Thread: Anything more powerful than a 150w opus?

what else are you planning on using with your system?

150W should be plenty for what you want. Power supplies are rediculously overrated these days.

The processor power table shows that the 1700 would be 50W or 64W depending on when it was made. Keep in mind that this is a maximum.

And really, do you need 1700Mhz in your car? You can always underclock the processor to save on power. Unless you plan on renting a DVD, and then ripping it in your car while you're grocery shopping so that you can return it on the way home, you really don't need that much power, do you?

In any case, the Opus can put out 12A (15 peak) on the +5V rail. If you have the 0.13um die processor then you should be OK with the Opus, however if you have the 0.18um then it would be too much for the Opus to power if it runs at full utilization for a long time.

Check out my Mp3CarFAQ (link in my sig), there's links to some commercial power supplies in the 250-400W range, but be prepared to pay through the nose. If you underclocked you could probably stick with the Opus and save yourself $100.

So no, there are options other than an inverter but they are expensive.

I meant that you could buy only the 150W PSU and not the 250W, thus saving you $100.

But yes, an inverter would work just fine. You won't be able to use it for long with the car turned off and you might notice interference, however it will work just fine.

If you have a 300W PSU (I doubt that you will ever see anywhere near that used though), you should probably get a >= 400W inverter just to be safe. A 300W inverter would not be enough because even if you only use 200W, if it's at 70% efficiency then you're drawing 285W from the inverter, which is too close to the limit.

I think running the XP-1700 on an Opus is borderline, you're gonna be pushing the power limits.

Actually in this case using laptop drives are *worse* because they take their power off of the 5V rail, which is the rail that you need to NOT take power off of. Normal drives use the 12V rail for the main power, which would be better in this case.

Yes, the motherboard, ram, and everything else in the system all take power, however the ram and AGP port (graphics card) uses the +3.3V rail, USB uses 5V rail, not much uses the 12V rail. I don't know the actual numbers for how much the mobo and ram takes, but the graphics card will take next to nothing if you're not actually using it

You might need a bigger PSU for that CPU, or do you know how to do any electronics work? If so, you can easily build a small circuit to give another 5V 5A off the +12V rail, which would solve your problems.

Also don't forget that the numbers quoted for the processor are worst case numbers I think. I doubt that you'll see those numbers under normal use, unless you plan on cracking RSA while you're driving, so most likely you should be fine with an Opus, just as long as you don't really tax the system by running a lot of things off of the 5V rail. I would recommend against using the laptop drives if you can, but if you already have them or are determined to use them, just beware that it might draw too much power out of the system. However if you made that extra 5V rail then you'd be all good.

However if you stick with the inverter and a normal 200W PSU then you'll have no problems at all.

The opus is $150 including shutdown controller. So you paid $45 more for 100W more power.

Do you have a link to that PSU?