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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."
For years I worked on a viable PC-for-the-car. This is before Microsoft had their operating system (failure) for car stereos, and before the CarPC was even a thought by the designer. My biggest problem was finding a cheap, small and capable 12DC-DC power supply. Even a few years ago they were basically impossible to find.
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I'm glad to see there is now a market for these power supplies (although I'm sure this isn't for car applications). I wonder how efficient it is -- and how much heat it gives off. The article was a bit...sparse.
I miss my old car PC -- 8 years ago it could do so much more than anything else I've seen. Considering how much time I wasted, I wish I kept all the software and code.
A couple more links to the picoPSU:
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/it.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/01/07/pico_psu/
http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=News&f
http://www.realtechnews.com/page/2/
And, of course: http://www.digg.com/hardware/World_s_smallest_pow
They sell them here for $50 if you're interested in putting one in your mod or computer.
You may also be interested in the pdf guide for the picoPSU-120.
My work here is dung.
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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What input range does it take? Is it suitable for automotive use?
Test your net with Netalyzr
" it will have to be used with an external AC-to-DC power converter"So this is just like all the other mini itx adaptors in that it requires an external brick to provide the juice. Who cares how small the internal part is?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
> I'm glad to see there is now a market for these power
> supplies (although I'm sure this isn't for car applications).
> I wonder how efficient it is -- and how much heat it gives
> off. The article was a bit...sparse.
From the article:
"The pico-PSU boasts an over 96% efficiency rating"
and:
"No enclosure or cooling is needed."
Craig
IBM can incorporate this into the World's Smallest Computer.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It takes dc and supplies dc. Doesn't that make it more of a converter?
And if so, it's no big deal. You can buy decent switched cap converters at Digi-key for a couple of bucks. I bought one not too long ago to step 14v down to 5 and supply 4 or so amps, and it was about the same size. The small footprint at 120w is fairly nifty, but otherwise I don't see the big deal.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Never mind that! How many trees will I have to tap to power my server?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
To the editors: Don't let the words "produce" and "power" be together. You cannot produce power. You can deliver, provide, etc. But definitely you don't produce power in a power supply.
How many trees will I have to tap to power my server?
All of them.
KFG
Unfortunately, the answer is that the brick is exactly big and noisy as your existing 480W power supply
I have a laptop sitting next to me that disagrees with you.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That wouldn't even power my video card.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
Every time a new device comes out, especially consumer electronics like the PSP and iPod I give people the same advice: wait. The early adopters are beta testers. Wait a year or so for people's computers to blow up from this new power supply and then buy your bug-free version for cheaper.
Please note I have never used this power supply before and have no idea how well it's made. I'm just making a general statement on electronics.
The XBox 360's.
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.
You have a laptop that draws 480 watts? Are your legs charred black or has it melted to the table yet?
The big difference with laptop power supplies is that they only have to supply 10-60 watts (depending on the laptop in question) and can get by with just passive cooling (although some laptops heat their bricks up a lot). There are also super-quiet power supplies for desktops, but none of them can supply 480 watts. At current efficencies that is just too much power for a reasonably sized passive device to dissipate.
I read the internet for the articles.
This is a DC-to-DC Converter, not a Power Supply. Nonetheless, the power density is impressive. Point of load regulation is better anyway. You can get by with a single output power supply and simpify the wiring. Just use converters where you need the lower voltage.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I believe current auto computers have a hefty filtering package to work under these varying conditions. The Pico-PSU doesn't seem to have enough filtering to be directly plugged in. However, a smaller external voltage regulator to handle the spikes/drops would probably do wonders for it.
It's nice to see these start getting some more attention. I've been a long fan of the works of the people over at http://www.mp3car.com/ and they use these quite extensively. Any tech savy person will love the things these people are doing. It's quite amazing. Needless to say when Im out of college this will be one of my first projects.
I will forever be a student.
Isn't this just a passthrough at this point? If you have to have an external AC->DC converter, then why not just stick the how PSU outside the box...
The gates in my computer are AND, OR and NOT; they are not Bill.
No, you weren't wrong, just slightly narrow in scope on your definition of a power supply. The purpose of a power supply is take an input power and provide clean output power in the form of AC or DC at one or more voltage levels to an end device. In the case of standard computer supplies that means transforming the 120V AC power coming in (AC being a far more efficient means a long distance power transmission) to a stable 12v/5V/3.3V/-5V DC output for use by the local electronic components.
A typical switching power supply accomplishes this by: a) Run the 120VAC thru a transformer, down to ~24VAC
b) Rectifying the output with diodes, filter with bulk capacitors to ~24VDC.
c) "Chop" the DC voltage into several subvoltages by turning a transistor feeding a buck coil on/off at high frequency (~10kHz).
d) Filter the resulting subvoltages with bulk and fine capacitors, resulting in a smooth clean output.
Skips step "a" (and "b"), making it convient to run off an available 12V source (say your car outlet). Telco DC power supplies have long done the same thing off ~48V DC power.
That being said... Despite the apparent enthusiasm, I have a very hard time believing the claim that this is possibly a 120W power supply for 3 distinct reasons:
1) If you take the specifications at face value, at full power this would being drawing 10.4 amps (claimed 96% eff.) in the 12V input. Given that the input wires appear to be 18AWG (standard ATX wire gauge), the wires would be cooking at that amperage. Typical transmission current ratings for 18AWG stranded copper is 2.3 amps.
2) The power connection appears to be a standard phono jack, again not suitable for 10 amps.
3) I only see 2 coils, 2 capacitors, a handful of diodes, possibly an inductor, and the chopper ciruits are most likely ICs sandwiched between the boards, in the pictures. That means there are only 2 buck transformer circuits, one taking 12V to 5V and one taking 12V to 3.3V, leaving 12V output unfiltered (highly noisy do to switching) and the 5/3.3V very rough under any significant power draw.
Therefore, given the above... I can;t see this power supply realistically providing more than ~30W at best, being very noisy while doing it....