Simple Dual Pico PSU Set Up

[iFreilicht]

I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work, but make sure that the two PSUs are as identical as possible. At the same voltage, parallel power source's current output adds, so you would get double the power output. But if the voltages differ too much, one will act as a load for the other, which will at the very least reduce the available power and in the worst case kill the brick with the lower voltage.

So using two Xbox bricks is a good idea, maybe try to find out what revisions of it exist and get two of the same revision.

"500 watt" flex atx psu

Was it made by Athena Power, incidentally?

 

[michaelmitchell]

You can power 960 + i5 6500 on a single 240W brick easily with an HDPLEX, I have i5 4590 which is more power hungry than your suggested i5 6500 paired with a 960 and it runs perfectly fine with a 19v 240W Dell brick. If you want a Pico style DC-ATX that supports wide range then check out the 200W Z4-ATX-200 by PicoBox.

 

[Zackmd1]

I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work, but make sure that the two PSUs are as identical as possible. At the same voltage, parallel power source's current output adds, so you would get double the power output. But if the voltages differ too much, one will act as a load for the other, which will at the very least reduce the available power and in the worst case kill the brick with the lower voltage.

So using two Xbox bricks is a good idea, maybe try to find out what revisions of it exist and get two of the same revision.



Was it made by Athena Power, incidentally?

Sounds good! The idea was to find an identical brick to the one I already have.

And yes! The "500 watt" psu was made by Athena Power. I don't know if the one I recieved was defective in some way or it is a representation of the actual product. It couldn't handle crysis 3 for more then 2 min which wasn't even enough time for the evga GTX 960 SC to spin up its fan. During those two minutes the psu had terribly loud coil whine not to mention the loud 40mm fan....

 

[Zackmd1]

You can power 960 + i5 6500 on a single 240W brick easily with an HDPLEX, I have i5 4590 which is more power hungry than your suggested i5 6500 paired with a 960 and it runs perfectly fine with a 19v 240W Dell brick. If you want a Pico style DC-ATX that supports wide range then check out the 200W Z4-ATX-200 by PicoBox.

Really now? All "calculations" I have done point to my system load wattage being around 250 watts. The 960 I have is the evga SC variant so it is slightly overclocked from the factory. 120 watt TDP I believe.

 

[Josh | NFC]

Is it possible to have 2 power bricks powering one pico? I'm currently deciding how I want to power my 960 + i5 6500. I originally tried a "500 watt" flex atx psu.... Very noisy and actually crashed in game because it could not provide enough power. So I want to try silent, and minimize wiring in the case. The pico fits the bill perfectly but 12v ac adapters are difficult to find over 220 watt. The idea was to use two Xbox one power bricks in parallel to power one pico and retain the on/off function of the power bricks. Is this possible or should I go for 2 160 picos with two bricks?

Running 400 watts through the Pico without mods is dangerous and I wouldn't consider it unless it was on a test bench and I could monitor it.

You are much better off with two Picos and a jumper wire.

Which 960 do you have? I spent a week with the Gigabyte Windforce ITX 960 running a 65w CPU only off the 160XT + 192w adapter. It was CLOSE to the power cap, but not over.

I know that the "ATX" 960s can draw alot more power, but depending on what you have one Pico might be enough...if not, go for the HDPLEX 250 with the Dell 330. No sense in multi bricks for your setup IMO.

Peace!

 

[Zackmd1]

Running 400 watts through the Pico without mods is dangerous and I wouldn't consider it unless it was on a test bench and I could monitor it.

You are much better off with two Picos and a jumper wire.

Which 960 do you have? I spent a week with the Gigabyte Windforce ITX 960 running a 65w CPU only off the 160XT + 192w adapter. It was CLOSE to the power cap, but not over.

I know that the "ATX" 960s can draw alot more power, but depending on what you have one Pico might be enough...if not, go for the HDPLEX 250 with the Dell 330. No sense in multi bricks for your setup IMO.

Peace!

Thanks for the reply! I did plan on upgrading all wiring on the pico in order to handle the added power. I think though I am going to move away from the parallel setup.... After more research it just seems to risky to attempt.

I have the EVGA GTX 960 SC mini itx. So I believe the TDP is 120watt. All I have researched thus far says my system should be over 220 watt which is why I wanted to do two Xbox PSUs. I already have one brick so I might just try it and see what happens! 220 watt safe enough for the stock pico 160XT?

 

[Zackmd1]

My card is actually 128 watt TDP. I'm thinking it's going to be to much for the Xbox psu but we shall see. If it is then I think I will go with a 160XT and a smaller 80 pico psu. The Xbox psu will power the 160XT while a much smaller and fanless 70-80watt psu will power the pico 80. That way if I wanted to upgrade the GPU to say a 150 watt or greater gtx 970/rx480 then I would still have room. I'll attempt the Xbox psu first to see if it can handle it and then move to the pico 80 if not. While the HDPlex is nice, it itself is expensive and the 330w dell brick is over $100 in some cases and $50 in others. My entire dual pico setup shouldn't cost me more then $80.

The question now then is to get the standby function working on the Xbox psu. I have to splice into PW_On from the motherboard and splice into +5vsb on the atx connector and route the Xbox +5v 1A single through it from what I can tell. Question is whether or not I need to completely separate this +5vsb from the pico or if I can just splice into it.....

 

[iFreilicht]

And yes! The "500 watt" psu was made by Athena Power. I don't know if the one I recieved was defective in some way or it is a representation of the actual product.

Athena Power have a reputation for making very bad PSUs that can't keep up with their spec. Ask @Hahutzy

 

[Hahutzy]

Yea don't buy Athena Power, it undermines the level of stability that can be provided by the FlexATX form factor.

Source: I've tried 2 different units with various setups. Both couldn't deliver power remotely close to what they claim.

 

[michaelmitchell]

I have no problem running 84W CPU + 120W GPU + RAM + M2 + HDD on 240W power brick however I do run it on the Dell 330W at home when its on all day because the brick is a lot cooler than the Dell 240W but not as portable in slim laptop bag, the power bricks can usually handle well over their power limits for short periods of time and in general your components don't use 100% of their TDP unless they are being stress tested. Unless you are running some other kind of component that is hogging power I and many could attest to similar components working fine with HDPLEX + Dell 330W adatper.

 

[Zackmd1]

Yea don't buy Athena Power, it undermines the level of stability that can be provided by the FlexATX form factor.

Source: I've tried 2 different units with various setups. Both couldn't deliver power remotely close to what they claim.

Unfortunately I found this out the hard way as well.... It amazed me that this "500 watt" PSU could not handle 200 watts.... Live and learn I guess!

 

[Zackmd1]

Success! I can confirm that you can indeed run a 65 watt processor, 130 watt GPU, and associated components off a single 220 watt Xbox One PSU and Pico 160XT! Ran both prime95 and haven benchmark simultaneously with no issues! Was checking temps on the wires and to my surprise the system wires (molex, CPU aux power) did not change in temperature much at all. What did get noticeably warmer was the power in leads and those thin gauge jumpers used on the 4 pin connector.

Moving forward I believe I need to beef up the power in leads. Any suggestions on how to do so? I was thinking of just increasing the gauge of the jumper wires and increasing the gauge (and quality) of my adapter for the Xbox One PSU connector that I cut off a dead Xbox One motherboard. Currently my adapter uses a standard CPU Aux 4 pin and the wiring associated. These wires got warmer but not to the point I was concerned with as the thin gauge jumper wires. That or just get rid of the 4 pin connector entirely and directly solder the 15 Gauge power leads to the Xbox one power connector. That arguably is the more elegant and easy option.

 

[Zackmd1]

So some numbers for those that are considering a setup similar to mine and are either going single or dual pico psu. All numbers are read from the wall using a watt meter.

System spec:
Core i5 6500
16gb DDR 4 Ram
EVGA GTX 960 SC mini itx (128 watt TDP)
Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi
3 SATA Drives (2 SSD 1 HDD)

Power Usage

Idle: 40-50 watts
Typical usage (Internet, Office, etc): 55-60 watts
100% CPU load: 90-100 watts
100% GPU load 30% CPU (typical gaming load): 150 watts with peaks around 170 watts
Full Load 100% CPU 100% GPU: 205 watts with peaks as high as 230 watts

So at full load I am just barely scraping by with one Xbox One PSU which is rated at 215 with peak load ratings north of 250 watts.

 

[aquelito]

Did you notice this new Pico-Box load-sharing solution ?

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/pr...g-Controller-PICO-BOX/211500_32760482658.html

Might be useful to chain two 12V bricks to feed a PicoPSU 160-XT, which can go well above the rated 160W ?
Or that kind of 250W DC-DC board.

 

[anak85]

Hi guys,
how much would a pico system for a 230 W ITX build cost me? What would the setup be?

I am considering the Streacom ZF240 for 140€ as an alternative which would still fit in my system.

 

[Sean Crees]

I'm really curious why this isn't what everyone is doing?

I'm envisioning 2x of these: Z3-ATX-200. Run the power connector to both from a single 330w 19.5v dell power brick. De-solder the 24pin atx connector from one of them and solder a small wire between PSON and GND, then have the power connector go to these 2x dc/dc units. One plugs directly into the motherboard like normal with a 4/8pin EPS connector for the CPU, and the second one is dedicated to power PCI-e 6/8pin power connectors on graphics card.

My reasoning for doing it this way instead of just getting a single HDPLEX? Getting rid of excess wires and better space efficiency. I've noticed quite a bit of excess cable using the HDPLEX because you need a 24pin cable to run between the psu and the motherboard. This gives you the benefits of using a pico-psu while also giving you more usable dc power that you get with an HDPLEX. In my mind, its a win-win scenario.

So why doesn't everyone do it this way? Is it just no one's thought of it? Or is there a downside I don't see? I'd love an option to be able to buy these dc/dc psu's as a bundle like this. I thought i remembered seeing a post on this forum somewhere about someone in talks with the guy that runs Pico-Box to bring an HDPLEX variant to market. Maybe we could get them to make a Z3 varient without the 24pin connector for this use case.

 

[Kmpkt]

De-solder the 24pin atx connector from one of them and solder a small wire between PSON and GND, then have the power connector go to these 2x dc/dc units. One plugs directly into the motherboard like normal with a 4/8pin EPS connector for the CPU, and the second one is dedicated to power PCI-e 6/8pin power connectors on graphics card.

I think this is why most people don't use this mod. It's a lot of work for someone, especially someone who isn't comfortable with electronics, pinouts, etc. to do this.

 

[Sean Crees]

I think this is why most people don't use this mod. It's a lot of work for someone, especially someone who isn't comfortable with electronics, pinouts, etc. to do this.

Well i guess the "easy" version of this mod would be to use something like this: 24 pin ATX jumper. Plug this into one of the 2x Pico PSU's. Then you just need to run the power leads to both the dc/dc units. It takes up a little more space, but its literally plug and play.

Wasn't someone from this forum talking with the guy that runs pico-box about making some sort of custom 300w HDPLEX variant for sale? Maybe we could convince him to make a Z3 with no 24 pin ATX connector on it for this use case.

 

[Kmpkt]

I'm the guy and I've been working with Larry at HDPlex to create a DC-DC solution with a 19V passthrough. What that will allow is powering of an ATX based motherboard via a 19V Pico PSU or alternatively direct connection of a 19V based board in thin mITX, Mini STX, Micro STX or NuC form factors. It will also function as a DC-DC power solution for custom eGPU designs.

 

[xtian0510]

I'm really curious why this isn't what everyone is doing?

I'm envisioning 2x of these: Z3-ATX-200. Run the power connector to both from a single 330w 19.5v dell power brick. De-solder the 24pin atx connector from one of them and solder a small wire between PSON and GND, then have the power connector go to these 2x dc/dc units. One plugs directly into the motherboard like normal with a 4/8pin EPS connector for the CPU, and the second one is dedicated to power PCI-e 6/8pin power connectors on graphics card.

My reasoning for doing it this way instead of just getting a single HDPLEX? Getting rid of excess wires and better space efficiency. I've noticed quite a bit of excess cable using the HDPLEX because you need a 24pin cable to run between the psu and the motherboard. This gives you the benefits of using a pico-psu while also giving you more usable dc power that you get with an HDPLEX. In my mind, its a win-win scenario.

So why doesn't everyone do it this way? Is it just no one's thought of it? Or is there a downside I don't see? I'd love an option to be able to buy these dc/dc psu's as a bundle like this. I thought i remembered seeing a post on this forum somewhere about someone in talks with the guy that runs Pico-Box to bring an HDPLEX variant to market. Maybe we could get them to make a Z3 varient without the 24pin connector for this use case.

Need help,

I just bought z3-atx-200 and a Dell 19.5v 330w. It appears that plug tips are not compatible. I am planing to replace them with male and female tips for ac adapter but the dell comes with 3 wires. What is this center wire/ID/Sense? Can I just plug the + to + and - to - with touching the center pin?

TIA