a 12v single prime power, a PC motherboard might just have a
wall-wart connector.

And maybe we'll see super-cheap power converter modules, like the
LTM-series from LTC, but a fraction the price.

Of course, 12 is the wrong voltage. It should have been 24.

yeh, but. I think most MBs are already designed to get most of
their power from 12V and there is a long way down from 24 to 1-2V

We were just talking about that on Friday: best way to get from 24
volts to +1. Single buck? Cascaded bucks? More complex magnetics?

One of my guys asked an ADI applications engineer, regarding an LTC
synchronous buck chip to do it. His reply was typically profound: it
depends.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote in
news:hd5gbkFlu30U1@mid.individual.net:

On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-fu
ture-of-power- supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guide
s/single-rail- power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something
critical fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board,
and then you find that one compatible with your existing CPU and
memory is no longer available, so that means buying new ones of
those, and throwing out perfectly good hardware because it's been
rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it
more likely to fail.

Sylvia.

Well, then crank up the clock!

Just place it in a fluorinert bath first.

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 9:57:12 PM UTC-4, Sylvia Else wrote:

On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

What a load of hooey. The only failure I've ever had in a PC was the caps in the voltage regulators on board for the CPU. Some years back there were a bunch of poor quality electrolytic caps made that found their way onto quality motherboards.

Paranoia about the power supplies on a motherboard failing is not very realistic. PSUs that fail are designed poorly to be sold cheaply. Buy cheap motherboards and they can fail as well. Buy quality stuff and it will outlast your need for the computer as so many of them do.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Don Kuenz]

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:

On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-pow
er-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

My mobos mostly fail due to bad caps. They tend to boot right up after
replacement of the three to four dimensionally largest cap families on
the mobo.

Thank you,

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU
There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf

When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

Sylvia.

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

søndag den 15. marts 2020 kl. 02.57.12 UTC+1 skrev Sylvia Else:

On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

why would the heat dissipation increase? all the regulators are already
on the motherboard, a few of them might have another input voltage that's it

 

Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:fb99521a-925c-40dd-a749-8fe6addd548a@googlegroups.com:

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 9:57:12 PM UTC-4, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-
future-
of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/gui
des/sin
gle-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something
critical fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board,
and then you find that one compatible with your existing CPU and
memory is no longer

available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing
out perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it
more likely to fail.

What a load of hooey. The only failure I've ever had in a PC was
the caps in the voltage regulators on board for the CPU. Some
years back there were a bunch of poor quality electrolytic caps
made that found their way onto quality motherboards.

Paranoia about the power supplies on a motherboard failing is not
very realistic. PSUs that fail are designed poorly to be sold
cheaply. Buy cheap motherboards and they can fail as well. Buy
quality stuff and it will outlast your need for the computer as so
many of them do.

I had a single CPU AMD in their early years and all it took was one
bad heat sink remount and it fried in seconds, literally, and took
the motherboard with it!

My ONLY ever fail like that. AMD search up showed that it was a
very hot CPU despite not being that fast.

My Dual CPU AMD ran hot too, but not as much. My subsequent Intel
purchase had 6/12 cores and it NEVER has run hot.

Heat fails do happen.

But the most common failure in ALL electronics is at power on and
power off events. That is one reason some folks leave their machine
up 24/7/365.

 

Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:6ca2b2fa-99be-4bfd-9c7f-0170ef73cbc3@googlegroups.com:

On Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 12:30:32 AM UTC-4,
DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:fb99521a-925c-40dd-a749-8fe6addd548a@googlegroups.com:

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 9:57:12 PM UTC-4, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-t
he- future-
of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/
gui des/sin
gle-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something
critical fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new
board, and then you find that one compatible with your
existing CPU and memory is no longer

available, so that means buying new ones of those, and
throwing out perfectly good hardware because it's been
rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it
more likely to fail.

What a load of hooey. The only failure I've ever had in a PC
was the caps in the voltage regulators on board for the CPU.
Some years back there were a bunch of poor quality electrolytic
caps made that found their way onto quality motherboards.

Paranoia about the power supplies on a motherboard failing is
not very realistic. PSUs that fail are designed poorly to be
sold cheaply. Buy cheap motherboards and they can fail as
well. Buy quality stuff and it will outlast your need for the
computer as so many of them do.


I had a single CPU AMD in their early years and all it took was
one
bad heat sink remount and it fried in seconds, literally, and
took the motherboard with it!

My ONLY ever fail like that. AMD search up showed that it was
a
very hot CPU despite not being that fast.

My Dual CPU AMD ran hot too, but not as much. My subsequent
Intel
purchase had 6/12 cores and it NEVER has run hot.

Heat fails do happen.

But the most common failure in ALL electronics is at power on
and
power off events. That is one reason some folks leave their
machine up 24/7/365.

Your crapping up of a heat sink mount has nothing to do with the
idea that adding the 3.3 volt regulator to the mobo will cause
premature heat death on mobos.

I never said it did. FUCK YOUI, ASSHOLE!

> But then I'm breaking my rule in replying to you.

Hey! RICK C... FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!

STICK YOUR RULE AND YOUR RESPONSE POLICY RIGHT UP YOUR RETARDED ASS
WHERE IT BELONGS.

It's not like I
expect a reasonable response.

Is that what you call SHIT like this post you made here? FUCK YOU,
RICK C. ASSHOLE.

Good job of NOT responding to the remark about the most common
failure mode.

Proof that you are fucking retard, spouting stupid shit about your
reading and repsonding personal fucktard 'rules'.

This is an electronics newsgroup, ya little jackass motherfucker.
Nobody wants to hear about your retarded personal rules.

And YES, you FOOLY deserved that. Every last bit.
FUCK YOU, RICK C COME BACK WHEN YOU GROW THE FUCK UP.

 

[Rick C]

On Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 12:30:32 AM UTC-4, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:fb99521a-925c-40dd-a749-8fe6addd548a@googlegroups.com:

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 9:57:12 PM UTC-4, Sylvia Else
wrote:
On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-
future-
of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/gui
des/sin
gle-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something
critical fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board,
and then you find that one compatible with your existing CPU and
memory is no longer

available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing
out perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it
more likely to fail.

What a load of hooey. The only failure I've ever had in a PC was
the caps in the voltage regulators on board for the CPU. Some
years back there were a bunch of poor quality electrolytic caps
made that found their way onto quality motherboards.

Paranoia about the power supplies on a motherboard failing is not
very realistic. PSUs that fail are designed poorly to be sold
cheaply. Buy cheap motherboards and they can fail as well. Buy
quality stuff and it will outlast your need for the computer as so
many of them do.


I had a single CPU AMD in their early years and all it took was one
bad heat sink remount and it fried in seconds, literally, and took
the motherboard with it!

My ONLY ever fail like that. AMD search up showed that it was a
very hot CPU despite not being that fast.

My Dual CPU AMD ran hot too, but not as much. My subsequent Intel
purchase had 6/12 cores and it NEVER has run hot.

Heat fails do happen.

But the most common failure in ALL electronics is at power on and
power off events. That is one reason some folks leave their machine
up 24/7/365.

Your crapping up of a heat sink mount has nothing to do with the idea that adding the 3.3 volt regulator to the mobo will cause premature heat death on mobos.

But then I'm breaking my rule in replying to you. It's not like I expect a reasonable response.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 11:47:53 PM UTC-4, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

søndag den 15. marts 2020 kl. 02.57.12 UTC+1 skrev Sylvia Else:
On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

why would the heat dissipation increase? all the regulators are already
on the motherboard, a few of them might have another input voltage that's it

I don't think so. There are 5 and 3.3 volt circuits which will now be on the Mobo. The 3.3 volt circuit likely doesn't need much, but the solid state disk drives run off of 5 volts, no? Actually, I don't know that for sure.. Many SSDs are now on special format plug in cards rather than the old disk drive form factors. They may have dropped the 5 volt input since they aren't spinning rust and be using 3.3 volts which they in turn drop down to a lower voltage to power the Flash internals. I'm assuming Flash uses a lower internal voltage than 3.3 volts. Nothing else uses 3.3 volts internally these days. But then Flash needs internal charge pumps to generate a higher programming voltage, so the circle is complete.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 2,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

On Sat, 14 Mar 2020 16:53:05 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sat, 14 Mar 2020 13:23:20 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote:

lřrdag den 14. marts 2020 kl. 20.48.45 UTC+1 skrev jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com:
On 14 Mar 2020 11:51:24 -0700, Winfield Hill <winfieldhill@yahoo.com
wrote:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf

The specifications are quite picky allowing only small voltage
tolerances and tight ripple requirements. You couldn't use a float
charged standard 12 V battery across the 12 V line (requires 12.6 to
13.8 V). After all, there are regulators on the MB that should handle
the 12 V input voltage variation.

With a 12v single prime power, a PC motherboard might just have a
wall-wart connector.

And maybe we'll see super-cheap power converter modules, like the
LTM-series from LTC, but a fraction the price.

Of course, 12 is the wrong voltage. It should have been 24.

Preferably 20 - 28 V voltage range to allow a battery in parallel to
act as a short time UPS.

yeh, but. I think most MBs are already designed to get most of
their power from 12V and there is a long way down from 24 to 1-2V

We were just talking about that on Friday: best way to get from 24
volts to +1. Single buck? Cascaded bucks? More complex magnetics?

Why not use isolated on board DC/DC converters. This would help with
ground plane noise issues, when no high currents would run all around
the MB.

In large server farms the 380 Vdc (+/-190 Vdc) feed is sometimes used
and isolated converters are used to generate lower voltages.

One of my guys asked an ADI applications engineer, regarding an LTC
synchronous buck chip to do it. His reply was typically profound: it
depends.

 

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 15.03.20 um 02:57 schrieb Sylvia Else:

When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one.

At the moment, I can barely smile at this. I had it happen
this week. After years of flawless service, the workstation
below my desk went kaboom. It made a blinding light on the
opposite wall.

The disks have survived, that's all I have checked up to now.

cheers, Gerhard

 

[Sylvia Else]

On 15-Mar-20 7:55 pm, Gerhard Hoffmann wrote:

Am 15.03.20 um 02:57 schrieb Sylvia Else:


When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one.
At the moment, I can barely smile at this. I had it happen
this week. After years of flawless service, the workstation
below my desk went kaboom. It made a blinding light on the
opposite wall.

The disks have survived, that's all I have checked up to now.

OK, that is a bit extreme. Still, perhaps it was the result of a
crow-bar circuit protecting the rest of your system. You can hope.

Sylvia.

 

[mpm]

Maybe we should get Skybuck's opinion on why motherboards fail?

 

[Don Kuenz]

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 02:39:35 -0000 (UTC), "Don Kuenz" <g@crcomp.net
wrote:

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

My mobos mostly fail due to bad caps. They tend to boot right up after
replacement of the three to four dimensionally largest cap families on
the mobo.

Thank you,

A more modern switcher module would use all ceramic caps.

There would need to be some bulk storage for gross load steps, like
whan a CPU comes out of sleep, bit the single prime source could
handle that.

Really, we're ready for a new ps architecture, for PCs and other
things.

Small Form Factor (SFF) PCs manufactured by Intel, Dell, HP, and others
have used ~19VDC wall warts for nearly a decade now. It's obvious to me
why they chose that particular voltage.

Thank you,

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU
There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.

 

On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 02:39:35 -0000 (UTC), "Don Kuenz" <g@crcomp.net>
wrote:

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-pow
er-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

My mobos mostly fail due to bad caps. They tend to boot right up after
replacement of the three to four dimensionally largest cap families on
the mobo.

Thank you,

A more modern switcher module would use all ceramic caps.

There would need to be some bulk storage for gross load steps, like
whan a CPU comes out of sleep, bit the single prime source could
handle that.

Really, we're ready for a new ps architecture, for PCs and other
things.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

On Sun, 15 Mar 2020 12:57:06 +1100, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
wrote:

On 15-Mar-20 5:51 am, Winfield Hill wrote:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3518831/how-intels-changing-the-future-of-power-
supplies-with-its-atx12vo-spec.html

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/single-rail-
power-supply-platform-atx12vo-design-guide.pdf



When a PSU dies, you can just buy a new one. When something critical
fails on a motherboard, it usually requires a new board, and then you
find that one compatible with your existing CPU and memory is no longer
available, so that means buying new ones of those, and throwing out
perfectly good hardware because it's been rendered obsolete.

And the increased heat dissipation on the motherboard makes it more
likely to fail.

Sylvia.

High efficiency standard-footprint single-inductor GaN based buck
switchers would make replacement infrequent and practical. And we
could use them too.

Probably polyphase for the big stuff.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"