Which PicoPSU Should i get

Hey guys also building a streacom FC08 build A8-3820 cpu, but looking at adding a Sapphire Radeon HD 6570 but think i need a 200w pico and brick for it just for some headroom.

Has anyone come across a good 200w pico and power brick or is it best i go with a 150w combination be enough.

Theres a guy on ebay selling refurbished power supply's, theres a HP POWER SUPPLY 19.5V 10.3A 200W for £50

The Streacom cases have a single hole for the picoPSU jack limiting you to the ones with the barrel-jack connector. It is not compatible with the 150/160W picoPSU.

See here:


The largest picoPSU with that connector is the 120-WI-25 which can take a 120W adapter higher than 12V (like 16 or 18.5/19 which are popular laptop bricks). What's the power draw of the HD6570? Under maximum load, the system should draw around 80W without the card. You won't be running it at maximum load -- more like 40W watching movies, etc.

That HP adapter is just the AC-DC adapter. You still need the DC-DC picoPSU power supply and there is none that would take 200W input.

(2012-06-19 02:24)Dougie Fresh Wrote:  The 120W will be enough but you'll be limited to a 8.5A adapter using the barrel-style plug unless you go with the 120-WI-25 in which case you can safely pair that with a 18.5V 6.5A adapter. If you look at the picoPSU 120W manual you'll see the barrel-style connector is has a maximum 8 or 8.5A (I forget which) rating. A 12V 120W AC adapter would be 10A if you were able to draw that much power.

The 120W also does not come with a P4 CPU connector so you'll need at least a molex-to-P4 adapter and then you'll also need a SATA-to-2-SATA power splitter to feed your SSD and ODD.

In my testing of the A6-3500/A75 the maximum power draw was around 77W using Prime95 as measured at the wall with a Kill-A-Watt meter. This system had an SSD, ODD and used a 120W DC-DC internal/84W AC external power supply.

I didn't found any limitation on dc jack on manual...but there is on pico. Is it possible here in Europe to get mini fit jr ( din connector) http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2012...dapter.jpg but
A Pico90 has a max load of 5A on 12v rail. It means only 60 watt. I know that many of you are using this pico with A6...but still looks to me a little underpowered. Pico 120-WI-25 (7A on 12v rail) looks safer to me.

Ive seen these on ebay and other sites such as mini-box.com.

There is the picoPSU-160-XT which can provide 160 Watts (200 watt peak) of power.

Theres is also the PW-200-M also the PW-200V which both output 200w but obviously wasnt sure about the external power supply/bricks that would work with it,

My earlier post shows the HP power supply which is 200w but 19.5v so not sure if this would work as the PW-200M requires a 12v power supply.

The issue with using the picoPSU 150 or 160 with the Streacom FC08 is there is a different connector on the picoPSU 150/160 (called a mini-fit JR connector) that has a large central hole for the 4-pin power plug and then two small mounting holes for the screws. The back of the case only has a place to mount the single-hole barrel-syle jack.

The different connector is necessary because the maximum amperage rating on the barrel jack harness (since we're picking words here) is 8A (96W) so the higher power 12V picoPSUs require the 4-pin harness. With the 120-WI-25, this is not an issue because it can take a 19V input which is only 6.3A for 120W and therefore can use the single hole barrel-jack harness.

If you look in the pico-150 user manual the maximum rating is there -- 8A for the barrel connector harness. It applies to the barrel connector for all picoPSU -- they are all the same -- and it's because the wire gauge of the harness is only enough for 8A. I've linked to it before.

Ive got a 600w atx psu in its box, would it be best for me to test what the total pwr wattage is first with a power meter when ive got all the bits together using this psu first, allthru its probably only 65% efficient.

But if i did need the extra power which requires the JR connector i could always modify the case to accept it no doubt.

(2012-06-21 18:23)markus625 Wrote:  Ive got a 600w atx psu in its box, would it be best for me to test what the total pwr wattage is first with a power meter when ive got all the bits together using this psu first, allthru its probably only 65% efficient.

But if i did need the extra power which requires the JR connector i could always modify the case to accept it no doubt.

It'll read higher than what the picoPSU will end up using.

My $0.02:

I have the 120-WI-25 and a 18.5V/6.5A adapter. When I tested using Prime95 with an Intel G620/H61/4GB/64GB SSD/HD5450 it ran around 80W (Kill-a-Watt reading) or so. The A8-3820 is going to run a bit more at full load -- maybe 10-20W?. The HD6570 -- I am not sure how the power consumption compares to the HD5450 -- I am guessing around the same or a bit more -- so you're looking at 90W?-100W? at full load. But, you won't be running it at full load. 1080p video on the A6-3500 was 31W at the wall compared to Prime95 at 77W. In my mind, from my experience using these power supplies, it extrapolates out to "should be fine." You won't know for sure until you try.

(2012-06-21 19:52)Dougie Fresh Wrote:  It'll read higher than what the picoPSU will end up using.

My $0.02:

I have the 120-WI-25 and a 18.5V/6.5A adapter. When I tested using Prime95 with an Intel G620/H61/4GB/64GB SSD/HD5450 it ran around 80W (Kill-a-Watt reading) or so. The A8-3820 is going to run a bit more at full load -- maybe 10-20W?. The HD6570 -- I am not sure how the power consumption compares to the HD5450 -- I am guessing around the same or a bit more -- so you're looking at 90W?-100W? at full load. But, you won't be running it at full load. 1080p video on the A6-3500 was 31W at the wall compared to Prime95 at 77W. In my mind, from my experience using these power supplies, it extrapolates out to "should be fine." You won't know for sure until you try.

Ive been trying to work out what the watts would be for my system which im slowly building up

A8-3820 65w TDP
OCZ 120GB Agility 3 SSD 0.49w idle 2w when writing. Source from Anandtech
Amd Radeon 6570 44w but Anandtech shows over 200w when under load for some reason not sure why that is unless its there test system.
Corsair 8gb (2x4gb) Ddr3 1600mhz Low Profile Vengeance Memory Kit Cl9 1.35v Power consumption ?
Asus F1A75-I DELUXE Power consumption ? Anandtech show 50w idle and and 132w under load

So looking at the reviews from Anandtech im abit bewildered allthru xbitlabs.com has the Asus F1A75-I DELUXE Power consumption topping out at 65w for cpu burn and just 16watts at idle.

Yeah, it's hard because actual power consumption at the wall will vary depending not only on CPU, motherboard, etc. but the power supply itself too, even between different external AC adapters with the same wattage rating.

And, the TDP rating of a CPU isn't the same as it's power consumption either.

@Dougie Fresh

Interesting reading your posts....

Thank you.