Since the introduction of the ATX2. X version of the power specification in 2003, PC power has been running well for 19 years. It was not until March this year that Intel introduced the ATX3.0 power specification, and the new 12VHPWR16-pin interface can provide up to 600W of power supply capacity for PCIe 5.0 graphics and expansion cards.

This change is very significant, and the future ATX3.0 power supply, including the motherboard, CPU, and graphics card design, will inevitably be affected. NVIDIA's RTX3090Ti power supply is the first graphics card to support the new specifications, but there is currently no actual ATX3.0 power supply available, so the graphics card also comes with three 8-pin adapters.

This new specification was jointly developed by Intel and PCI-SIG organizations, so why do both parties strengthen the power supply of graphics cards so much? The PCWorld website interviewed Stephen Eastman from Intel, who wrote a power design guide and introduced the improvements of ATX3.0 in power supply design.

The original text is quite long, but in summary, it can be summarized in one sentence - the ATX3.0 power supply is prepared for the PCIe 5.0 graphics card. On the surface, it appears to be increased to 600W power supply, but in reality, it needs to be higher, able to handle three times the power consumption, which is 1800W power supply, although it is only instantaneous.

The power consumption of a graphics card is not as simple as the TDP or TBP power consumption provided by the manufacturer. Currently, although the PCIe 5.0 graphics card is nominally powered up to 600W, the actual issue of PowerExcursion power offset needs to be considered, which can be understood as peak power consumption.

In the ATX3.0 power supply, Intel and PCI-SIG have different power consumption offset requirements for different power sources. For power sources exceeding 450W, it is necessary to achieve 3x power supply for at least 100 microseconds.

For a 600W graphics card, the ATX3.0 power supply aims to achieve an instantaneous power output of 1800W, which is not possible with the current ATX power supply. This is also one of the core reasons for the major changes in power supply standards and wires in ATX3.0 power supply.

By the way, from the perspective of AMD and NVIDIA's RX7000 and RTX40 series graphics cards, there is no way to significantly increase the power consumption of graphics cards in the future to improve performance. The power consumption of H100 accelerator cards can exceed 700W, and it is not impossible to obtain 500-600W for game cards. If you want to change cards by the end of this year or early next year, you should consider a new generation of power supply.