SPCR

Hi all.

My current system is an Asus H87I-PLUS motherboard, I5-4670, two 2.5 HDDs. The actual power consumption, measured on the power cord, is between 20W and 60W (cpu full load).
I would like dismiss the case's noisy PSU (Thermaltake SD101) for something really quiet. I'm thinking about an extenal brick PSU, 80W - 100W, but I have no experience with this kind of power supplies applied to desktop machines so I'm not aware about their drawbacks, if any.

Is this a good idea?

A picoPSU with a good 80W brick (or maybe even 60W but that might be cutting it close) would work fine.

I'm very interested in your power numbers. Is that 60 watts under load with
all four cores busy? Any undervolting?

I have used picoPSUs in my last two machines and am very happy with them.
Look for a level V power brick for best efficiency.

Yes, 60W with 4 cores fully loaded, running at 3400Mhz, and the noisy 180W power supply. No undervolting, just BIOS defaults.
This cpu can go up to 3800Mhz, reaching its 84W TDP (I suppose), but I don't know how to unlock this "turbo" mode and I don't care.

What I find interesting is that 4 cores running full-load limited at 800Mhz raises the power consumption only to 22-24W. And the processing power is still quite good!

Using a 7 years old (but good quality) 450W ATX psu the power consumption goes up to 34W (idle) and 76W (loaded).

One question: can I use a 20-pin PicoPSU plugged into a 24-pin ATX connector?

Yes, my first picoPSU system was a 20-pin pico into 24-pin ATX connector.

It seems that 20-pin picoPSUs don't have the 4-pin separated plug for the cpu power connector. This means that I must choose a more powerful 24-pin picoPSU?

Could you suggest a reliable european online shop?

There are adapter cables to convert a molex connection to the 4-pin CPU
connection, such as http://www.mini-box.com/4-Pin-P4-Power-Cable.
Molex Y-splitters are easy to find.

Or you could consider the picoPSU-150-XT or picoPSU-160-XT which do have
P4/CPU connector already. The higher capacity picoPSU won't affect your
power efficiency much; the choice of power brick is more important.

I don't have any experience with European suppliers as I live in the U.S.

LogicSupply is (just) one.

I'm going to buy these:

http://www.logicsupply.eu/power-supplie ... su-150-xt/
and
http://www.logicsupply.eu/power-supplie ... 12v10a-l5/

thank you for your hints!

Should give you plenty of headroom, good choice.

I received the package, and immediately installed the new power supply.

18W idle, and the power brick is... almost cold.
59W full load @3400MHz, and only the cpu fan is spinning up. I like it!

Thank you for your suggestions. Bye!