Gigabyte N3150N won't boot with PicoPSU

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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Landy
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Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:05 am

Gigabyte N3150N won't boot with PicoPSU

Post by Landy » Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:18 am

Hi everyone. I'm replacing my old VIA EPIA firewall box with a new one using a Gigabyte GA-N3150N-D3V board, with the Braswell Celeron fanless CPU. But I'm having strange power supply problems.

I want to use the PicoPSU-90 from the old EPIA machine (with a 60W power brick). It has the 4-pin P4 connector that the Gigabyte board requires. It only has a 20-pin ATX connector, and the motherboard has a 24-pin ATX socket, but everything I've read says that shouldn't be a problem.

But the Gigabyte board won't boot with the PicoPSU. No sign of life at all. If I plug in a spare 150W FlexATX that I had lying around, the machine runs just fine, so the hardware is OK.

The only other power-drawing peripherals are an SSD and a USB keyboard. So in theory the PicoPSU should be more than adequate. It will happily drive the EPIA board plus a 2.5" HDD and a desktop CD drive, so the Celeron board and an SSD should be no problem.

So I have a PC that runs fine with another PSU, and a PSU that works fine in another PC. But they won't work together. Anyone have any ideas why it might be?

Vicotnik
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Re: Gigabyte N3150N won't boot with PicoPSU

Post by Vicotnik » Mon Oct 30, 2017 11:29 am

Timing could be an issue. That's the only possibility that I can think of. I had an old picoPSU, a wide input version, that worked with the old VIA mITX board I found it with, but not with more modern systems. A used a cheap power supply tester that complained that the old picoPSU was slow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_good_signal

Old caps maybe? Not much to do on a picoPSU. :(

Landy
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2017 4:05 am

Re: Gigabyte N3150N won't boot with PicoPSU

Post by Landy » Mon Oct 30, 2017 1:51 pm

Timing, that is an interesting possibility. It has to be some obscure incompatibility like that I think.

In my junk drawer I found an old e-mini DC converter board, plus an ATX wiring loom from some other power supply with the right connectors, and I've been able to get it working with those, along with the same 60W AC adapter.

I did wonder if for some reason the N3150N board required the 24-pin ATX, but I was able to confirm that's not the case. The loom I found has a 20+4 modular connector, and the motherboard works just the same with the 20+4 or with just the 20-pin ATX plugged in.

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