Thread: Power Supply and Inverter question

Search.

I have been searching, and the post I have read seem to indicate that it is OK to use a power supply rated higher than the inverter since the power supply will only draw as much power as it needs. Also, the inverter can handle up to 250W peak, so even if more than 140W is needed at startup for a second or two, it should still work. I just wanted to run this by everyone to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
I had another thought as well - since the SBC only requires 5V, I could always switch to a notebook hard drive and then I would not require 12V at all - the entire system would run off 5V. Is there a power supply that works off DC that could do this? I was thinking of using a universal notebook DC supply like the one from Targus to supply 5V since they will work up to 70W (more than enough for an SBC, notebook hard drive and character LCD). Any thoughts on this?
Thanks again,
Mike.

I have that identical board. I purchased an Arise 845V DC-DC PS and am expecting to receive it today or tomorrow. I'll let you know how well it does for power. They are only $77 and only supply 12v and 5v (which is fine for our board and for additional drives.)

I also have one of those Targus Universal Auto/Air adapters....I also wonder how well it would work. Those are more expensive than the DC-DC supply though.

[ 08-20-2001: Message edited by: Meatballman ]

Thanks Meatballman. Maybe I should just cough up the money for the Arise DC-DC. I can't find any distributors who sell the Arise power supplies. Did you order yours directly from Arise?
Thanks,
Mike.

Yeah, you can buy direct...the number for the sales person that I talked to is 650-428-0868 ext 118. If you wait a day or two I can confirm whether it will work or not.

mtmsol , the short answer is yes. Im running my Duron 800 and a 6.4GB HDD with a 300W ATX PS and a 140W inverter, works fine.....

the 300W is the max the PS can support, it will not suck 300W all the time only if it was loaded up running enough hardware.

I received my ACE-845V yesterday and set it up on the bench to test it. I used a bench 13.8v DC power supply to supply voltage to it. I then plugged it into the PCM 5862 system consisting of a Powerleap K6III-400, 32 meg EDO RAM, and a Seagate 20.4 gig 3.5in HDD. It powered up and worked like a champ. It runs Windows 98Lite very smoothly.

On a side note, I'm disappointed with the video performance so far. Divx is jumpy normal size and unwatchable at full screen. Anyone know where best to invest money to improve it? I'm thinking that moving up to 64 meg RAM will help. I don't want to ditch the onboard video, but can if I need to. There is an expansion pci slot. I was going to use it for a DVD decoder card though.