Asrock Launches Z490 Phantom Gaming 4SR, the First Commercial Motherboard to Meet Intel's ATX12VO Standard

While we believed that more time was missing, The first commercial motherboard to use the ATX12VO standard is already with us. We are talking about the Asrock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4SR, the first to use this standard where the power source only provides 12V and conversions at 5V and 3.3V are done on the motherboard.

When compared to the normal Asrock Phantom Gaming 4, which uses the “standard” ATX power that we have been using for years, we noticed several differences. In red are the power inputs, viewing a 10-pin connector plus an additional 6-pin connector to power the various components on the motherboard, as a replacement for the additional 24-pin connector. In orange we see the new conversion circuits that we mentioned, that convert to the different voltages that we no longer have now that the source provides only 12V. Finally in light blue we see the new outputs for SATA connectors, which now come out of the motherboard as 5V and 3.3V connections are required which the source no longer offers.

It will be interesting to see how the transition to this ATX12VO standard continues, which doesn't seem so bad now that we start to see the first products to use it. It is somewhat strange to see more power circuits on the motherboard and that now to feed a SATA port the power does not come out of the source, but according to the promises of Intel and manufacturers, the sources will be much cheaper and more efficient, so the transition will be worth it.

What do you think about the implementation of this standard? Do you think it will be worth implementing ATX12VO and have cheaper and more efficient sources?