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The World's Tiniest Power Supply Unit
An anonymous reader writes "This year at CES members of the press got to grab a glimpse of the world's tiniest power supply. Well actually it is the world's tiniest 12V snap-in ATX DC-to-DC power supply, but you get the idea. This unit produces 120W of power and is about the size of two AA batteries. It is specifically designed for use with Mini-ITX motherboards, but can be used in many other applications."
Very nice, very small, but only converts DC to DC, so there will still be another brick doing AC-DC conversion beneath your super tiny designer micro case or nanomac. Nice nonetheless, maybe one could fit those to work with existing DC networks for household appliance, so we can finally have a network of toasters, smart Japanese toilets, mirco ovens, light switches and artificial pets. Or maybe we'll just build more efficient computers that run by power over ethernet.
Chriss
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IBM can incorporate this into the World's Smallest Computer.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Will this work off of a car 12V?
;-)
No it won't - at least not very long
Modern computers need most of the power on the 12V Rail.
This powersupply is not a 120W unit as advertised, but a 40W(sustained) or 60W(peak) power supply for 3V3 and 5V.
The 12V rail is just switched through from the input source (specified as +7..+22V).
If you supply +22V to your Motherboards 12V-Input, or to drives, you will likely fry them. Most would be specified at 12V +/- 10%.
However, even if the device you connected to this supply needs only 3V3 and 5V, I still wouldnt want to connect the powersupply to a car battery while the engine is running.
A car battery usually supplies between 11 and 12 Volts when the motor is off. When the motor is running, the alternator generates 14.1V and the battery is loaded from this constant voltage source.
Automotive electronics ist usually specified for a +60V "load dump", which means a powerhungry device like a solenoid is switched off and then the alternator takes tens of ms to adjust to the sudden reduction in power consumption.
If the battery cannot absorb the resulting excess current surge (because it is either bad, empty(e.g. after a jump-start), or the terminals disconnect momentarily), this power supply will see up to 60V at its inputs, or has to clip dozens of amps.
There is no space for the neccessary large surge arrestors on the board, so this will probably blow the input caps and the mosfets of the switcher.
But still, even a 40W power supply is impressive in this form-factor.
Now I can build a single box cluster without needing multiple AC-DC power supplies. They can all be run off HDD connectors from the main PSU.