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Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

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Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#131

Post by denton-scratch »

nicoburns wrote: post #128
denton-scratch wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's an "inefficient electric heater"? Is that a device that generates more light than heat? Surely all the energy you put into any machine is eventually going to turn into heat? Hmm - perhaps there are heaters that generate heat mechanically, and the resulting losses are sonic.

There are electric heat pumps which move heat from the ground into your space which use drastically less energy than electric heaters that convert electricity into heat directly.

Sure; but that's because a heat pump has the potential to be > 100% "efficient" (which isn't real efficiency, in the thermodynamic sense).

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#132

Post by LeifCarrotson »

myself248 wrote: post #125

That looks all the world like a Micro-Fit 3.0 drawing, whose contacts are normally rated at 8.5A, but here they're claiming 9.2A each. Also, the largest Micro-Fit terminal is made for 18AWG, but the article mentions 16. https://www.molex.com/molex/products/family/microfit_30?pare... I suspect what's happening is Molex is making a new version of the terminal with higher clamping force or better plating, to keep the te…

The current deratings are down to 5.5A for 12-circuit wire-to-board applications:

https://www.molex.com/pdm_docs/ps/PS-43045-001.pdf

But that is allowing a maximum temperature rise of 30C, it uses 18AWG wire as you say, and it's supposed to be capable of 600V AC/DC; it's not supposed to decompose/leak more than 5mA when exposed to 2200V.

All of that is overkill for inside of a PC. If you're willing to limit the operating voltage to 12V and can guarantee that your board side conductors have big, multi-plane copper traces pulling heat out of the contacts to an actively cooled heat sink, you can get away with a lot that you couldn't if you were using the connector as, say, an in-line disconnect in some conduit for a 480V servo drive.

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#133

Post by turtlebits »

denton-scratch wrote: post #124
turtlebits wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of things are a huge waste of electricity. Ever use your oven? At 12% efficiency you're wasting over 1kw of electricity. Unless energy prices rise, it's literally pennies.

How can an electric oven be just 12% efficient? I suppose: 1. You often have to pre-heat the oven, so during that time, you are not cooking food 2. The oven is rarely full, so instead of heating food, you are heating the oven 3. The oven remains hot after the food is removed, but you could argue that's low-grade heat, unsuitable for cooking If my electric oven is just 12% efficient, I'd like to know why (and how I ca…

It's not hard to understand, the energy required to heat up food vs energy consumed by the appliance.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/06/f23/conventi...

TLDR: they measure with a metal block.

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#134

Post by turtlebits »

noobermin wrote: post #49
evandijk70 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the environmental problem should be approached like a budget - figure out how much we can spend, and than allocate it accordingly. We have to avoid being 'penny wise and pound foolish' with the environment. If I look at my own environmental footprint, the biggest changes I can make are in my heating, my flying, my driving and I am trying to change those things (working from home, and changing my holiday desti…

It will start to matter if it costs ~3KWh's of gaming per day. Probably even more if this is meant for serious gamers, they will game more than 3 hours per day. It doesn't matter it's genshin impact or animal crossing but it definitely starts to matter when your gaming costs almost two orders of magnitude up in power from the typical case.

3KWh a day is $0.30 or less than $10/month. (in Seattle).

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#135

Post by Raidion »

chaosbutters314 wrote: post #86
jl6 wrote: post #27

I’ve always thought of gaming as a virtuous low-impact form of entertainment, insofar as it displaces real-world pursuits like foreign ski holidays, gasoline-powered road trips, or land-hogging golf courses. But burning nearly a kilowatt on a gaming rig feels like a step too far. Sure, the power could be sourced from wind or solar plants, but there’s still a level of excessive conspicuous consumption going on here th…

if you crunch the numbers on how much solar (desertec has a fun graphic on this for the interested) and wind power we could produce if politicians actually cared about fighting climate change, there is nearly an infinite supply of power for humanity. This isnt even including fossil fuels, nuclear/fusion, biomass/trash, and hydro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed....

Lots of sunlight, but limited amounts of manufacturing and rare earth metals for solar and limited amounts of energy storage for times when solar and wind aren't available. Solar and Wind are terrific, but they're not a free lunch. What drives down the price of energy, drives up the cost of wind/solar/batteries.

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#136

Post by kevingadd »

cogman10 wrote: post #130
timw4mail wrote: post #76

This looks like some abomination of the ancient molex drive connection with part of an ATX main connection. At which point does the GPU get its own dedicated power supply?

The real question is at what point do gamers start choosing lower power parts because the GPU is too power hungry? Do we get into a world where professional gamers start having 240V lines installed for their PCs? A US power outlet is typically rated at 120VAC@15A, that's a 1800W budget if the only thing on the circuit is a PC.

Well, the higher power draw cards tend to be more expensive, so in practice budget-focused gamers are already buying lower power parts.

AMD and NVidia have at times competed on power usage, but generally that doesn't sell units to the degree that game support or new features do.

For mobile you start getting traction there because '-based laptops have an hour of extra battery life' is meaningful, but gamer laptops are typically designed to be plugged in. The higher power draw typically means more heat and louder fans as well but for some reason noise doesn't seem to be a consideration for most gamers - every gaming laptop I've ever used was unbearably loud.

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#137

Post by kevingadd »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #81
timw4mail wrote: post #76

This looks like some abomination of the ancient molex drive connection with part of an ATX main connection. At which point does the GPU get its own dedicated power supply?

We seem to be reaching the point where I expect it'll soon make more sense to consider the GPU as the heart of the computer and the CPU as a peripheral.

Historically typical GPU power draw has exceeded CPU draw for a really long time. In terms of peak compute throughput the GPU usually has an advantage in any gaming-focused machine, and even general productivity ones. A developer workstation with a Threadripper probably evens things out more.

A GPU these days can often do general purpose compute, but not in a way that meaningfully allows it to compete with the OS for heavily branched or random access workloads since its memory controller and execution model are a poor fit. I'm not sure we'd ever see GPUs fully displace CPUs for that reason.

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#138

Post by cedilla »

Someone1234 wrote: post #122
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how hard it is to do a bottom-up conversion of the USA to 230. If the "all-electric" branch of the environmental movement are right, we'll eventually need to adopt the superior European kettle technology. Getting everyone on the same plug would be great.

Every single home in the US has 220 already. They're taken from 220 to 110 at the breaker for common outlets, but many large appliances (and EV chargers) already are 220. Worse kettle performance is unfortunate. But better safety is a nice side effect (in particular as the NEMA connector the US uses is dangerous/poorly designed/bad, even with the ground pin).

If houses in the US are 240V, than houses in Europe are 480 (or rather, 400V because it's usually triphasic).

The voltage arriving at the building is kind of irrelevant to the discussion. The question is whether a connection could even sustain the house network at double the voltage with larger appliances than it was designed for.

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#139

Post by kayson »

I've always wondered why CPU AIO coolers are so prevalent, but GPUs almost exclusively use air coolers. We're nearing a point where GPUs will have a TDP >2X the hungriest CPU (Threadripper), but the cooling used by most is far less effective.

It's especially noticeable in smaller builds like those using mini-itx. Most of them GPU coolers draw air in from the bottom and exhaust out the sides, which doesn't really fit well the usual PC case airflow setup of draw cool air in the front and exhaust out the back and top. It seems like blower style coolers are also getting harder to find.

I'm hoping my next PC can have an AIO at the intake connected to the GPU, and a large air cooler for the CPU. That makes way more sense to me than having the AIO on the CPU and an air cooler on the GPU...

Re: Up to 600 watts of power for graphics cards with the new PCIe 5.0 powerconnector

#140

Post by Retric »

Raidion wrote: post #135
chaosbutters314 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you crunch the numbers on how much solar (desertec has a fun graphic on this for the interested) and wind power we could produce if politicians actually cared about fighting climate change, there is nearly an infinite supply of power for humanity. This isnt even including fossil fuels, nuclear/fusion, biomass/trash, and hydro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed....

Lots of sunlight, but limited amounts of manufacturing and rare earth metals for solar and limited amounts of energy storage for times when solar and wind aren't available. Solar and Wind are terrific, but they're not a free lunch. What drives down the price of energy, drives up the cost of wind/solar/batteries.

When you double battery production over 5 years prices go down not up. It’s a function of economies of scale.

It’s one of the major reasons EV ranges keep increasing the batteries are less expensive.

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