Thread: Power Supplies = Confusion

Thanks for such a quick response. I guess my next question is what's the difference between

The Opus Here That says, "power supply works with ATX motherboards "
And
The PW-70a that says that it's designed specifically for the Mini-ITX.

Thanks again, I appreciate your input

Originally Posted by 2THXTRM

Hey guys just a quick question. I've been ing and ing for a few weeks now and I'm still confused about power supplies. I want to build a carpc using an VIA-EPIA M10000 board 512ram 80gig 3.5' drive and a 2.5' DVD rom. What power supply does a system like this require? Does it need to be hard wired or can I use a cigarette type adapter. Thanks in advance and thanks for your patience, I know many of you don’t like to answer basic questions like this but honestly I'm new & confused

I would recomend the OPUS, it's definitely an awesome power supply for carputers. Automatically turns the computer on/off, survives crank, etc.

As far as just what it requires goes, you can use pretty much anything. While a DC-to-DC power supply like the OPUS is best, you can also use a normal, "house hold" ATX power supply with a power inverter. This is a little more crude, and will require you to turn it on/off manually (unless you get a relay of some sort set up to do that for you). A normal power supply with an inverter also uses more power than a DC-to-DC power supply, and might not survive crank (ie, when you start the engine, the computer runs low on power and shuts down).

You CAN run your computer through a cigarette lighter, but I wouldn't recommend it. Cigarette lighters aren't really wired to handle computers, and it would probably be best to run it all hard wired (it's not that hard to do, and probably worth it just to run a line into the car from the battery).

Hope that helps some

What about the carnetix stuff???

The Opus does look nice but it sure drives up the price of the project does carnetix make something more affordable?