PicoPSU advice

[t0m]

I have put together a media centre PC with the following components:

Intel DH67BL motherboard
Intel Core i3 2100 CPU
2 x 2GB Kingston Value DDR3 1333MHz RAM
Crucial m4 64GB (Boot)
2 x 1TB WD green hard disks (media storage)
SATA DVD-RW drive

This is currently powered by an old Antec Earthwatts EA-380 ATX power supply and draws ~30W from the mains at idle. Load is about 20W higher, but this machine will spend the majority of its time decoding video at very low CPU usage so it is idle draw that I am most concerned with.

I am considering switching the power supply for a PicoPSU. I have a few old laptop 19V power bricks to experiment with, so the obvious choice is the Wide Input 120-WI-25, a combination which should be very efficient.

So that I can make a decision, can anyone tell me what kind of idle power draw can I expect with the PicoPSU?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Vicotnik]

Depends a little bit on the brick. Idle at 18-23W would be my guess. With a 19V adapter, personally I would go with Electrodacus Winmate DD-24AX DC-DC Module rather than the WI picoPSU btw, if there's space for it. Not that I have anything bad to say about either.

edit: Missed the second HDD, adjusted my guess a little bit.

[t0m]

The DD-24AX looks interesting - I like the idea of some regulation to protect my components!

I am not 100% clear on the connectors on the board though. It seems to come with a 20-pin ATX power cable and nothing else. Can I connect my molex power cable directly to the board? And do the same with the AUX12V cable? What is the third (24V?) connector used for?

I have plenty of room in my case for this (it's an Antec Fusion) and it looks like it is cheaper in the UK than the PicoPSU!

[fwki]

If you want a Winmate, better act fast becasue Electrodacus indicated he's selling out inventory due to time constraints. The 24V connector is INPUT ONLY unless you use it to daisy chain to a second Winmate powered by a single 200W+ brick (there's an entire thread here on that subject). Here's an ebay link http://www.ebay.com/itm/130W-mini-ITX-A ... 27c3855bae

[porkchop]

hopefully this info can still be useful.
just last night i went from an antec ar350 80plus to picopsu80 and 84w delta power brick (from ebay), my results:
idle/load
ar350 40w/68w
picopsu 32w/68w

as you can see the pico is amazing at low load, once it gets higher though the 80plus catches up.
the caveat here though is that the brick i'm using probably isn't the best, and an 80plus gold/platinum would easily beat my ar350.