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By Aaron Klotz published 10 August 22

Power-hungry GPUs — no problem

MSI has introduced the world's first fully compliant ATX 3.0 power supply: the MEG Ai1300P PCIE5. This unit is designed for power-hungry next-gen GPUs, and can withstand 2,600W power spikes. 

ATX 3.0, which was finalized back in February, is Intel's latest power supply standard. The new standard notably supports the brand-new 16-pin 12VHPWR power connector, which allows for up to 600W of power consumption from a single cable. ATX 3.0 also introduces a number of new power specifications, with improved efficiency and reliability ratings and a much higher tolerance for power spikes. 

MSI's new MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 features higher quality components compared to previous designs. MSI says the unit can handle up to double its power, or 2,600W, and is designed to counteract the large power spikes expected on next-gen GPU hardware. 

Power spike issues are already concerning on Nvidia's latest RTX 30 series GPUs — the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti can see power spikes as high as 660W, while the RTX 3080 can see spikes of up to 530W, according to Gamers Nexus.

Current power supplies are designed to sustain brief power spikes beyond their rated power specifications. But with the 30 series GPUs, these spikes have become problematic to the point where some units will shut off due to over-protection limitations (rarely, but it does happen from time to time). And with reports suggesting next-gen GPUs will almost double the power consumption ratings of current-gen GPUs, it's not too much of a stretch to assume their power spikes will be just as bad, if not worse. 

A 2,600W power spike is the maximum limit the new power supply can handle — and it can only endure a spike like this for under a millisecond. But this time increases greatly for lower power spikes: the unit can sustain a 2,340W power spike for 1ms, a 2,080W power spike for 10ms, and a 1,560W power spike for 100ms. 

MSI's MEG Ai1300P PCIE5 is the first, and currently only, power supply that fully complies with the ATX 3.0 standard. However, more ATX 3.0-compliant units should hit the market soon, as we get closer and closer to the release of Nvidia's 40 series and AMD's Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs.

Aaron Klotz is a freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering news topics related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

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