Not sure which picoPSU I have. Question on power brick

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

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xalu
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Nov 15, 2013 3:44 pm

Not sure which picoPSU I have. Question on power brick

Post by xalu » Fri Nov 15, 2013 4:27 pm

Hi all,

I am not sure which PicoPSU I have so I wanted to see if anyone might be able to help me out. I have one of the automotive type power supplies that allow an input of 6V to 24V. I am currently using a 19V 3.4amp power brick (Says 65Watts) to run the pico power supply. I can't remember if I bought the 98W or 125W picopsu. I found the two different ones on Amazon and looking at the photos it looks like I have the 125W. I just wanted to see if anyone could confirm this for me by looking at my psu.

Here are links to the two on amazong: M3-ATX-HV 95 Watt and M3-ATX, 125w output, 6v to 24v wide input.

Attached a photo of my PSU:
Image


Now my question really is this. I have a 12V/10A (120W) power brick I want to use with my PSU. If does happen to be the 95W picoPSU will I get magic smoke (blow my power supply)...or since this is an intelligent power supply will it just draw the max power it supports? The reason I ask is these are designed for cars where the amps can go way way up. I'd imagine it would be okay to work with this 10A power supply. However, to avoid blowing up my $65 power supply I wanted to double check here. Though I am 90% sure it should be fine, it's better to make sure :)


Thanks!


Extra info for those who care:
For the most part the 65watts works surprisingly well. However, I have to be careful what I plug into the USB ports or the PSU resets my PC for lack of power. I just added a 64gb SSD card leftover from my macbook air to the computer that I have ubuntu 13.10 OS installed. I put my home folder on a 1tb 2.5" sata drive. Since I have low power situation I am running the sata drive through the USB powered hub I have with its USB controller it came with (it was/is an external drive I had gutted and had connected to mobo directly). I'd like to power this hard drive through sata and plug directly into mobo but need more power to do so. Hence the question above.

Full specs: This computer is affectionately called "Wallbuntu" since its mounted to my wall to save room in my workshop
OS: Ubuntu 13.10
Mobo: DA078L Boxer Motherboard Specs CPU: Athlon 64 Dual Core 5000+ × 2
2gb DDR2 800 X 2
64gb apple SSD (Sata to mobo) - Ubuntu 13.10
1TB Toshiba (Sata to USB controller to Powered USB Hub) - /home folder
Logitech k810 Bluetooth keyboard
Logitech T630 mouse
Samsung 26"SyncMasterT260 (HDMI to mobo)

Wallbuntu:
Image

xalu
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Nov 15, 2013 3:44 pm

Re: Not sure which picoPSU I have. Question on power brick

Post by xalu » Fri Nov 15, 2013 10:08 pm

After I made the thread and posted it. It wasn't coming up so I assumed it was deleted for some reason. I decided to go ahead and use the 120w power brick. So far the system seems to be working great. I have the two hard drives connected and was using my note 2 phone as a virtual drive via USB and no power issues. After looking closely at the photos, I am pretty sure that my unit is the 125w one. The two silverish boxes with "PicoPSU" printed on them are only on the 125w version. So I should be good. Reading more about them they can be connected directly to a 12v source in a car or boat. In that case these should work over a wide range of amps.

Anyway, I solved it on my own, but maybe this would be useful to someone else down the road.

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