4 ms·

Lower voltage would be OK, but then all of the cables and plugs would need to be redesigned. And there would still need to be for voltage switching unless we st

Lower voltage would be OK, but then all of the cables and plugs would need to be redesigned. And there would still need to be for voltage switching unless we start adding a protocol and have PSU switch voltage dynamically... which is also not efficient. Since they went so far to create a new cable which wont be available on old PSU they would have easily extended that slightly and introduced an entirely new PSU class which has a new voltage also. But now they went the easy route and it failed which is even worse as they will have to redesign it now instead of it being safely done the first time.

0x457 2y ago
> Lower voltage would be OK, but then all of the cables and plugs would need to be redesigned. And there would still need to be for voltage switching unless we start adding a protocol and have PSU switch voltage dynamically... which is also not efficient. It's not like that. It's a design where PSU only provides 12V to motherboard and motherboard provides the rest. Only location of those connectors change. It's called ATX12VO. In modern PC almost nothing draws from 3v3 rail, not even RAM. I'm pretty sure nothing draws 3v3 directly from PSU at all today. 5v rail directly from PSU only used for SATA drives.
johnwalkr 2y ago
There are versions of the cables (and adapters) that work on older PSUs, although new PSUs are starting to come with the same connector that new GPUs have. Anyway there are pros and cons to using 12V, or lower or higher, and anything except 12V would require a new PSU so it's a hard sell. But even without that detail, I have a feeling 12V is a reasonable choice anyway, not too low or high for conversion either in the PSU or in the GPU or other component. In any case, at the end of the day sending 12V from the PSU to GPU is easy. The connector used here is bad, either by design or manufacturing quality, but surely the solution can be a better housing and/or sockets on the cable side connectors instead of a different voltage.

0x457 2y ago

> Lower voltage would be OK, but then all of the cables and plugs would need to be redesigned. And there would still need to be for voltage switching unless we start adding a protocol and have PSU switch voltage dynamically... which is also not efficient. It's not like that. It's a design where PSU only provides 12V to motherboard and motherboard provides the rest. Only location of those connectors change. It's called ATX12VO. In modern PC almost nothing draws from 3v3 rail, not even RAM. I'm pretty sure nothing draws 3v3 directly from PSU at all today. 5v rail directly from PSU only used for SATA drives.

johnwalkr 2y ago

There are versions of the cables (and adapters) that work on older PSUs, although new PSUs are starting to come with the same connector that new GPUs have. Anyway there are pros and cons to using 12V, or lower or higher, and anything except 12V would require a new PSU so it's a hard sell. But even without that detail, I have a feeling 12V is a reasonable choice anyway, not too low or high for conversion either in the PSU or in the GPU or other component. In any case, at the end of the day sending 12V from the PSU to GPU is easy. The connector used here is bad, either by design or manufacturing quality, but surely the solution can be a better housing and/or sockets on the cable side connectors instead of a different voltage.