MSI releases 'world's First' ATX 3.1 ready mobos with additional PCIe juice to power-crazed GPUs of the next-gen generation

MSI has released its new X870/X870E motherboards that support AMD AM5 processors including the new Ryzen series chips. The biggest news is ATX 3.0 support and an increase in PCIe power.

MSI claims that the new supplemental PCIe Power feature of the boards delivers a major increase in overall board and graphics card power supply. This could be very useful, especially with the expectation of ever-increasing power consumption from upcoming GPUs.

The motherboard has an integrated 8-pin power connector that provides the power boost. It's conceptually similar to the supplemental power connectors which already supply power to the CPU socket.

The PCIe power feature combines with the support for the ATX 3.1 standard in order to enable 2.5x more "power excursion" on the PCIe graphics slots. This increases the power delivery for the primary PEG-16 from 66 W up to a maximum 165 W.

High-end GPUs consume a lot more power than that. The balance will be provided by the new ATX 3.1 12-V-2x6 power connector, which is backwards compatible and very similar to the 12VHPWR connector, which caused all those melted RTX 4090 graphics cards.

Increasing the power delivered to the PCIe slot will increase the overall power budget that GPUs have available. But that's just the beginning. PCIe Power adds more power to the system than just the PEG-16 slot increase.

Overall, it adds 252W. This combines with the 168 W board power delivered via the 12V rail of the main 24-pin ATX connector to give a total of 420W. This does not include the power circuit for the CPU.

The new MSI boards are capable of delivering a slightly insane 132 W to the fan headers. No matter how insane your CPU and GPU specifications are, cooling should not be an issue. You'll need a powerful PSU, along with a high-end GPU and CPU, to power these boards.

If your GPU can draw up to 600W, and you have an Intel CPU that draws 300W or more, as well as 420W of motherboard power, then you need a PSU with a rating of about 1,500W to be safe. This is pretty close to a standard US 15A power socket's peak wattage, which is 1,800W.

This raises the question as to where this power consumption will end. As welcome as these new power connectors may be, the ATX standard seems to have fallen far behind the reality of PC components and power requirements.

The main 24-pin connector could benefit from a major overhaul to make it capable of handling any power requirements. Imagine a single power cable that could be used for all devices, along with a major revision of the PCIe standard. This would eliminate the proliferation of cables and connectors. This is surely not beyond the wit and intelligence of man?

We now have additional motherboard connectors that are compatible with both CPUs and GPUs. However, you will still need to plug in another cable to the graphics card. It's a bit of an improbable solution.

MSI hasn't been very clear about which motherboards will be getting these new ATX features. We believe that all X870E and X870 Series motherboards will be included. You can view the complete lineup here. Models with additional PCIe power are available on September 26. You can satisfy your massive multi-cable fetish within a week. Good luck!