PicoPSU 90 real life datapoint

[mctubster]

Hi,

Thought this data may help someone.

G1610 CPU (55W TDP)
Gigabyte Z77M-D3H (est 10W TDP)
C400 64GB SSD (1W)
Hitachi 1TB Travelstar 5K1000 (4.5W peak)
8GB DDR3, 1.5V (est 5W)

PicoPSU 90 + FSP 84W (12V, 7A)

Stable - System boots fine and is stable under general usage, eg XBMC/Kodi, various services including Crashplan running, which does use a fair amount of CPU from time to time.

Unstable - Add Virtualbox running a Windows VM + BlueIris (using 60-70% of all CPU), as well as being very IO intensive receiving 3x1080P streams and writing to disk

Thoughts? Not enough A on 12V?

Have gone back to a 200W Dell power supply

Cheers

[Stevo_]

Hi,

Thought this data may help someone.

G1610 CPU (55W TDP)
Gigabyte Z77M-D3H (est 10W TDP)
C400 64GB SSD (1W)
Hitachi 1TB Travelstar 5K1000 (4.5W peak)
8GB DDR3, 1.5V (est 5W)

PicoPSU 90 + FSP 84W (12V, 7A)

Stable - System boots fine and is stable under general usage, eg XBMC/Kodi, various services including Crashplan running, which does use a fair amount of CPU from time to time.

Unstable - Add Virtualbox running a Windows VM + BlueIris (using 60-70% of all CPU), as well as being very IO intensive receiving 3x1080P streams and writing to disk

Thoughts? Not enough A on 12V?

Have gone back to a 200W Dell power supply

Cheers

Probably getting some significant drooping on the 12V rail for the brick approaching max load. Need to run a HW monitor while unstable in graph mode, but if it's running fine on the 200W no worries.

[xan_user]

pico 90 is rated at 5amp max without forced airflow over it. 7amp peak for up to 60 seconds.
"forced air ventilation is required. For fanless or improper ventilation operation derate the output of the 3.3 and 5V rails until PSU temperature falls below 65C."...

[fuzzymath10]

Undervolting the cpu might help for peak usage to prevent crashing if that option is available.

I'm running an i7 3770 with a 512GB MX100 and 8GB memory and two 80mm fans. My Pico psu is the multiple voltage version which supports 6A on the 12V. The DC is from a cooler master universal laptop brick.

It took a lot of calibration but I have it at the point where it won't crash and I have increased the turbo for 1-2 cores to about 4.1-4.2. It cannot hit more than 3.6 or so on four cores before crashing.

[quest_for_silence]

Crappy PSUs (but so cute and tiny)... sorry, I couldn't resist...

[mctubster]

Thanks for all the info so far.

I just ordered a semi-professional power meter http://steplight.com.au/products/power- ... vAodI3YAOg

And I have made up a inline current lead for the DC side. Once I receive the power meter I will report back and will be able at least to understand the actual load mains side, load DC side, as well as voltage drop etc, and see if the Pico is actually performing to spec.

It certainly will be interesting to understand if a PicoPSU + Efficiency Level V power pack are actually more efficient then a 80plus Gold PS ... which is the original reason I bought the Pico.

Cheers

[quest_for_silence]

It certainly will be interesting to understand if a PicoPSU + Efficiency Level V power pack are actually more efficient then a 80plus Gold PS

Given a determined power level, it mainly depends of the brick of choice (and of the specific PSU used for comparison, of course).
Take note that even the AC matters: at 115V lots of ATX PSUs are more efficient at low power levels than at 230V (while it's quite the opposite scenario at high power levels).