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I love computers with 12VDC native power jacks. Why? My solar-powered van (interior only, the engine is still diesel) is 12VDC everywhere, and that's good clean battery DC, not some noisy-ass AC/DC conversion. I love it so much that 2 of the last 3 computers I built (on an ATX form factor) were 12VDC native. I have external AC/DC power supplies for them, but when travelling/living in a solar-powered environment, I ge…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree it's delusional, but to give some hard data, Mercury Research published its quarterly findings on x86 market share as of Q4 2019[0]. Specifically: - On the server side, AMD market share is only 4.5% (up by 1.4 percentage point from last year) - For desktop, market share is 18.3%, up by 2.4 pp from last year. - For laptop, market share is 16.2%, up by 4.0 pp from last year. - For overall x86 chips, market shar…
> Maybe in 4-5 years, AMD will be the dominant player. But it's still too early to call them this. Highly unlikely. This is AMD's prime time because Intel screwed up, and they've peaked at 15%. I predict Intel to gain the pace in a few years and dominate the market once again.
Four important things to consider: First, this already happened to some extent. Outside of drives and fans, the virtually all of the power used in your system is exclusively 12v; either from the 12v pins on your ATX24 or P4 or EPS12 connectors, or via the PCI-E connectors; very little non-drive or non-fan power is supplied via 3.3 or 5v rails. Second, almost all PSUs today use 12v DC to 3.3/5v DC converters to increa…
Fujitsu have been building PCs for a number of years with proprietary 12v-only PSUs, with SATA power being provided from an auxiliary connector on the motherboard.
I love computers with 12VDC native power jacks. Why? My solar-powered van (interior only, the engine is still diesel) is 12VDC everywhere, and that's good clean battery DC, not some noisy-ass AC/DC conversion. I love it so much that 2 of the last 3 computers I built (on an ATX form factor) were 12VDC native. I have external AC/DC power supplies for them, but when travelling/living in a solar-powered environment, I ge…
I love computers with 12VDC native power jacks. Why? My solar-powered van (interior only, the engine is still diesel) is 12VDC everywhere, and that's good clean battery DC, not some noisy-ass AC/DC conversion. I love it so much that 2 of the last 3 computers I built (on an ATX form factor) were 12VDC native. I have external AC/DC power supplies for them, but when travelling/living in a solar-powered environment, I ge…
Do you find that it's more power efficient to run a custom built machine like that? I would think that using a laptop as your daily driver would stretch your battery bank further, since it's designed from the ground up for battery power. I lived off solar power for a while, and that was my thinking. I never did the math to verify it though.
What I will say is that the machine I used to use in the van lost its video output (the perils of onboard graphics), and I've found it impossible to source a reasonable replacement mobo. As a result, I've switched back to using a laptop (lenovo Y700) in the van.
What I notice as a potential improvement is that it effectively lets me store an extra X hours of power for computing, because I'm adding the laptop battery to the overall storage. Compared to my "house batteries", the laptop batteries are of course very small. But getting (say) 3 hours of work time stored up in the laptop does seem like a plus, especially on cloudier days.
I love computers with 12VDC native power jacks. Why? My solar-powered van (interior only, the engine is still diesel) is 12VDC everywhere, and that's good clean battery DC, not some noisy-ass AC/DC conversion. I love it so much that 2 of the last 3 computers I built (on an ATX form factor) were 12VDC native. I have external AC/DC power supplies for them, but when travelling/living in a solar-powered environment, I ge…
It would be really cool to have a solar/battery powered vehicle you can power from DC. A bus-sized RV could easily generate 5kw from current solar panels just on it's roof.
Current RVs do have both 110v AC and 12v DC systems, but they're not easily integrated. 12v is too low to power bigger stuff like air conditioners (1500 watts = 125 amp wiring!) and converting DC to AC requires expensive inverters.
A really cool solution would be high-voltage DC powering DC appliances directly and stepping down to clean lower voltage DC close to where it's needed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, this is just rearranging some things to avoid California's new efficiency regulations. If you move the inefficent stuff to the motherboard, the PSU magically gets more efficient!
Huh? Is California regulating PSU efficiency or power draw from the wall?
Makes sense. Should have happened long ago. All those old voltages date from when +5 from the power supply was used directly by the logic. Facebook's Open Compute rack delivers only +12 to the boards and drives, and that's from 2011. There's a power supply in the base of the rack that takes in three-phase AC or 48 VDC or whatever and puts out +12VDC. All other conversion is on the board. This is just catching up desk…
I recall Google mentioned something similar in some old explanation about their server designs.
It was bound to happen eventually, there has been a long trend towards point-of-use regulation displacing multiple output supplies. I'm just surprised they went with 12V, and not 19V which has lower rectification losses, less power loss to wire/trace resistance, and a large existing design ecosystem from laptops where 19V has been the norm for years.
To me it seems like the ATX12VO specification is more of an endorsement of the direction PC power supplies seem to be moving in rather than a from-scratch redesign. It would be nice to have higher voltage (19V, 24V or perhaps higher) for a single voltage supply, but it would be a far bigger change to the overall PC ecosystem.