ATX is outdated garbage, and needs a modern replacement

[Jon Gerow]

Old article, but still relevant as the form factor STILL hasn't changed:

https://www.osnews.com/story/29700/a...n-replacement/

[ashiekh]

Isn't that why BTX was invented?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

[Jon Gerow]

Isn't that why BTX was invented?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)

We see how well that worked out, right?

[ashiekh]

I suspect the future is single voltage power supplies, so then 'group regulated' is just fine ;-)

I read someplace that computers consume more energy than aircraft (all computers compared to all aircraft), so I hope the future is low powered.

My Raspberry Pi has no fan and runs on a single voltage; but I worry about the SD card wearing out (SLC is expensive)

[Jon Gerow]

My Raspberry Pi has no fan and runs on a single voltage; but I worry about the SD card wearing out (SLC is expensive)

But can it run Crysis?

[Stefan Payne]

Old article, but still relevant as the form factor STILL hasn't changed

Form Factor is something like 35 years old or so, maybe more, designed for like 120W PSU with 50-60% Efficiency and 80mm fan, back in the day when IBM was "da boss"...

But the voltages aren't any better.

At least the 3,3V Rail should be gotten rid of and additional 12V pins for the Motherboard. At least double them to 4.
And remove most of the 5V or all of them from the connector...
Who needs 5x 5V these days or 4x 3,3V these days??

So a quick calculation in my head (left 1 5V and removed all 3,3V) makes that come out at 14pins, with the removal of the negative rails, its 12 pins...
That sounds better than 24pins with 2 holes (in the future)...

[Ansem1]

I agree with the article!
While building computer for me or my friends I really can't understand how is possible that we still have 10 pins to connect 1 at time for case leds+buttons!

Also the ATX+CPU connectors are insane. I get that cables need to be big, but the connector is awful! I can't count how many times I nearly broke my motherboard beacause of the ATX connector!

I really hope that computer makers will come out with a decent new standard

[mariush]

At least the 3,3V Rail should be gotten rid of and additional 12V pins for the Motherboard. At least double them to 4.
And remove most of the 5V or all of them from the connector...
Who needs 5x 5V these days or 4x 3,3V these days??

So a quick calculation in my head (left 1 5V and removed all 3,3V) makes that come out at 14pins, with the removal of the negative rails, its 12 pins...
That sounds better than 24pins with 2 holes (in the future)...

5vSB + 5v for backwards compatibility.
Lose 3.3v and -12v
No extra 12v
Add 20v (since it's in USB power), make it tolerant enough to also use ~18.5v DC In adapters, so you could power lighter systems (like 35-65w TDP processors with integrated graphics and a m.2 ssd) from a 65w-90w adapter).


Something else that i thought about... would be cool if we could have a sort of "USB Light" because even the simplest USB 1.1 is way to complex for some things.
For example...
no 3-4 different transfer modes,
no 40+ byte headers per data packet depending on transfer mode (i think 9 byte is the minimum)
stricter packet sizes ... for example have each header 8 bytes always, and then data payload in multiples of 8 bytes, up to 1024 or 2048 bytes ( if one byte in header is used to specify max payload, then you have max 256x8 bytes) and minimum 8 bytes ...
have device specify at connection time the maximum payload size it can process, for example for microcontrollers with only 64-128 bytes of RAM or something like that, they could say at handshake "i can only process up to 16 bytes payload size" and the hub controller will fragment bigger stuff in consecutive 16 byte payloads and packets each with 8 byte header.
send to remove the cascading feature (no usb devices in usb hub which goes in usb hub), remove
device can send at initial connection what voltages it supports 5v, 12v, 20v, hub always starts in 5v and if device asks (by sending a command to hub chip) it switches to 12v or higher if hub supports it (hub chip could be 5v and 12v only) - it would be trivial to have microcontrollers with a tiny ldo on the input to make sure they won't blow up with 12v or 20v at input.
maybe have 5 wires instead of 4, voltage ground in out clock and then you can have full duplex at 8-10mbps.

If you simplify the protocol and make it possible to use less transistors in a "hub chip" maybe you can make cheap "hubs" that have 8-16 "usb light" ports.

Why this... well look for example as fans with RGB and all the different protocols aura sync , msi mystic lights , nzxt cam, 12v rgb headers , 5v rgb headers etc

Wouldn't it be way easier to have a small "usb light" microcontroller inside the fan which connects to a "usb light" hub and reports it's a "fan with rpm sensor and pwm input", and also a rgb strip with n leds and each fan and rgb has its own id (unique serial or stored in eeprom / flash) which rgb software can enumerate and identify and send commands to the RGB to change them and sync all of them through the usb hub

You can have 12v fans or 24v fans (working at 20v) and the motherboard initially starts at 5v and the microcontroller can report it can handle 5v and 12v or 5v/12v/20v and then the usb light hub chip switches to 12v or 20v and everybody's happy.

[ashiekh]

5vSB + 5v for backwards compatibility.

I think backward compatibility would be an error.

Concerning USB, we already have a different number of pins for USB 1/2 compared to USB 3 and the type A connectors on USB 3 thumb drives are a bit crazy for backward compatibility.

[mariush]

psu doesn't care about different usb connectors.
and you'd still have basic devices like a usb keyboard. I was thinking that with the reduction of manufacturing processes power consumption goes down, so it wouldn't be unheard of to have a pc powered from 5v 2A adapter for example. such motherboards could be sold with a tiny adapter cable that takes 5v..20v (if usb charger supports quickcharge or whatever is called and create the power good and power ok signals and 5v. Or, you can buy modular psu and insert a single 6-8 pin connector.

Motherboards need a low voltage for stand-by (for chipset, wake-on-lan, keypress) and stuff like suspend to ram.

I suppose it could be changed to 12v stand-by (for higher efficiency) but that would force all motherboards to have a 5v dc-dc converter on them.
Still, considering a lot of systems these days use m.2 ssds (running with 3.3v i think) it could make sense to use same onboard dc-dc/vrm

We could have something like:


[PGood] [12vSB] [ 12v ] [ 12v ]
[ Pok ] [ GND ] [ GND ] [ GND ]

and psu can add a relay to switch 12vSB to 12v from internal dc-dc converter / regular output once pc starts completely.

3 pairs x 12v x ~9A (~300w) would be enough for pci-e slots, fans, ram vrm, onboard stuff

They could also change the pci-e slots in a backwards compatible way like they did with agp-pro (extend slot on the rear facing side a bit - if card has some gold fingers there signaling support, the motherboard could send 20v instead of 12v through regular power contacts (if additional 20v only connector is inserted in motherboard)