CPU Pico-box Z4-ATX-200 Anyone has experience with those?

[princess_daphie]

So I bought one of these from aliexpress and while it is working, kinda, I'm having weird issues with it.

1. It is more stable when I power it up with a 24V power supply (360w), as compared to a 19V power brick (240w).

2. It clearly CANNOT give me 180w of 12V power, not even for a brief moment. It tends to shut down when total load is between 120w and 140w (at the wall, so in essence, much less when counting brick + picopsu inefficiencies)

I've been testing it for a like a week and trying different things with it and it seems to only be stable on really low loads (<100w) with few power spikes (r5 5600g core boost thing disabled). It also seems much more flakey when it's cold. Once warmed up it seems to be more stable. Oh, and the way it fails is my system just reboots. Unlike other failures I've had before where the system would shut down completely.

It's NOTHING like the hdplex 160w, which i still have and is living up to its expectations. I was hoping to hear from someone else who's had experience with those.

 

[msystems]

I'm assuming its just cheap build quality and corner cutting on Pico box and (+possibly outright lying about specs), in contrast to HDplex, having more conservative numbers published as the max spec (as it's not uncommon to hear of some of the models perform 25%+ overspec with active cooling).

I have two pico box models coming for review soon (X9 320 and X3 300) and will be testing to see if they lied about the specs on them as well.

 

[princess_daphie]

I'm assuming its just cheap build quality and corner cutting on Pico box and (+possibly outright lying about specs), in contrast to HDplex, having more conservative numbers published as the max spec (as it's not uncommon to hear of some of the models perform 25%+ overspec with active cooling).

I have two pico box models coming for review soon (X9 320 and X3 300) and will be testing to see if they lied about the specs on them as well.

I see, I'll be interested to read your reviews!

It IS getting increasingly difficult to find a good quality ~200w 19V picopsu that's just a plug-in unit, like the hdplex 150~200w range of before. I wonder why they don't make them anymore That's why I resorted to try and find a unit that seemed solid on aliexpress, but I guess I failed. There weren't many other options that seemed viable. All the 19V 200w units I could find have specs like 6A on the 12V rail, which is ridiculous. The one I bought was supposed to be 10A ~ 15A peak.

So for now I ordered some 12V units that seemed to have a couple good comments on them and seem easy to mod. I'll have to buy a good 12V power brick now though.

 

[robbee]

If you're going down the 12V road, the Mini-box 160-XT is probably the way to go. However, there is much less power conversion going on 12V units so quality is less of an issue.

 

[princess_daphie]

If you're going down the 12V road, the Mini-box 160-XT is probably the way to go. However, there is much less power conversion going on 12V units so quality is less of an issue.

Yeah, I spotted that one! However, there are two issues. I'm in Canada and shipping costs are prohibitive from mini-box's website, 38$USD, which is like 50$CAD, plus the cost of the unit!!! And second, I checked their specs sheet and the 12V line is listed quite low. I'm running a system with a dedicate graphics card, so...

My build is either an r5 5600G or an i5 11400 paired with an rtx a2000. That's the kind of power budget I'm working with with my kind of builds.

 

[robbee]

The 12V rail on the 160-XT is unregulated afaik so it is able to push a lot more than the specs claim. Back when bricks were a lot more popular, there were people running a GTX 1060 off it.

Out of interest, What's keeping you from using the HDPlex? The 11400 may be pushing it a bit, but it should be totally fine powering a 5600 and A2000.

 

[princess_daphie]

The 12V rail on the 160-XT is unregulated afaik so it is able to push a lot more than the specs claim. Back when bricks were a lot more popular, there were people running a GTX 1060 off it.

Ohh, I see, that's probably why some (not all I'm sure) lesser expensive 12v pico alternatives can do the same. For one, I've read that the "rgeek" ones are pretty crappy.

Out of interest, What's keeping you from using the HDPlex? The 11400 may be pushing it a bit, but it should be totally fine powering a 5600 and A2000.

Oh, I've managed to make my 11400 with my a2000 actually! I had to return a power brick I bought though as it wasn't able to keep up for longer than a few minutes. It was rated as 180w, but I suspect it wasn't able to give anywhere close to that. Using another brick i bought off amazon, a 240w one, it seems to be working, but the brick becomes worryingly hot after gaming for a while, which I'll have to keep an eye on eventually.

The reason why I'm trying to find another 19v pico-psu is that I was hoping to have a backup solution should my hdplex eventually die or break, since I can't buy another one easily.

I'll probably switch my build to my r5 though, because the i5 is much more gimped when disabling multi-core enhancements compared to the r5, and i know that enabling those are much harder on the picos. It IS working on the hdplex + 240w brick though.

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From further testing, it's really really difficult to make the z4-atx work with a discreet gpu. When I disable multi-core boost with my r5, it can run stable off my 19v power brick, but in heavy gaming, it still fails. It really prefers a 24v power source.