Hello, I'm completely new to SFF and am soliciting advice of how external power works. I'm currently planning on a 3600 + 1660 super/ti build in a MC600 case, which is not going to fit a SFX/flex PSU. The wattage calculator on newegg suggests that I should be looking at around 240W of power draw, which makes sense since the 3600 draws 90 at peak from Anandtech graphs and the 1660ti draws 130, and adding a few watts here and there for fans/ssd/etc.
So my primary question here is what are my choices for external power. My understanding is that there's a DC-DC that sits on top of the 24pin on the motherboard and a AC-DC external power brick that feeds power into the DC-DC. But I'm having trouble finding what people use for both of those components; the only easily accessible one I've been able to find so far is:
- The picoPSU 192W combination unit, which is clearly insufficient (or is it? Can I power limit the cpu/gpu to not draw more that 192W total?)
- A custom order one that people order through another thread that I lost the link to and can't find again
- The 400W thing from HDPlex which seems to only cover DC-DC with the AC-DC portion (https://hdplex.com/hdplex-internal-400w-ac-dc-adapter-with-active-pfc-and-19vdc-output.html) also expected to be internal.
To summarise:
- What are my options for a 250+W external power brick/combination/whatever they're called? Where do people find these in general/what keywords should I be putting into google?
- Can I / is it a good idea to limit system power draw to 192W so I can cram the 192W picoPSU into the build?
- Is there an easy way of cramming a flex PSU somewhere and sidestepping the whole problem? I don't really care about the case as long as volume stays less than roughly 5-6L, so is there a simple case somewhere that I missed that would make the problem go away (and won't break the bank)?
So my primary question here is what are my choices for external power. My understanding is that there's a DC-DC that sits on top of the 24pin on the motherboard and a AC-DC external power brick that feeds power into the DC-DC. But I'm having trouble finding what people use for both of those components; the only easily accessible one I've been able to find so far is:
- The picoPSU 192W combination unit, which is clearly insufficient (or is it? Can I power limit the cpu/gpu to not draw more that 192W total?)
- A custom order one that people order through another thread that I lost the link to and can't find again
- The 400W thing from HDPlex which seems to only cover DC-DC with the AC-DC portion (https://hdplex.com/hdplex-internal-400w-ac-dc-adapter-with-active-pfc-and-19vdc-output.html) also expected to be internal.
To summarise:
- What are my options for a 250+W external power brick/combination/whatever they're called? Where do people find these in general/what keywords should I be putting into google?
- Can I / is it a good idea to limit system power draw to 192W so I can cram the 192W picoPSU into the build?
- Is there an easy way of cramming a flex PSU somewhere and sidestepping the whole problem? I don't really care about the case as long as volume stays less than roughly 5-6L, so is there a simple case somewhere that I missed that would make the problem go away (and won't break the bank)?
