i found out who makes the 220w, completely passive external brick psu for the upcomming pentium M zen box from shuttle.

its from a company called Delta Electronics Inc.

heres the site for the PSU:

http://www.delta.com.tw/product/ps/adap ... d=2&ptid=3

and heres how to contact them for sales in the US:

North American
US Power Sales
Address : Delta Products Corp. 4405 Cushing Parkway Fremont, CA. 94538
USPowerSales@delta-corp.com



anyway we could get MikeC to get one of these, make some sort of custom pin-out converter to make it plug into a standard ATX style motherboard plug and run it through its paces?

This power brick + the Shuttle SD11G5 is already on the bench, running a test config. I guess I could try a 12V-only load test...

Power bricks are not capable of powering an ATX computer. All they do is rectify the AC current and step the voltage down (usually somewhere between 10-20V for computers and laptops). In order for this to work with an ATX board, you'll need a separate piece that converts the output from the single DC output of the brick into the various ATX voltages.

In the case of the Shuttle, it's probably built into the motherboard. You can buy DC-DC ATX boards as standalone parts, though.

use the brick with a dc/dc atx psu.

you can find some 200w versions here:

http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/c.ACCT1272 ... gory.13/.f


i googled a bit but couldnt find anything higher than 200w. they do say they have 95% effeciency though.

could you hook the brick up to one of these, plug it into a micro atx motherboard, and run some tests?

some things i'd like to know. exactly how much would direct charge for its PSU brick, cause it didnt state that on the website. also what sort of effeciency does it have. does it even output a full 220w? and finally how well would it work to use it in conjunction with a dc/dc atx psu on a micro atx motherboard.

Heh.....reminds me of the old days. I had a 55w Delta power brick (19v) running my first SFF.

Had an AMD K6-3chip @333mhz, a laptop HD, a standard CDRW, two small fans, a couple PCI cards....all ran without trouble using that delta....

They'll need to have the same connectors, and the rated input of the DC-DC board will have to match the rated output of the brick.

About efficiency, I'd think maybe 85%-ish, about 80% overall including th DC-DC board. A member on here tested the efficiency of a Lex 120w brick and DC-DC board, and I think it was high 70% to low 80%. I'm sure it varies from part to part, though. I think he was also running off 230VAC, which is slightly more efficient in PSUs than 115VAC.

For a while I used a 120w Lex kit in my Turion64 computer. It worked pretty well, but I noticed a few of the inductors (or maybe they were transformers?) got pretty warm without any airflow over them, and this was with a very small load, probably 50w. I dunno what the heat ratings on these things are. They're just copper wire wrapped around a piece of iron, so I'm sure it can handle a good amount of heat. Still kind of bugged me, though. If you plan to run 150w+ through a DC-DC board, you'd probably want to make sure at least some airflow was moving over it.

And just to play devil's advocate, are you sure that adapter doesn't have a small fan in it? I've heard of some that do. It probably wouldn't turn on at low loads, but if it ever did turn on I'm sure it'd be annoying.

well im looking at the descriptions of both the brick psu and the 200w dc/dc atx psu:

"100% Silent. The PW-200-M mini PSU is a 100% silent dc to dc solution. No fans, no noise, just power for your silent and small PC."

"New! Pentium4 Support! PW-200-M can power most P4 motherboards running up to 3.0Ghz, look for P4-ATX cable option."

and it takes a single 12v input, which is what the brick psu puts out. so i dont see any compatibility issue's. plus if it can power a 3ghz p4, then a micro atx board with a pentium M should be no problem.

Make sure you look at the rail settings. Its much lower than a normal 200w microatx PSU.

Ever try this, MikeC?