Thread: Powering laptop

depends, if your laptop can run off the voltage required for it from the ps, then it could certainly be used for it's sole power no problem. if you did that you might also need to use a seperate pol power supply for either your 12v accesories or 5v acessories, but that's not so bad really.

I like using a regular atx power supply & have that trip a relay to power a car adaptor for the laptop so then the atx power supply can be used to power all acessories you might add, the atx & the car adaptor should be more than enough to power anything you can add to your system. it may be slightly wasteful in that the 3.3v won't be very useful for much, but at least you know that you have enough power for everything else you might add.

I guess I would look at the whole system & decide what else I would be powering... if the ps you have in mind will power everything you'll add including the laptop then that's great, but if your going to have to add another ps for accessories anyway, then I would consider using an atx supply & a car adaptor.

if you used an atx supply tripping a relay for a car adaptor then it could still do the startup/shutdown for you... I've done them both ways & unless it's a minimalist system your building, I like the atx/ car adaptor solution better as it has more room for expansion & will allow you to grow the system without headaches, it sucks to try to add somethng to your install & realize that you don't have enough power for it. no matter what, you'll probably need 3 different voltages, 5v, 12v & whatever voltage the laptop runs at, of course the ps & a seperate pol can do the job, but if your going to add a lot of other stuff you could get to the point of needing more than one seperate pol's.. that won't happen normaly with an atx/car adaptor solution.