The 12VO power standard appears to be gaining steam — new standard will reduce PC cabling and costs

MSI's promo for upcoming 12VO Products
(Image credit: HardwareLuxx)

The 12VO power standard, developed by Intel, is designed to reduce the number of power cables needed to power a modern PC, ultimately reducing cost. While industry uptake of the standard has been slow, a new slew of products from MSI indicates that 12VO is gaining traction.

MSI is gearing up with two 12VO-compliant motherboards, covering both Intel and AMD platforms, and a 12VO Power Supply that it's releasing simultaneously: The Pro B650 12VO WiFi, Pro H610M 12VO, and MSI 12VO PSU power supply are all 'coming soon,' which presumably means they'll officially launch at CES 2024. HardwareLux got a pretty good look at MSI's offerings during its EHA (European Hardware Awards) tech tour, including the 'Project Zero' we covered earlier.

MSI Pro H610M 12VO using the Intel's 12v rail only standard for the desktop PC standard

(Image credit: MSI)

One of the noticeable changes is the absence of a 24-pin ATX connector, as the ATX12VO connectors use only ten-pin connectors. The publications also saw a 12VO-compliant FSP power supply in a compact system with a thick graphics card.

A couple of years ago, we reported on FSP 650-watt and 750-watt SFX 12VO power supply. Apart from that, there is a 1x 6-pin ATX12VO termed 'extra board connector' according to its manual and a 1x 8-pin 12V power connector for the CPU. There are two smaller 4-pin connectors that will provide the 5V power needed for SATA drives. It is likely each of these connectors provides power to two SATA-based drives.

Benefits of a 12V-Only PSU for the Desktop PC Market

Intel proposed the ATX12VO standard several years ago, but adoption has been slow until now. This standard is designed to provide 12v exclusively, completely removing a direct 3.3v and 5v supply. The success of the new standard will depend on the wide availability of the motherboard and power supplies. 

Components like RAMs, USB, and M.2 SSDs don't use 12v rails or draw from the power supply directly — M.2 SSDs and RAMs use 3.3V, while USB and SATA-based drives use 5V. The motherboard will be responsible for managing voltages for these components. While this makes sense for M.2 SSDs, RAMs, and USB as they do not take power from a power supply directly and now would need a step-down converter on the motherboard, the 4-pin SATA power outputs will have a 12v-to-5v step-down converter powering through a cable (provided by the motherboard manufacturer as MSI includes one cable with its motherboard) for the SATA-based drives, each output possibly powering two devices. 

Hence,12VO should be easier to implement now as the dependency on SATA-based drives has been significantly reduced in the enthusiast space by M.2 SSDs. Having a single voltage rail handled by the power supply should help with better AC-DC power efficiency, and fewer cables due to the absence of 5.5 and 3v rails would lead to better cable management. 

Potential Early Users- System Integrators

According to Hardware Luxx, it seems that the initial ATX12VO components are aimed at system integrators like Dell/ Alienware, HP/ Omen, Lenovo, and several others. It makes sense as these companies are likely to jump on the bandwagon immediately, as the removal of 3.3v and 5v would help reduce manufacturing costs. There will also be retail components like motherboards and power supplies for this standard, starting with companies like MSI and PSU manufacturers like FSP.

Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Contributing Writer

Roshan Ashraf Shaikh has been in the Indian PC hardware community since the early 2000s and has been building PCs, contributing to many Indian tech forums, & blogs. He operated Hardware BBQ for 11 years and wrote news for eTeknix & TweakTown before joining Tom's Hardware team. Besides tech, he is interested in fighting games, movies, anime, and mechanical watches.

  • bit_user
    IIRC, @InvalidError made the case that 24V would've reduced overall cost, system-wide. Since nothing uses 12 V, natively, it would've made PSUs cheaper to go with 24 V, and wouldn't have made much difference at the motherboard level.

    I wonder if the prominence of 19 V power bricks might be why they didn't go with 24 V. It's probably a stretch of an explanation, but you do see those on mini-ITX systems, sometimes.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    bit_user said:
    IIRC, @InvalidError made the case that 24V would've reduced overall cost, system-wide. Since nothing uses 12 V, natively, it would've made PSUs cheaper to go with 24 V, and wouldn't have made much difference at the motherboard level.
    IIRC, what I have said in the past is that 24V is the highest voltage that can be handled with inexpensive MOSFETs. Once you go beyond 24V, parts start getting significantly more expensive. That makes 24V the highest voltage that could be cost-effectively used to boost power supply and distribution efficiency.

    Another reason for 24V is that if PCs gain many USB4+ ports in the future, each of those port will need 20V capability and it is much easier to implement those as buck-only converters from 24V than buck-boost converters from 12V.

    Not sure what laptop adapters have to do with this. The 19V there is simply because it is a convenient voltage to charge 4S NMC/NCA battery packs from: 19V from the adapter - 0.5V battery-ORing diodes - charging inductor losses - charging PWM FET losses - current measurement shunt losses - wiring losses - etc. = 17V (4.25V/cell) end-of-charge voltage. Most VRMs in a laptop run off of whatever the system power rail is at, which is whatever the battery voltage is while the laptop is on battery power, so you already have plenty of examples of VRMs able to take 10-21V input voltage. Making those compoinents 24VO-compatible would only require bumping the absolute maximum voltage tolerance from the 23V or so they already have to about 28V.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    12VO is a good stopgap to make forward and backward compatibility with ATX PSUs and boards easier though - just need a dumb adapter one way and a low power 5v/3.3v buck converter the other. I'd have been happier with 48VDC - standard for datacentre DC distribution, so no shortage of components available to handle it. Quarter the current for the same power draw (e.g. 300W cards from PCIe card-edge power).
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Thanks for the info, as always.
    : )
    Glad to see you around. Happy holidays!
    ☃️ 🎅 ✨
    InvalidError said:
    Not sure what laptop adapters have to do with this.
    Sorry, just making a random guess why they went for 12 V.

    Perhaps a better one would've been for compatibility with existing PSUs? Would it be conceivable to use an ATX PSU with one of these new boards via a simple intermediate connector, or does the existing ATX PSU spec not require enough current on their 12 V rail?

    If not that, do you have any theories about why they went with 12 V instead of 24 V?
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    24v it's way better than 12v. But I think 12v it's more user friendly :) (less risk of injury or death).
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Amdlova said:
    24v it's way better than 12v. But I think 12v it's more user friendly :) (less risk of injury or death).
    Can 24 V really be that dangerous, if USB is using 20 V?
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    bit_user said:
    Can 24 V really be that dangerous, if USB is using 20 V?
    99.99% of times can't kill
    But you never see what a dumb user can doo :)
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Amdlova said:
    99.99% of times can't kill
    But you never see what a dumb user can doo :)
    Even if they press on a PCB with pointy barbs hard enough to puncture their skin, that's still not very dangerous. What makes current dangerous is when it's across your heart muscle.

    My dad taught me, whenever you're handling a potentially live wire (talking about 115 VAC, here), to keep one hand in your pocket. That will help you remember not to potentially touch a ground with the other.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    bit_user said:
    Thanks for the info, as always.
    : )
    Glad to see you around. Happy holidays!
    ☃️ 🎅 ✨

    Sorry, just making a random guess why they went for 12 V.

    Perhaps a better one would've been for compatibility with existing PSUs? Would it be conceivable to use an ATX PSU with one of these new boards via a simple intermediate connector, or does the existing ATX PSU spec not require enough current on their 12 V rail?

    If not that, do you have any theories about why they went with 12 V instead of 24 V?
    PCIe is on 12V if I'm not mistaken, stepping down this one at the mobo level would increase costs.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    edzieba said:
    I'd have been happier with 48VDC - standard for datacentre DC distribution, so no shortage of components available to handle it.
    Again, what I think @InvalidError said about this is that 48 V wouldn't offer much/any cost-savings in the PSU, but would add significant cost to the motherboard. So, the least system-wide cost/complexity would seem to be at 24 V.

    edzieba said:
    Quarter the current for the same power draw (e.g. 300W cards from PCIe card-edge power).
    On a related note, just imagine how much grief could've been avoided if PCIe used 24 V instead of 12 V, for the 12VHPWR connector!
    Reply