History of Computer Power Supplies
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
1,267 words · ~6 min read
0:00
these days buying a power supply is pretty straightforward unless you're
0:04
going for a really specific aesthetic
0:07
get an ATX power supply which by the way are compatible with ATX microatx and
0:13
Mini ITX motherboards all you got to do is make sure it isn't some kind of
0:17
Bargain Basement no-name unit that will explode when you try and run crisis and
0:21
that it has enough wattage to power your rig and with high-end graphics cards
0:25
getting more and more power efficient these days and those are usually the
0:29
most power hungry part of a computer getting a PSU that's sufficiently
0:33
powerful is becoming less and less important by the day but it wasn't
0:38
always as easy as just slotting in the first thing you could find and carrying
0:42
on with your Computing in fact the power supply that came with the original IBM
0:47
PC only provided 64 watts of power
0:50
pushed a whopping 5 volts through the CPU which would fry any modern consumer
0:55
grade processor and forget about fancy
0:58
features like standby soft reset old school Power Supplies
1:03
only had a hard power switch so everything was either fully on or fully
1:07
off all the time with that said though
1:10
the really difficult thing about these older power supplies was their physical
1:15
layouts even in the era of at power
1:19
supplies the predecessor to ATX that lasted from 1984 until the late '90s
1:24
there were not only multiple different
1:28
form factors such as baby at XT and some
1:32
weird thing that worked with PS2 but some systems even had switches
1:37
slaughtered directly to the computer case out of the power supplies so good
1:41
luck replacing your PSU if it suddenly fizzled out further adding to the
1:46
frustration of technicians and tinkerers everywhere and then as if that weren't
1:51
enough there wasn't even one uniform standard for the actual pin outes onto
1:56
the motherboard amongst these different form factors I mean the power supply
2:00
scene was basically chaos but the ATX
2:04
standard saved us from an eternal Quagmire of proprietary form factors
2:09
when it was introduced in 1995 by Intel
2:13
especially as it actually did a lot more than just make our power supplies mostly
2:18
the same size in fact the ATX standard
2:21
made things much easier for home PC Builders as well as small shop owners
2:26
who wanted to build or offer something different than what the ibms of the
2:30
world were cranking out and not only did it make things easier having just one
2:35
standard made things cheaper improving competition throughout the industry and
2:40
generally speaking higher quality as well as a single standard forced
2:44
manufacturers to innovate and improve on quality rather than focusing their
2:48
efforts on trapping us into proprietary
2:52
Ville and that's exactly what happened assuming of course you're buying from a
2:56
reputable brand ATX power supplies have
2:59
evolved they've come in large and small varieties with both 80 and 120 mm fans
3:06
yet they're still ATX compliant and can fit in a wide variety of cases combine
3:12
that with improved efficiency in recent years as we've seen with the 80 plus
3:16
rating system and ATX has had fantastic
3:20
staying power in spite of several companies trying to replace it
3:24
throughout the years such as antech with their CPX design a few years back and
3:30
even Intel who tried to replace their own standard with the now defunct btx
3:36
form factor ATX also brought us familiar things that we now take for granted like
3:41
the 20 and then later 24 pin connector
3:44
which serves as the primary power delivery for pretty much all modern PCS
3:49
but the wires that connect to the motherboard to enable Smart power
3:53
management and a greater emphasis on
3:56
12vt power delivery you see older power
3:59
power supplies often delivered most of their power on the 5vt rail with many
4:05
actual sensitive components directly
4:08
connected to it these days the smaller
4:12
transistors on Parts like CPUs and
4:15
graphics cards play much more nicely with lower voltages I mean think about
4:20
overclocking your CPU putting two volts through it you might kill
4:25
it but on the flip side as computer
4:28
components have become faster and more powerful they actually need even more
4:34
current that's the amount of electricity being sent through the chip so modern
4:39
power supplies have more power on the 12vt rail and then it gets converted to
4:44
lower voltages for the many different components by voltage regulator modules
4:49
or vrms and those will be present on the motherboard or on the graphics card
4:53
itself this way the components can operate at a safe voltage and still get
4:58
enough current from the higher capacity 12volt rail ATX has also changed with
5:04
the times in other ways introducing PCI Express power connectors as graphics
5:08
cards went from sipping electricity to becoming the most power hungry component
5:13
in a PC a further Testament to its staying power when many other computer
5:17
standards have been put out to pasture within its lifetime but that doesn't
5:23
mean then that all modern power supplies use the exact ATX form factor there are
5:28
also derivative form factors such as sfx
5:32
which is essentially identical to ATX electrically and in fact interoperable
5:36
with ATX motherboards but a heck of a lot smaller making them popular for
5:40
things like super small mini ITX builds
5:44
in servers you'll find power supplies that have a couple of eps connectors so
5:49
EPS standard power supplies which actually is kind of funny because that 8
5:54
Pin CPU power connector ended up making its way into desktops as well and
5:58
finally there are things like tfx for slim Tower systems or I mean they still
6:04
do exist the dreaded proprietary power
6:08
supply fortunately for you though the PC
6:11
DIY Enthusiast most of those power supplies are nearly irrelevant unless of
6:16
course you find yourself working for a YouTube channel where you have to solder
6:20
connectors on weird power supplies you found in a scrap Heap somewhere in order
6:25
to get a computer to boot at the last moment in a competition say for example
6:31
speaking of getting things done in just a moment brain tree payments my friends
6:37
brain tree is the way to achieve easy
6:41
mobile payments maybe you're working on the next Uber Airbnb or GitHub well if
6:47
you are why not use the same simple payment solution that helped them become
6:51
what they are today brain tree makes mobile payments so fast easy and
6:55
seamless it's almost magical it's not actually magic it's science but just
7:00
just stick with me here you can add it to your app with just a few lines of
7:03
code and you are instantly ready to accept Apple pay Android pay PayPal
7:06
venmo credit cards and even Bitcoin and if some other way it comes along brain
7:11
tree is going to support that too brain tre's fast payouts and continuous
7:15
support mean that you'll always be ready whether you're earning your first dollar
7:19
or your billionth so see fewer abandoned
7:22
carts and more sales with brain tre's best-in-class mobile checkout experience
7:26
you can learn more at Braintree payments.com Techquickie Linked In the
7:30
video description so thanks for watching guys if you liked this video like it if
7:34
you disliked it dislike it if you want to check out other channels boom if you want to leave a comment suggesting
7:38
future fastest posses boom and finally if you want to subscribe then I like you