5 ms·

> I'm curious as to why no vendor has yet tried to push a 24V or 48V PSU rail standard to reduce the amperage pushed over these crappy pins. people on another

by paulmd 4y ago

> I'm curious as to why no vendor has yet tried to push a 24V or 48V PSU rail standard to reduce the amperage pushed over these crappy pins. people on another HN thread yesterday literally were bitching about the cost (not safety - cost) of a $1 adapter being "forced" on them by NVIDIA and now you want to tell them they're gonna have to buy a whole new PSU? that's gonna be quite the comment thread. but yeah you're right in general, gotta move to 48V to move forward, pushing infinite amps at low voltages is completely bass-ackwards. The pcie-add-in-card form-factor needs a rethink in general, the GPU is now the largest and most power-hungry part of the system by far, and power isn't the only problem imposed by that ancient AT standard. imo we should move to some standardized "module sizes" for GPUs so that we solve GPU sag and cooling at the same time. the "pcie card" of the future should be a 12x6x4" prismatic module that slides on rails into a socket that provides a PCIe edge connector as well as a XT90 jag (or similar) for power, at a defined physical location, with 48V. Airflow should happen in a defined direction and manner, whether that's axial flow or blower-style. also please for the love of god, hot air rises, the AT standard means axial coolers are pushing against convection. But we couldn't even get BTX to take off, which is a trivial modification of ATX to reverse the orientation and fix this problem, the DIY market is deeply deeply rooted in the 1980s and will not abandon ATX without some nudging. Enterprise and OEM are fine, their volumes are big enough to do their own thing, but consumers are spinning their wheels fighting IBM's 1980 mistakes. It's gonna take government intervention, the EU is gonna have to step in and do it like with USB-C cables. The mess of arbitrary card dimensions slowly growing larger over time is the exact same problem that we had pre-standardization with USB too.

codeflo 4y ago
I think at these sizes and weights, the GPU needs to become a board that you screw onto the case, like a second motherboard. Sagging solved. Now the noisy fan, replace it with a preinstalled water cooling block to be integrated with your overall cooling solution, voila: noise and weird airflow solved as well.
- paulmd 4y ago
  Exactly, that's what I mean by "on rails". Imagine sliding a server PSU into place and it latches as it seats... do that but with a "GPU module". The case itself needs to be part of the support to fix GPU sag, and that's only possible with dimensional and connectical standardization. Smaller stuff that still reflects the "add-in-card" intention of the original design is fine, you can still have a bunch of PCIe slots for network cards and USB controllers if you want. But the GPU is not really an "add-in-card" anymore and it's problematic in a design sense to keep acting like it is, let alone to have every single product on the market doing something completely different dimensionally. That's the "pre-USB-micro" era problem that USB faced. There's no need for water though, that's a whole can of worms.
  - flatiron 4y ago
    AGP part deux
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  All in one water loops aren't as great as they make them out to be. You still need fans on a radiator, they can be quieter because they're often larger. Pump failures are more common than fan failures and harder to repair. Traveling with a water loop is a nightmare unless you drain it first.
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    Who's traveling with an ATX tower? In any case, I've always used the standard water cooling kits and they never failed me (as opposed to constantly breaking fans and huge temperatures). Maybe it's my environment.
    - dvngnt_ 4y ago
      people with apartments who move
    - squeaky-clean 4y ago
323 4y ago
At 500W+ maybe the GPU should have it's own dedicated power supply with it's own power cable. And then the GPU manufacturer could optimize the voltages and amps since they control the whole power chain. You could have some standardization, a simple power negotiation protocol "I can supply 500W at 24V or 48V" and a standard (big) connector. A long time ago the display was powered from the main unit, but we moved passed that and now displays have their own power cable.
- yurymik 4y ago
  Well, it didn't go that well [last time around](http://www.x86-secret.com/pics/divers/v56k/finalv5-6000.jpg http://www.x86-secret.com/pics/divers/v56k/finalv5-6000.jpg).
  - metadat 4y ago
    > Forbidden > You don't have permission to access this resource.
    - wlesieutre 4y ago
      Blocked based on referrer, if you go up to your URL bar and hit enter it should load directly
      - metadat 4y ago
        Cool, that fixes it- thanks!
        account42 4y ago
        Take it as a reminder to disable the privacy leak (for Firefox set network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy to 1 or 2 [0]) and demand that browser vendors fix their defaults. [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer
- toast0 4y ago
xbar 4y ago
The inside of consumer-assembled PCs is a terrible place for government intervention.
Tsiklon 4y ago
The workstation world sort of broadly standardises card length, allowing for support on 3 sides (PCI Bulkhead, PCI-E Slot, and a card extension with a blade to fit in a rail guide towards the front of the chassis). Even old cheese grater Apple Mac Pro's had this setup.
MisterTea 4y ago
> ... and now you want to tell them they're gonna have to buy a whole new PSU? I saw the connector and did a double take, it has a third row of smaller signal pins which none of my existing power supplies have. Not even my newest which is a 750W from last year. Sone new gpu power connector. So I assume most people had to buy a new psu anyway. I am all for higher voltage. 24V is the standard in industrial automation as well as off highway machinery and european trucks. 48V is common in telco but positive ground though it is common in industry; I use 48v supplies for small stepper and servo motor amplifiers for motion control.
- ziml77 4y ago
  People haven't had to buy new PSUs. The adapter has the circuitry built in to detect how many of the connections are populated. For each one, the 40xx cards will raise their power limits by 150W.
  - rasz 4y ago
    fun fact - that circuity is totally superfluous. Connector itself has 4 small pins underneath main ones specifically for detection. Nvidia did Apple here inventing stupid shit to make it proprietary. All this circuity does is 4 to 2 binary encoding.
    - cmsj 4y ago
      It's not proprietary, the connector is called 12VHPWR and it's specified by the PCI SIG.
      - rasz 4y ago
        Not the connector, additional useless chip Nvidia put in it encoding 4 signals into two pins, and leaving 2 remaining pins unpopulated.
        arka2147483647 4y ago
        Usefull to have unused pins, if you have to update it to support 1000w in the future
hakfoo 4y ago
The reason BTX failed is that it didn't present compelling arguments for enthusiasts at the time. Were there high-end enthusiast-class BTX boards, comparable to the best ATX boards of the time? I don't recall seeing them in any numbers. Hell, even BTX cases from recognizable manufacturers are quite rare. It's obvious they were making the pitch to the largest OEMs, the Dells and Acers who can source their own cases and boards. And the sales pitch was most compelling for them. If you've got a roasting Pentium 4 and a modest graphics card, you can fit them in the BTX "cooling channel" and keep them at a frosty 95c with a dinky heatsink and one or two cheap fans. That's not really exciting to an audience already saying "I can spend $75 on a kilogram of heatsink to get my CPU down to 70c, or $200+ on a custom-loop watercooling setup and get to 45c". Maybe they needed to find a niche market for hobbyists to work with-- for example, the early "silent computing" crowd might have been more interested in marginal increases in cooling. After all, people are willing to consider other form factors when there's some compelling draw (see Mini-ITX) I also wonder if the original design thesis still holds up. Once the Core series came out, "how do we cool this angry CPU" became less of a fixation, so it was probably easier to switch back towards commodity ATX designs. On the other hand, we've shot back past the original thermal situation and then some-- would the design still hold up with an unlimited 7950X drawing ~250W and a 4090 drawing 400w all trying to exhaust it into the cooling channel, or would they bake each other to death? I do agree that today's GPUs are ridiculously long, and nonstandard designs make them difficult to manage. Given that most outward-facing drives are gone, and SSDs have replaced most spinning rust in enthusiast PCs, I wish we'd see more "flat desktop" style cases. The GPU isn't sagging because its weight is directed mostly straight down into the case's bracing, convection is probably a little better, but it doesn't really help the power nightmare. They always make the cheap photoshopped jokes about GPUs with mains power, but maybe that's a stopgap solution-- sell the 5090 with an external power brick supplying, say, 48V/12A, and there's no internal cable gore and the power system can be 48v everywhere it matters. Then there's no need to design the rest of the PSU to guess what nVidia will want tomorrow.
yummypaint 4y ago
Speaking of USB-C and crazy design choices, I'm a little surprised someone hasn't just slapped a bunch of those on a graphics card to provide 100W at 20V each. Arguably the parts should be cheap since they are already available at scale, and 6 ports wouldn't be any larger than the problematic nvidia connector. I'm mostly joking, but for portable/mobile GPUs it doesn't seem that insane, that way there is also some choice as far as power adapter bulk.

by paulmd 4y ago

codeflo 4y ago

I think at these sizes and weights, the GPU needs to become a board that you screw onto the case, like a second motherboard. Sagging solved. Now the noisy fan, replace it with a preinstalled water cooling block to be integrated with your overall cooling solution, voila: noise and weird airflow solved as well.

paulmd 4y ago
Exactly, that's what I mean by "on rails". Imagine sliding a server PSU into place and it latches as it seats... do that but with a "GPU module". The case itself needs to be part of the support to fix GPU sag, and that's only possible with dimensional and connectical standardization. Smaller stuff that still reflects the "add-in-card" intention of the original design is fine, you can still have a bunch of PCIe slots for network cards and USB controllers if you want. But the GPU is not really an "add-in-card" anymore and it's problematic in a design sense to keep acting like it is, let alone to have every single product on the market doing something completely different dimensionally. That's the "pre-USB-micro" era problem that USB faced. There's no need for water though, that's a whole can of worms.
- flatiron 4y ago
  AGP part deux
squeaky-clean 4y ago
All in one water loops aren't as great as they make them out to be. You still need fans on a radiator, they can be quieter because they're often larger. Pump failures are more common than fan failures and harder to repair. Traveling with a water loop is a nightmare unless you drain it first.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  Who's traveling with an ATX tower? In any case, I've always used the standard water cooling kits and they never failed me (as opposed to constantly breaking fans and huge temperatures). Maybe it's my environment.
  - dvngnt_ 4y ago
    people with apartments who move
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago

323 4y ago

At 500W+ maybe the GPU should have it's own dedicated power supply with it's own power cable. And then the GPU manufacturer could optimize the voltages and amps since they control the whole power chain. You could have some standardization, a simple power negotiation protocol "I can supply 500W at 24V or 48V" and a standard (big) connector. A long time ago the display was powered from the main unit, but we moved passed that and now displays have their own power cable.

yurymik 4y ago
Well, it didn't go that well [last time around](http://www.x86-secret.com/pics/divers/v56k/finalv5-6000.jpg http://www.x86-secret.com/pics/divers/v56k/finalv5-6000.jpg).
- metadat 4y ago
  > Forbidden > You don't have permission to access this resource.
  - wlesieutre 4y ago
    Blocked based on referrer, if you go up to your URL bar and hit enter it should load directly
    - metadat 4y ago
      Cool, that fixes it- thanks!
      - account42 4y ago
        Take it as a reminder to disable the privacy leak (for Firefox set network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy to 1 or 2 [0]) and demand that browser vendors fix their defaults. [0] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer
toast0 4y ago

xbar 4y ago

The inside of consumer-assembled PCs is a terrible place for government intervention.

Tsiklon 4y ago

The workstation world sort of broadly standardises card length, allowing for support on 3 sides (PCI Bulkhead, PCI-E Slot, and a card extension with a blade to fit in a rail guide towards the front of the chassis). Even old cheese grater Apple Mac Pro's had this setup.

MisterTea 4y ago

> ... and now you want to tell them they're gonna have to buy a whole new PSU? I saw the connector and did a double take, it has a third row of smaller signal pins which none of my existing power supplies have. Not even my newest which is a 750W from last year. Sone new gpu power connector. So I assume most people had to buy a new psu anyway. I am all for higher voltage. 24V is the standard in industrial automation as well as off highway machinery and european trucks. 48V is common in telco but positive ground though it is common in industry; I use 48v supplies for small stepper and servo motor amplifiers for motion control.

ziml77 4y ago
People haven't had to buy new PSUs. The adapter has the circuitry built in to detect how many of the connections are populated. For each one, the 40xx cards will raise their power limits by 150W.
- rasz 4y ago
  fun fact - that circuity is totally superfluous. Connector itself has 4 small pins underneath main ones specifically for detection. Nvidia did Apple here inventing stupid shit to make it proprietary. All this circuity does is 4 to 2 binary encoding.
  - cmsj 4y ago
    It's not proprietary, the connector is called 12VHPWR and it's specified by the PCI SIG.
    - rasz 4y ago
      Not the connector, additional useless chip Nvidia put in it encoding 4 signals into two pins, and leaving 2 remaining pins unpopulated.
      - arka2147483647 4y ago
        Usefull to have unused pins, if you have to update it to support 1000w in the future

hakfoo 4y ago

The reason BTX failed is that it didn't present compelling arguments for enthusiasts at the time. Were there high-end enthusiast-class BTX boards, comparable to the best ATX boards of the time? I don't recall seeing them in any numbers. Hell, even BTX cases from recognizable manufacturers are quite rare. It's obvious they were making the pitch to the largest OEMs, the Dells and Acers who can source their own cases and boards. And the sales pitch was most compelling for them. If you've got a roasting Pentium 4 and a modest graphics card, you can fit them in the BTX "cooling channel" and keep them at a frosty 95c with a dinky heatsink and one or two cheap fans. That's not really exciting to an audience already saying "I can spend $75 on a kilogram of heatsink to get my CPU down to 70c, or $200+ on a custom-loop watercooling setup and get to 45c". Maybe they needed to find a niche market for hobbyists to work with-- for example, the early "silent computing" crowd might have been more interested in marginal increases in cooling. After all, people are willing to consider other form factors when there's some compelling draw (see Mini-ITX) I also wonder if the original design thesis still holds up. Once the Core series came out, "how do we cool this angry CPU" became less of a fixation, so it was probably easier to switch back towards commodity ATX designs. On the other hand, we've shot back past the original thermal situation and then some-- would the design still hold up with an unlimited 7950X drawing ~250W and a 4090 drawing 400w all trying to exhaust it into the cooling channel, or would they bake each other to death? I do agree that today's GPUs are ridiculously long, and nonstandard designs make them difficult to manage. Given that most outward-facing drives are gone, and SSDs have replaced most spinning rust in enthusiast PCs, I wish we'd see more "flat desktop" style cases. The GPU isn't sagging because its weight is directed mostly straight down into the case's bracing, convection is probably a little better, but it doesn't really help the power nightmare. They always make the cheap photoshopped jokes about GPUs with mains power, but maybe that's a stopgap solution-- sell the 5090 with an external power brick supplying, say, 48V/12A, and there's no internal cable gore and the power system can be 48v everywhere it matters. Then there's no need to design the rest of the PSU to guess what nVidia will want tomorrow.

yummypaint 4y ago

Speaking of USB-C and crazy design choices, I'm a little surprised someone hasn't just slapped a bunch of those on a graphics card to provide 100W at 20V each. Arguably the parts should be cheap since they are already available at scale, and 6 ports wouldn't be any larger than the problematic nvidia connector. I'm mostly joking, but for portable/mobile GPUs it doesn't seem that insane, that way there is also some choice as far as power adapter bulk.