Intel ATX 3.0 16-pin Power Connector for PCIe Gen5 is Smart, Has Four Power-Delivery Variants

[btarunr]

Intel is reforming the ATX specification in a big way with ATX 3.0, and power supplies shipping with new 16-pin power connectors for the next generation PCI-Express Gen 5 graphics cards. The 16-pin 12VHPWR (12-Volt High Power). The need for a new connector standard is arising from the growing power demand from graphics cards, as contemporary high-end GPUs crossing the 375 W barrier (two 8-pin PCIe inputs), and some of today's high-end cards even shipping with typical board power values of 450 W at stock frequencies. Custom-design cards based on these GPUs create cable-spaghetti in your case, as they come with three or more 8-pin connectors. To solve these problems and more, Intel innovated the 12VHPWR.

The 12VHPWR connector has 12 electrical pins and 4 side-band pins, for a total of 16 pins. The side-band pins enable low-fi communication between the power-supply and the graphics card, and two of these pins, labeled "SENSE0" and "SENSE1," let the graphics card know what kind of connector is plugged in, so it can accordingly adjust its power-management. There are four variants of the 16-pin connector based on the electrical capability offered by the PSU. These include 600 W, 450 W, 300 W, and 150 W. The arrangement of the two SENSE pins is how the graphics card tells the four apart.



The 12VHPWR connector delivers power in two system states—Initial Permitted Power, and Maximum Sustain Power. The former defines a power-delivery limit when a system is powered up and awaiting boot (up to the stage of the graphics driver to get loaded). The latter is the limit allowed once the driver takes over (software configuration). The table above shows the various power configurations. Will this cause chaos? We don't think so. Any graphics card with a 16-pin connector will take in any connector, and if the connector doesn't meet its requirements, the GPU will default to the lowest power spec, and adjust its frequencies accordingly (performance will be affected). The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition is (or was supposed to be) the first graphics card with a 16-pin (12+4 pin) connector, including the side-band stub, even though the GPU doesn't support PCIe Gen 5.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Valantar]

Wait, so this means that shitty third party cables and extensions are just going to bridge sense1 and sense0 to ground right at the connector, right? I foresee a future where this leads to some ... let's say unsafe custom wiring. Hooray!

Other than that, this is kind of cool. But also too simple a mechanism for me to trust any custom cabling that isn't very high quality.

 

[Space Lynx]

all it took was an influx of socialist tax payer money in a capitalist free market economy to make it happen... neat lol

 

[Valantar]

all it took was an influx of socialist tax payer money in a capitalist free market economy to make it happen... neat lol

Wait, what?

 

[Space Lynx]

Wait, what?

Do you not remember last year when USA gave a crap ton of tax money to Intel....?

Why Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was a guest at President Biden's State of the Union address

Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger is choosing big domestic chip manufacturing investments over short-term shareholder rewards, and he has a big fan: President Biden.

www.cnbc.com

nom nom

 

[Chomiq]

Here's hoping GPU manufacturers will figure out an optimal position for the connector on the PCB.

 

[Valantar]

Do you not remember last year when USA gave a crap ton of tax money to Intel....?

Why Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was a guest at President Biden's State of the Union address

Intel's CEO Pat Gelsinger is choosing big domestic chip manufacturing investments over short-term shareholder rewards, and he has a big fan: President Biden.

www.cnbc.com

nom nom

Corporations are routinely awarded giant piles of tax money - it's a central building block of late-stage capitalism, and as the US is the most extreme representation of that ideology, this is entirely unsurprising. I was wondering what made you link that specifically to the launch of the ATX 3.0 spec. Even implying a causal tie there is ... a stretch? It's not like the ATX 3.0 spec releasing benefits the US in any specific way, right? That A happened, and then B happened, does not mean that A caused B.

 

[Space Lynx]

Corporations are routinely awarded giant piles of tax money - it's a central building block of late-stage capitalism, and as the US is the most extreme representation of that ideology, this is entirely unsurprising. I was wondering what made you link that specifically to the launch of the ATX 3.0 spec. Even implying a causal tie there is ... a stretch? It's not like the ATX 3.0 spec releasing benefits the US in any specific way, right? That A happened, and then B happened, does not mean that A caused B.

I imagine any influx of cash helps all divisions of a company

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

The "Rebound Effect", the empirically demonstrated phenomenon in which technological developments leading to respective gains in efficiency result in a NET increase in energy consumption rather than a NET decrease, are definitely confirmed in the videocard market post-maxwell. The way these videocards are sucking the juice down you'd have no idea we were in the midst of an energy and ecological crisis of global scale.

 

[londiste]

Here's hoping GPU manufacturers will figure out an optimal position for the connector on the PCB.

Is there such a thing? Even when ignoring the technical realities of where the best place for it would be in terms of PCB layout and VRM location. Some like the connector at the end of the card, some like it on the end but at the side. Ampere's middle center angled location was weird but most people did not and do not really care much about that either.

 

[Ruru]

Here's hoping GPU manufacturers will figure out an optimal position for the connector on the PCB.

I liked when they were in the back of the card, not on the side like they've been for years now.

 

[EatingDirt]

all it took was an influx of socialist tax payer money in a capitalist free market economy to make it happen... neat lol

I think you're confused about what words mean and how they relate to this topic. Socialism isn't when government gives corporations large sums of money/tax breaks(Here is the definition of socialism). The phrase you're looking for is corporate welfare.

Now, as for the subject at hand, it seems to be about that time to transition to a new cable for GPU's. Seeing as all but the lowest power cards need 2 cable connections already, it only makes sense to do away with the multiple 6-8 pin connectors and compress everything back down to 1 cable.

 

[Space Lynx]

I think you're confused about what words mean and how they relate to this topic. Socialism isn't when government gives corporations large sums of money/tax breaks(Here is the definition of socialism). The phrase you're looking for is corporate welfare.

Now, as for the subject at hand, it seems to be about that time to transition to a new cable for GPU's. Seeing as all but the lowest power cards need 2 cable connections already, it only makes sense to do away with the multiple 6-8 pin connectors and compress everything back down to 1 cable.

according to your link, "collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods" I imagine Intel had talks with the white house before getting that influx of money, and how they plan to spend it, so ipso facto in a round about way... depends how you look at it... hehe

 

[mechtech]

Hmmm so when will we actually see atx 3.0 psus on the shelf??

 

[kiriakost]

Hmmm so when will we actually see atx 3.0 psus on the shelf??

The pictures are proofs, that the standard this is now at the desk of most PSU factory R&D team.
They will need three months to design a prototype.
Six months testing.
a) First production sample = at eight months time.
Internal testing two months.
Getting all certifications = six months.

Give or take = 14 months for the fast running teams.

 

[Valantar]

I imagine any influx of cash helps all divisions of a company

Meh. Intel is flush with cash, and has been for decades. This makes literally zero difference to their day-to-day operations, it just keeps the ever-fickle shareholders and board members happy in feeling safe continuing on the current path of the company, rather than running around like headless chickens as shareholders often do when spooked.

This is the circular logic of business in late-stage capitalism: shareholders run at the first sign of danger, which sends stock markets plunging. Stock markets are seen as a measure of the stability of the economy, despite having near zero direct relation to the actual stability of jobs or incomes (beyond being able to run companies out of business for no reason other than fear). Governments don't want that, so they spend public money funding private profits to keep the shareholders from panicking. This makes shareholders accustomed to artificially inflated profit margins and wildly unrealistic costs of doing business, which further increases their anxiety for anything approaching an ordinarily stable business. So they lobby government for more support. And 'round and 'round it goes.

The "Rebound Effect", the empirically demonstrated phenomenon in which technological developments leading to respective gains in efficiency result in a NET increase in energy consumption rather than a NET decrease, are definitely confirmed in the videocard market post-maxwell. The way these videocards are sucking the juice down you'd have no idea we were in the midst of an energy and ecological crisis of global scale.

Yeah, it's pretty messed up. I always put this down to essentially greed and fear in the face of competition: You have a gen 1 product that does X perf at Y watts. Then you have gen 2 that could do 1.3X perf at Y watts - but what if 30% isn't enough, or competitors deliver more? So you push power, maybe to 1.5Y, and get 1.8X perf instead. More efficient? In a way, yes. But also poorly tuned and sub-optimal, and you'd have gotten better efficiency if you weren't so dead set on pushing things as far as they would go. And for each generation as the pushing succeeds, the engineers start thinking "well, we could push it to where it is now, why not further?" And suddenly we go from the 30-40W CPUs of the early 2000s to 250+W ones today, and dozens-of-watts GPUs at the same point (or hundred-ish for what most people could get a decade ago) to 400W today and 600W tomorrow.

Heck, my 6900XT is definitely a product of this process - but then I keep it undervolted and underclocked to a far more efficient range, cutting nearly 150W off its power budget.

 

[EatingDirt]

according to your link, "collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods" I imagine Intel had talks with the white house before getting that influx of money, and how they plan to spend it, so ipso facto in a round about way... depends how you look at it... hehe

Great, now we've learned that you don't understand what Collective Ownership is. Here is that definition. The only way giving more money in the form of subsides to Intel would be socialist/communist is if it was owned by the government.

The government giving subsidies/tax breaks to private corporations is a neo-lib/con capitalist concept (Neo-Lib). The expectation being that these private entities are more efficient at meeting market demand than a government entity would be, and because of this, the economic impact in the long run is a net gain.

So again, the phrase you are looking for is corporate welfare, and both parties in the USA, which are full of neo-lib/cons, continue to be in favor of it.

 

[Space Lynx]

Great, now we've learned that you don't understand what Collective Ownership is. Here is that definition. The only way giving more money in the form of subsides to Intel would be socialist/communist is if it was owned by the government.

The government giving subsidies/tax breaks to private corporations is a neo-lib/con capitalist concept (Neo-Lib). The expectation being that these private entities are more efficient at meeting market demand than a government entity would be, and because of this, the economic impact in the long run is a net gain.

So again, the phrase you are looking for is corporate welfare, and both parties in the USA, which are full of neo-lib/cons, continue to be in favor of it.

Thanks for the info, it is appreciated as I like to learn more about the world.

 

[Valantar]

Great, now we've learned that you don't understand what Collective Ownership is. Here is that definition. The only way giving more money in the form of subsides to Intel would be socialist/communist is if it was owned by the government.

The government giving subsidies/tax breaks to private corporations is a neo-lib/con capitalist concept (Neo-Lib). The expectation being that these private entities are more efficient at meeting market demand than a government entity would be, and because of this, the economic impact in the long run is a net gain.

So again, the phrase you are looking for is corporate welfare, and both parties in the USA, which are full of neo-lib/cons, continue to be in favor of it.

Couldn't agree more. It's pretty fascinating how many people living under neoliberalism just don't seem to know that this ideology exists, and instead buy into simplistic rhetorical devices about these things "actually" being [insert hated ideology, typically socialism]. And then they keep voting for the very people who have consciously put these policies and structures into place, and who continue to maintain them.

 

[Space Lynx]

Couldn't agree more. It's pretty fascinating how many people living under neoliberalism just don't seem to know that this ideology exists, and instead buy into simplistic rhetorical devices about these things "actually" being [insert hated ideology, typically socialism]. And then they keep voting for the very people who have consciously put these policies and structures into place, and who continue to maintain them.

CNN and Fox news decide who USA candidates are, not USA voters. You are uneducated in how broken America has become, and such ignorance I wish I had still.

 

[Valantar]

Thanks for the info, it is appreciated as I like to learn more about the world.

If you're interested in a critical perspective on the current structures dominating our world, I highly recommend looking up Mark Fisher's writings. Capitalist Realism is the go-to (and at 90-something pages it's not that big of an undertaking), but essentially all of his writings are excellent at dissecting late-stage capitalism and rendering visible the structures upon which it is built. Truly enlightening work.

CNN and Fox news decide who USA candidates are, not USA voters. You are uneducated in how broken America has become, and such ignorance I wish I had still.

That's too conspiratorical a take for my tastes. As I see it, the parties decide candidates; most media just push whatever candidate on the establishment-to-reactionary scale fits their current judgement of who will win; they ultimately don't care beyond wanting viewers and for the status quo to continue in terms of them still making money. Note that on that spectrum there is zero room for progressive or even slightly left-leaning candidates - just look at how Bernie was pushed out. But despite how the media hated him, it was party leadership that screwed him over, and his grassroots support demonstrated that corporate media are more easily beaten than entrenched systems of bureaucratic power such as party leaderships. Trump did push himself into the republican party despite party leadership hating him, but then he had tons of cash behind him, and was riding a far-right wave that started long before he became politically relevant (the Tea Party etc.). These right-wing forces were already exerting significant power on Republican party leadership for nearly a decade before his win, and were backed by massively wealthy donors financing their candidates, extremist think tanks writing and promoting policies, etc. Fox did love the Tea Party due to their sensationalism (and the politics of channel leadership), but saying it decided who won is far too simplistic. Of course Fox News has long since degraded into a reactionary/quasi-fascist propaganda tool for various billionaires and ideologues, so it's hard to analyze in the same framework as the regular for-profit media. The rest are opportunistic but have some desire to convey some smidge of truth in what they do; Fox has long since abandoned that in favor of ever-increasing sensationalism and outright propaganda. But then that also describes the Republican party for the past ~5 years, so those two do go rather hand-in-hand. Still, many in the US seem to make the mistake of thinking that just because Fox operates as the propaganda arm of the republican far-right fringe, that other media are the same for the Democratic party - ties are much, much looser there. Those media are broadly aligned with the neoliberal economic policies of conservative democrats and moderate republicans, and certainly not with either the social nor economic policies of progressive democrats or democratic socialists.

 

[Vecix6]

Hmmm so when will we actually see atx 3.0 psus on the shelf??

As I know actually it seems that some PSU already exists or are at least anounced: ASUS Loki, Gigabyte UD1000GM PG5, and others from Cooler Master and MSI.

I got some questions about this:

Why you call this an Smart power connector, as I know my VGA uses 8 pin connector capable of 150W + 75W PCI Express conection but my card and ALL consumes diferent power depending of his load so it's not fixed to 225W or other number, it varies, so I cannot understand the usefull of those new standard with 4 prefixed W.

Also I got other question ¿Is ATX 3.0 from Intel is compatible with ATX12VO Power Supplies or there are two diferent standards both from Intel for future PSU?

 

[aQi]

Well this means we are going to see an Intel ARC pci epress 5.0 with 12pin power connector gpu.

 

[looniam]

Wait, so this means that shitty third party cables and extensions are just going to bridge sense1 and sense0 to ground right at the connector, right? I foresee a future where this leads to some ... let's say unsafe custom wiring. Hooray!

Other than that, this is kind of cool. But also too simple a mechanism for me to trust any custom cabling that isn't very high quality.

its not that different than from before:

people should already be wary of shoddy cables.

 

[Vayra86]

CNN and Fox news decide who USA candidates are, not USA voters. You are uneducated in how broken America has become, and such ignorance I wish I had still.

No, countries get the leaders they deserve, its really that simple.

Its far too easy to always point the finger elsewhere. The same goes for 'power usage' and how 'commerce makes it increase'.

We're the idiots buying everything.