FSP at CES 2020: A Next-Gen Pure 12V PSU, and a UPS That Wants to See the World

Fortron's consumer brand, FSP, brought a handful new power products to CES 2020, besides its already launched CMT710 premium gaming chassis, the Hydro G Pro premium modular PSU from mid-2019, and Dagger Pro SFX PSUs. The inconspicuous-looking FSP500-30AKB looks like a cheap OEM-included PSU with rear 80 mm exhaust, which comes included with your case, and which you immediately discard. Only that it's possibly the most innovative thing FSP brought to CES. This PSU is being designed for Intel's upcoming PC spec that does away with the 5 V, 5 Vsb, and 3.3 V power domains altogether.

The pure-12 V PSU has only two domains: +12V and +12 Vsb. What this means is a goodbye to the bulky 24-pin ATX power connector. The PSU only feeds 12 V to your motherboard, which uses onboard VRM and DC-to-DC switching to put out the lower voltage domains, including power for your SATA storage devices. The 24-pin connector is effectively reduced to a new 10-pin connector that only has 12 V and 12 Vsb cabling. Other cables include 8-pin EPS connectors for your CPU VRM, and 6+2 pin PCIe connectors for your graphics cards. EPS and PCIe power are purely 12 V-based standards already. The 5-pin connector is less than half as thick as your 24-pin connector, and 2 pins wider than an EPS connector. Some of the more premium PSUs may user thicker gauge wires for this connector.