Intel ATX 3.0 standard 600W 12-pin 12VHPWR Power Supply

Intel ATX 3.0 to pack huge 600W graphics cards

PC power supplies are often not talked about much. It is because, they have been the same for almost a decade with little or no changes. However, Intel has now announced the arrival of its ATX 3.0 standard power supply. It is built for full-sized PC cases. There is a standardised connection for graphic cards and other PCIe devices and it is going to deliver up to 600 watts on a single connector.

Graphics cards are really in the game these days and we have heard that the maximum throughput for an 8-pin ATX rail is close to 150 watts. Therefore, these powerful gaming GPUs will have to double or even triple up. You will have to create a bit of extra space inside the case and the wiring should be a bit complex as well.

Intel

This power supply also comes with a new 12-pin 12VHPWR connection that allows you to get access to some extremely powerful graphics card that are needed for the next couple of upcoming generations. The pin houses are physically quite smaller with 3.0mm pitch compared to 4.2mm on the traditional current power supplies in the market.

There are four additional data pins squeezed in beneath the primary power pins and that makes it a total of 16 pins. This will help largely in managing the DC output voltage regulation and a series of new tools intended to control high power output precisely and accurately.

All of this is very securely handled by the power supply. The company has announced that the new Intel 12VHPWR connection is going to be standard for almost all, if not all PCIe cards using the 5.0 specification.

Some companies have even tried to copy this design with 12 primary pins and no additional four pics. For example, NVIDIA’s 30-series Founders Edition cards are using a funny version of this connection.

NVIDIA is basically using adapters in the box for double-8-pin power supply rails to easily conform with PSUs. However, the 12-pin connection should also be fast-compatible with the 12 VHPWR rails. Without the extra data pins, they are going to limit themselves to just 450 watts for power regulation.

This amazing technology of ATX 3.0 COMPLIANT POWER SUPPLIES AND PRE-Built systems are expected to arrive in the markets later this year. Our experience says that the next generation of power supplies are going to be physically compatible with all ATX-standard PC cases, however; you might want to have adapters for pre-ATX12VO motherboards and SATA components. We have also heard rumors about the forthcoming GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card coming with a 12+4-pin 12VHPWR connection. However, nothing official has been announced in this regard yet.