Diy Dc-dc Pc Power Supply , Anyone?

[nismo1003]

I will be putting a Computer in to my car, a cheap seteup ATX board witha 2000xp AMD , I kind of need some help on a DIY 12DC-DC PC power SUpply for my ATX board and one hardisk , I did some seach on the net, they have some premade product, but it's a tight budget project, so ..... had anyone done it or got any good source how ot make one? thanx

[nismo1003]

other wise , I will have to use a 12V to 120AC convertor and then use a regular PC power supply which i don't want to do that .

[hannibal]

This is something I plan on doing in the future. I think the problem is that you need 120VAC to run your PCs power supply. Even if you came up with a way of running the 12VDC into your PC and straight to the motherboard, you would still need 3.3V and 5?V circuits for the drives and hard disk.Unfortunately, I think plugging the PC into an AC adapter is the simplest way.

Edit: I just realized youve talking about building a power supply designed for a 12VDC input. You were a step ahead of me. Ive never done anything like that, but if you could point me to those premade units you found, hopefully it'll give me some ideas.

[nismo1003]

they have it on Ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...=3670

[MECPInstaller]

doesn't all the parts on the computer run on 12 volts though? what if you just removed the main transformer and just ran the power directly to the computer. This is just an idea definatly not sure if it would work on not so i'd look more into it

[ayjay]

i have a buddy at work who has a computer in his trunk, an lcd screen stuck on his dash and a mouse that sits on his passenger side seat... pretty ghetto install but it works i'll ask him how he did it tomorrow, if he's working...

[ayjay]

ok guys... my buddy says that all you need to power your computer properly is a 400W power inverter... the inverter takes a regulated 12V and converts it to a 120V 400W signal... dunno if that makes sense but he said that's all you need... good luck!

[IvoryJ30t]

ive been looking into it also. the cheapest way of doing it is with the inverter.

you would have to build your own power supply to run off of the vehicles power.

you car pumps out 13.4-13.8 v when running.

your computer needs regulated +12v, -5v, +5v, +3.3v or +2.0v depending on chipset.

now that voltage needs to be rock solid. a standard 78xx series voltage regulator chip will not supply enough current for the disk drives and the chipset. and on top of that they need a 2v overhead of the output voltage [atleast 14v input for the 12v]

it makes the most sense to get a 400 watt inverter feeding 120VAC to a standard ATX power supply.

[hannibal]

The converter seems to be the easy way out. A 400W 12VDC to 120VAC is a BIG converter. I doubt you would need 400W to power a PC that has onboard auidio and video with 1 hard drive and a DVD drive.The ebay power supply seems like a great deal at $55. Its cheaper than buying a DC to AC converter and a normal PC power supply. I think the 120W is enough to power a basic PC (without AGP or PCI cards). But building a copy of that DC to DC power supply is way over my head.http://www.dakotaproject.com is the site of that guy on ebay. His setup looks pretty nice. My question is whether a ATX or MATX board will work with this power supply (if the pwr supply has enough power for these bigger boards)I also looked at http://www.mini-itx.com Theyve got a lot of DIY projects on there. And check out http://www.dashPC.com It looks like they used a mini ITX board too.