Thread: Advice needed - picoPSU-120-WI-25 not reliable

I'm just about done with my new system, which is a Zotac Nforce 630i motherboard with a Celeron 430 35W processor in an M350 chassis. I'm using a 2.5" SATA HD for now. System works fine with a regular ATX power supply or my M1-ATX, which unfortunately does not fit into the M350 chassis. So I got the picoPSU-120-WI-25 to use in the car, and I'll use the M1-ATX's shutdown controller to power a relay that will break the power connection to the picoPSU as well as power the screen and a few other items.

Unfortunately, I'm on my second picoPSU and they both have the same problem. The original one worked fine for several days and then got very flaky, just like the replacement. Usually I just see the red LED flash momentarily on the picoPSU, the cpu fan twitches, and nothing but the green LED on the picoPSU mocking me. Sometimes I can get it to power up the system, but it's rare.

I have 2 bench supplies that I use, one is measuring 15.0V and the other measures 13.8V, but I've also fed it +12V from an ATX supply. Current draw into the M1-ATX is right at 2A, which I've also seen with the picoPSU when it actually worked. I hacked up the M1-ATX cable to measure current draws, and with the M1-ATX saw 2.5A on the +5V rail (4A in-rush current) and about 1A on the +12V rail both for in-rush and stable system. Haven't measured 3.3V current draw but the picoPSU is rated at 6A nominal and 8A peak so I just don't see how that could be it since the overall system power draw is so low.

Any suggestions? I've asked the mfg. for technical support but haven't heard back yet. I have hours of testing into this POS, and I can't believe it won't work correctly with such a low power system.