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I bought a mini ATX DC to DC power supply on eBay to use with a motherboard. Unfortunately I did not notice it came without any kind of adaptor. So what I have is basically two wires, red and black, that is supposed to connect to a "12 volt power supply". I hardly think my local gadget store sells any kind of adapter that accepts two bare wires.

Is there an adaptor for sale that is made to work with this kind of power supply?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ This is a Q&A site, not show and tell. I don't see a question here. Everything is a statement and nothing ends with a question mark. \$\endgroup\$
    – Olin Lathrop
    Commented Oct 3, 2011 at 23:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ It does sell soldering irons though, doesn't it? \$\endgroup\$
    – leftaroundabout
    Commented Oct 3, 2011 at 23:13
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    \$\begingroup\$ It's hard to make my question sound question-ish when someone blatantly edits away the line that was meant to show that I am indeed interested in knowing how to get this device working. I re-added a much more direct approach, please leave it be. Also, what would I solder in on to? The part where I specified my rather limited experience was also edited away, sorry. \$\endgroup\$
    – baggage_lump
    Commented Oct 3, 2011 at 23:18

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That LOOKS like quite a nice power supply, and would be very useful in some circumstances.

  • IF you were wanting to operate your PC from 12 Volts DC then this is a suitable supply for you.

  • But IF you want to operate it from AC mains you should sell / give this to somebody else and obtain a more normal power supply - because adding a mains to 12V conversion stage will introduce extra problems that you are unlikely to want to deal with.

Operation:

You should be able to connect a 12V car battery or 12V DC adaptor of sufficient power output capability to operate it.
Red connects to +12 VDC.
Black connects to ground = -12VDC.

They say that it supplies up to 200 Watts of power.
To supply this much power you would need say 250 Watts input.
At 12 Volts that's about 20 Amps.
That is a large amount of current for typical 12V supplies.
A LARGE 12V truck battery charger may supply that.
Many wont.
Even at half power you would need about 10 amps - also more than most supplies are capable of.

Connector

Your motherboard needs to support the connector shown - they say it will work with any Pentium 4 motherboard but that it is specifically made for use wih mini-ITX motherboards

enter image description here

enter image description here

The power supply was apparently sourced from here.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Cars can frequently supply 150W or more (through the cigarette lighter, more directly from the battery), and most embedded systems won't be anywhere near pushing the 200W limit, so this power supply would be likely to just work in any car-mount application. \$\endgroup\$
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented Oct 4, 2011 at 0:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ben Voigt - yes. Agree. Note my - "You should be able to connect a 12V car battery or 12V DC adaptor of sufficient power output capability to operate it." That applies if you charge it in a car or out of one. Some car alternators are good for 50A+. \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon ♦
    Commented Oct 4, 2011 at 0:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ Ahhh, by "truck battery charger" you weren't referring to the alternator. \$\endgroup\$
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented Oct 4, 2011 at 2:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Ben Voigt - I think we are on the same wavelength :-). I gained the impression he had bought it for a non automotive use so I was trying to explain the sort of size of 12V power supply that he would need. ie massive by normal standards. Even at 1/2 power it needs about 10A and most mains powered car chargers won't supply that so I said "truck battery charger". I wholly agree with you that "in car" the situation is easier - although I'd avoid trying to draw 20A from a cigarette lighter socket if at all possible. \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon ♦
    Commented Oct 4, 2011 at 3:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks for the excellent answer. Sorry about the confusion; In the original question I had specified that I wanted to operate it from a standard wall socket, but I forgot to put this piece of information back after someone edited it. When I bought it, I assumed I could just use a regular 12v battery eliminator. The two bare wires for connecting is above my desired difficulty level. I may very well take you up on the advice of buying a new model; I know very well these things normally come with wall socket adapters. I'll just have to examine what I buy slightly better. \$\endgroup\$
    – baggage_lump
    Commented Oct 4, 2011 at 11:09
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What peripherals are you using with the pc? I just built several ITX pc's that do not have a dvd or cd, and uses a SSD Hard drive. This kept the current down low and we were able to use 60W 12 volt power supply bricks that run on 120vac. I plan to incorporate my design of a 12 vdc UPS into the system. This would be more efficient than the standard UPS that needs to convert from 120vac. Just because you have a 200W power supply it does not mean the pc will use that much power, it will only take what it needs.

However if space and power are not an issue, then a standard 250W ATX power supply will do nicely, and probably cheaper.

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