Discussion Can i power a portable monitor from an sfx power supply?

diddyreviews

Case Bender
New User
Jul 18, 2024
2
0
I am looking to make a portable PC with a monitor attached. The monitor is powered via USB c, is it possible to get this power from the power supply in some way?

Just to make it easier and not have to have a second power adapter for the monitor.

Thanks in advance
 

HWI

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Sep 6, 2022
101
84
I do the same as @3lfk1ng and power my portable monitor from one of the USB-A ports on the motherboard. I really wish GPUs would provide a USB-C DP port, that was a short lived option on only a select few GPUs a couple generations ago.
 

3lfk1ng

King of Cable Management
SFFn Staff
Bronze Supporter
Jun 3, 2016
919
1,718
Santa Barbara
www.reihengaming.com
Yea, I have a USB-C on a 2080TI that I'm selling and it was honestly the best part of that GPU.

I could have all my USB devices plugged into my monitor and then use a single USB-C cable to switch from one computer to the other by plugging directly into the 2080TI. All the devices that were plugged into the monitor would instantly work on both machines (M+KB+HDD+etc)
 

msystems

King of Cable Management
Apr 28, 2017
812
1,428
It depends what voltage the monitor expects. It seems that most, if not all portable monitors will only be using a few watts and should be able to be powered by 5v. If it's only 5v, then adapting from the motherboard will most likely work fine as a typical USB 3.0 port delivers 5v @ up to 1.5A.

If it needs 12v, 15v, 20v, it will only work if the motherboard has an actual USB-C with power delivery v1.0 or better. But so far I have yet to see a portable monitor that needs that.