Oh, boy! You're right! )) I forgot about the main characteristic -- the voltage! ) Skip them all then. But that e-store has a 180W and 120W versions within the input range of our DC-DC. Don't know how good they are though.

As for LITE ON PA-1161-02 -- it's not obligatory for a perforated power brick to have an active cooling. This may be intended for an "anyhow" air convection. But some of them are active. E.g. most powerful of Trust branded bricks has a small fan inside, that buzzes at high load.

Can't you find a UK seller on E-bay? It won't be international shipping, and you can pick it up even yourself. I suggest you to look there, simply of a wider choice.

I received my Winmate DD-24AX today and connected it to a spare PC, with all drives and other peripherals disconnected, but so for I haven't had a lot of luck with it. When I hit the power button the CPU fan spins for a second or so, but then stops, with no other sign of life from the system.

I'm using it with a Li Shin 0226A20160 AC adapter, which is definitely within the Winmate's required spec. I'd have thought that if the power brick was faulty it most probably wouldn't power up at all.

I'll test it with another system when I have the time, I've an old Celeron boxed away that still works, but I'd appreciate any ideas as to what's going wrong.


Edit: I tried it with my old 450Mhz Celeron and it powered up perfectly.

I have read the Low power system not booting with high efficiency PSU?! sticky thread, but I assumed that this wouldn't be a problem. The old Athlon I used for testing, even with all it's drives disconnected, draws around 80W idle, and that isn't particularly low power. Obviously there's something funny with its old MSI motherboard. I have my fingers crossed that I won't experience anything similar when I try the DD-24AX with my main PC.

BTW, for anyone looking for an AC adapter for the DD-24AX, my 160W Li Shin brick (for a Fujitsu laptop) seems to work quite nicely, and is easily available. It has a nice long cable and a 4 pin connector with the correct pin layout to plug straight into the DD-24AX.

It's fanless, and from the look of it the 180W version is too. Plugged in with no load, my brick does make a small amount of noise, but not something you're likely to hear when it's on the floor behind a desk. Certainly nothing like the whining from a lot of other power bricks I've had to suffer over the years. At the Celeron's 45W-75W load it makes no noise, even with my ear pressed against the brick it's silent.

Hi Steve_Y,
Can you provide the spec of your spare PC that dose not work with the Winmate PSU.
I can only think on two possibilities one that you did not connect the P4 cable that is supplying the CPU and the second that the 5V line at start up is using more than 7 to 8A and the overcurrent protection will power down.
The problem with High efficiency PSU is not affecting the Winmte DD-24AX since this will work even without load.
Thanks for letting me know about the Li Shin brick pin compatibility.

I think the motherboard's an MSI MS-6340, I'll confirm that when I get home.

Other than that the spec is:

Athlon XP 1700+
256Mb RAM
GeForce FX 5200 128Mb AGP graphics
PCI Network card

When I tested it with the Winmate I had all the drives disconnected, and it doesn't need a P4 cable, just standard 20-pin ATX.

Thanks, Steve, for the good tip. 160W brick for a laptop! Sheesh. The Fujitsu's musta had high-end Pentium 4's under the hood? Good to know the pinout is compatible too!

Do you have a model #? I googled Li Shin 160W. The first hit I clicked on was for an LCD TV, 24V output.

http://www.unitedsale.com/product_info. ... s_id=18341

My 160W brick's # is: 0226A20160

Believe it or not that seems like the low end model in the range. There are also 180W (0415B20180) and 220W (0405B20220) Li Shin adapters for those Fujitsu/Alienware laptops. They all seem to share the same design and all seem to be fanless, IIRC the spec sheet states 87% efficiency at full load. Not that there's any advantage to the more powerful ones for use with the Winmate.



That should work fine too. The main difference, from the look of it, is that it supplies 24V @ 6.67A, while my 160W brick is 20V @ 8A. Either is fine for the Winmate, and they have the same pinout.

What's inside an external power brick? What's stopping a manufacturer - or a brave modder - from transferring the contents of a power brick into a TFX or SFX form factor box with lots of holes in it?

I don't see a reason why that can't be done, so why aren't there fanless, 80-Plus efficiency, ~120W TFX/SFX PSUs on the market?

Oh yeah! I'm searching for the right (one I'll not regret to use only internally) power brick to disassemble it and to fix it in the empty ATX box, along with electrodacus' Winmate board. It is how the fanless PSU is born

I've had a play comparing the Winmate+Li Shin 160W with a Seasonic S12II-380.

With the Seasonic my Celeron idles at 43W AC input, with the Winmate+brick it goes up slightly to 45W.

You can see SPCR's calculated efficiency for the Seasonic here. From that, I'd estimate that the Winmate+Li Shin is around 70% efficient at that load, not bad, but not as efficient as with the 120W FSP brick that SPCR used in their Winmate review.

Considering the claimed efficiency of 87% under load, I'd expect the Li Shin to do a bit better in comparison when running a more power hungry system. It'll be interesting to see how it compares under load when I'm using it in my main PC.

Thanks alot. Now I know what to do with my old obsolete ATX PSU enclosure. Not the most compact but a little more professional looking then it dangling around like it is right now.

Steve_Y - Thanks for all the comparison interesting to know.
About the Athlon XP system I have no idea why it will not work this is first time I hear the system will not start and some even used with core i5 systems.
swivelguy2 - It will be preferable to have an external brick so big part of the heat is not inside the case. The reason you don't see small 80% efficiency PSU is the cost. Most people will prefer to buy a 80-Plus 450W power supply then buying an 80-Plus 120W and the production cost will be very similar. Not to many buyers will understand that with a low power system the 120W will be more efficient even with the same declared efficiency. And the electricity is still cheap enough for people to consider the cost of energy.

The experienced folks on this thread wouldn't be fooled by this but I thought I'd post it anyway

http://www.pchub.com/uph/laptop/46-4199 ... 20160.html

Just because it's a Li Shin 0226A20160 doesn't mean it's got the right plug on the end!

Does anyone know what is the efficiency of the Gateway power supply that electrodacus includes with the Winmate PSU? Does it get very hot under heavy loading?

Im thinking about picking up one of the DC-DC PSUs + AC adapter then take it apart and put it inside an old broken ATX power supply.

The Winmate DC-DC PSU is a bit too long to fit inside a standard ATX power supply case.

I believe this means the all (or most) of the CPU power is pulled from the 5v rail. In which case it can easily be exceeding the 8A (40w) limit of the Winmate PSU. I've seen (and owned) Athlon boards where the 5v line in the 20pin ATX plug gets rather brown and crispy due to the high current flow
I guess Athlon boards with the 4pin ATX connector would work with the Winmate PSU as they power the CPU from the 12v rail.
Regards, Seb

Hi Electrodacus,

Yesterday, I got the psu along with the gateway wall wart (it surely is good quality, worth the expense i think).
Praise also fo the good packaging.

Will check it this friday or sunday. Looking for cable adapters and sleeve.

Should have skipped the power cord that with american plug is worthless for me (actuallt i trashed it) and i have lots of schuko PC cords lying around.
The Gateway adapter is really good, though.

Tanks Telestar for your purchase. I usually send the US power cord to Europe even if not needed since the shipping will be the same and is in my add so some people may complain that they did not revived everything.
The AC adapter is great quality but unfortunately I have limited stock I think less than 10 so if someone is thinking of buying this kit Y5 it need to hurry. The PSU boards are still plenty especially the 130W the 120W are limited but the quality is similar and there are not to may differences between this two.

Recently I bought a universal notebook power brick, Trust PW‑2120. It is very useful when you need to supply something in range between 12 and 22V with up to 8A (not much than 120W power). There is a teeny fan inside, as you can see, and yeah, it whines a lot triggering with load current raise(!), so I had to remove it. My PC wattage is kinda low so I don't think this thing realy needs an active cooling. Good efficiency of 85% at full load, and about 75-80% at my 30-50W DC consumption. Electrodacus' board works great with this one (no special 4-pin connector with Trust PSU so I adopted Winmate DC-DC to work with standard jack)

Btw, I checked the efficiency of Samsung N140 AtomN280/945GSE/1Gb netbook power brick (40W / 19V), and it has the same efficiency, consuming the same watts when loaded with 40W DC.

Lin Shi 160W brick (34 euro incl shipping): see
http://cgi.ebay.nl/Genuine-AC-Adapter-L ... 3a57a6ad47

So isnt it kind of pointless to buy this DC-DC if it will be used with a psu brick that's less than 85% efficient? Assuming the DC-DC is 93% efficient and you use a 85% efficient brick, then your overall efficiency is only roughly 79%. Even under low loads of 40W-ish, you would probably get roughly the same efficiency by using a cheap 80plus PUS like an Earthwatts 380, but you get the benefit of higher capabilities for future expansion. Maybe Im just still not understanding the whole DC-DC concept other than to save space...

Most low power computer will use 30W to 40W at idle and even with 85% efficiency for an AC adapter the Erthwatts 380 will use more. The other reason is that more than 70% of the heat will be generated will be outside the case on the AC adapter (brick). And usually the AC adapter is fanless so you do not get the noise and dust.

Ok so I paired up the Winmate 120W DC-DC with a 90% efficiency 120W power brick. With some hacking, I managed to stuff everything inside a standard ATX power supply enclosure + slow spinning 80mm fan.

With my old Antec EA380 80+ psu, idle power consumption of my server was 40W. With the new DC-DC I am idling at 36W. Just as I suspected, the energy savings isnt that much.

Thanks for the info.
Is the 80mm fan necessary?
Yes you are right 4W dose not make a big difference in the monthly power consumption but 4W from 40W is 10% this means that the Antec EA380 is 10% less efficient at this load. You can not expect more. Even if you have 100% efficient PSU you will not really save money you just get less heat and noise.
If you use the computer 24 hour a day then you have 4WX24hx30day =2.88kWh/month if the kWh is 10cent you save 30cent/month about 3.5$/year
Maybe in the future electricity will be more expensive but for now you can not save money if you increase the efficiency with 10%

Im running the 80mm fan at 5V, it normally consumes 0.2A at 12V. It's practically inaudible. I would say when it comes to cramming everything in a tiny ATX enclosure, then the fan is necessary because you can feel the exhaust to be somewhat warm even at these low loads. The DC-DC is very efficient and does not get hot, but the AC adapter will definitely get warm/hot to the touch but it would probably be alright if you were to run the power brick externally.

I definitely did not buy the DC-DC + power adapter to save money through power efficiency. I had another use for the EA380 and so for $60 ($30 for the DC-DC, $30 for the power brick) I figure why not.

Interestingly though, on another system that I tested, idle consumption dropped from 54W to 36W idling just by switching from a generic 400W power supply to the DC-DC + power brick.

Would you like to show how you've made that (may be, some photos?)

Unfortunately my camera broke and I've been putting off buying a new one. My cell phone doesnt take very good close up pics.

But basically how I did it was take apart an old broken ATX power supply. To fit my particular AC adapter and the DC-DC was a real tight fit, but I simply put the circuit board of the DC-DC and AC-DC such that they were back to back and fit them diagonally inside the ATX case. It's a tight fit, but there just is enough room inside the ATX PSU for the Winmate DC-DC. The power brick's circuit board was a real tight fit and I actually had to trim down some of the side heatsinks to get it to fit correctly. Some improv is required to mount the circuit boards, and of course make sure to insulate the boards from each other and from the ATX case. Then of course you make the wiring connections and viola, it looks just like a standard ATX psu except it is more efficient and only supplies 120W.

Electrodacus, would it be possible to use a very simple AC/DC converter with the Winmate DC-DC PSU? I found a large toroid transformer and could build a very simple AC/DC converter. Is that a bad idea?

At those kind of loads, it would be very inefficient to use a traditional AC-DC transformer. It will be bulky and you will waste alot of energy as heat. It's better to use a switching laptop DC supply, otherwise you might as well just save the hassle and get a simple 80+ ATX PSU.

A lot? Are you sure?