4 ms·
This seems like an annoying decision for DIY, but the upside seems to be less cable routing. That will surely save costs. Cables and connectors are more expensi
by murgindrag 7y ago
This seems like an annoying decision for DIY, but the upside seems to be less cable routing. That will surely save costs. Cables and connectors are more expensive than silicon these days.
Old system: Each device needs to connect to PSU and to the motherboard
New system: Each device needs to connect to just the motherboard. Right now, parallel cables, and in a year or two, a common cable carries power+data.
I predict the natural conclusion to this trend will be:
* 2-wire connections, with DC power and AC data on the same lines, a la microphone phantom power. Connectors and cables will be simpler. Electronics will be slightly more complex.
* I predict things like power ready will be communicated over that data line, as will metadata. Instead of 12V sense, we'll have an ADC of voltage on the motherboard communicated back digitally.
* 12V will be on all the time. 12V standby will be achieved by switching power off to some components on the motherboard, and communicating back to the PSU that we don't need a lot of power for a while.
I predict all of this will make computers less hackable for DIY.
- myself248 7y agoDid you RTFA? Pin 7 is 12vSB, which will be on all the time, not the main 12V rails. It's likely to work exactly like 5vSB right now, just at a different voltage. Personally I predict this will make it much easier to DIY things like vehicle PSUs, since you'll only need a single buckboost converter and some ignition-sense logic. All other factors will be relatively unchanged, just the red and orange wires are going away which is fine because basically nothing used them anyway.