GIGABYTE UD1000GM PG5 1000W, ATX 2.31, Rev. 1.0

The announcement of Intel’s new ATX v3.0 specifications was bound to start a race, as every company is looking to establish itself among the early adopters as a means of growing with the larger market. GIGABYTE took a little different approach here – instead of developing a whole new platform capable of fulfilling all of ATX v3.0 requirements, they simply upgraded one of their existing units and added one 600 Watt 12VHPWR connector to it.

The UD1000GM PG5 offers an extraordinary value for a 1000W power supply. Not only do you get a massive amount of power, you also get the new PCI-e gen 5 connector that is becoming the new standard for the newest graphics cards!

Gigabyte pushed hard to be the first to release a PCIe 5.0 ready power supply in the UD1000GM PG5, but it looks to have been a rushed move. Meeting the strict ATX v3.0 requirements is not as easy as installing a 12VHPWR connector and lowering corresponding PSU timings for Alternative Low Power Modes compatibility. The primary point of the newest ATX specification is for PSUs to withstand extreme transient loads that go up to 200% of the PSU's maximum-rated-capacity. As crazy as that sounds, the 200% transient load scenario is not the toughest one because it only lasts for 0.1 ms. The most difficult are the 180% and 160% transient loads because those last considerably longer, 1 ms and 10 ms respectively, and in those tests, the PSU shut down every attempt I made. This renders the UD1000GM PG5 incompatible with the ATX v3.0 specification, and I cannot say for certain whether there will be any problems with any upcoming GPUs or the RTX 3090Ti since I don't have the RTX 3090Ti—I am not willing to spend thousands of dollars to acquire one—and the former haven't been released yet.