Anyone tried a Pico power supply for their computer

[Mikeb]

I have a low power Atom D525 based computer running windows 7 64bit which I use to stream 44.1khz to 192khz music files to my Touch and to playback files using Foobar and a Stello U3 sdif usb adapter. With a standard atx 350w power supply the fan from this supply proved to be a little distracting in the quieter music moments. After a bit of research I decided to try a Pico 120watt power supply. This plugs directly into the atx 24pin motherboard connector with the power supplied by an external 19volt FSP power brick. This setup is fanless and is therefore totally quiet. The blackness of the background when playing music with the new power supply is certainly very noticable with more inner detail present. Due to the voltage range that the Pico can use it is actually feasible to use a 12 volt battery with sufficient reserve to power the computer. I can recommend anyone that has a low power computer with a noisey power supply to try a Pico module it certainly makes my music playback sound better.

 

[gjm]

I have heard good and bad about them, from the "why aren't all small low-power PCs supplied with these?" through to "don't touch them!"

I'm looking at using a Pi for a music server and the Raspyfi folk all use good quality power supplies. They've done their testing using Audio Diffmaker and have seen improvements by ensuring the power supply to the Pi is good. The output sound wasn't the issue, it was the occasional and admittedly fairly minor issues that dirty mains supply was causing.

Keep us posted, even if only to say 'still working...'

 

[rdale]

I have heard good and bad about them, from the "why aren't all small low-power PCs supplied with these?" through to "don't touch them!"I'm looking at using a Pi for a music server and the Raspyfi folk all use good quality power supplies. They've done their testing using Audio Diffmaker and have seen improvements by ensuring the power supply to the Pi is good. The output sound wasn't the issue, it was the occasional and admittedly fairly minor issues that dirty mains supply was causing.

Keep us posted, even if only to say 'still working...'

I use a Raspberry Pi as an MPD music server and it is an OK option if it actually works with your DAC. I use a Pi with my B&W MM-1 desktop system which have an adaptive USB input. In my main system I'm using a BeagleBone Black which costs about the same as the Pi, but the USB actually works with asynchronous DACs such as my HRT Music Streamer II+, or USB/SPDI/F converters like my V-Link. There are other low power ARM options such a the Cubox. My BeagleBone and Raspberry Pi use about 2 watts of power from linear PSUs I got from Item Audio. It seems to me that if your audio computer is consuming 120 watts you must be doing something wrong.

 

[gjm]

I've started a Pi thread. Apologies to Mike for almost immediately dragging his thread off-topic!

 

[rdale]

I've started a Pi thread. Apologies to Mike for almost immediately dragging his thread off-topic!

Apologies from me too, I'll go off and reply to Graham's new thread.

 

[Marvt74]

I've used muliple pico power supplies from the 80w up to the bigass 160w version. I honestly can't fault them at all and think they're fantastic. At the moment i have 2 computers using them

Home Server - 4x 2tb Hard Drives (2x WD Red and 2x Samsung F1), AMD E450 chip and 4gb of ram. Plus the off time i have a couple of external HD's connected. Whole thing tends to draw about 50w at normal running conditions and i've got a 150w Pico in it (mainly for the additional connectors). This think has been running 24/7 for about the last 18 months and i've never had an issue with it.

Front room Streamer - Intel I3 2120 (i think) cpu, Some Asus motherboard, a 240gb SSD drive and 4gb ram. This thing is totally silent to the point its a little bit creapy, and since i didn't connect the LED's its tricky to work out when its turned on! Again this is powered with a 150w Pico branded by Streacom and i've had no issues so far (about 6 months)

 

[tonerei]

Pico is fine any other better option will incur expense and be harder to implement.try a maplin linear supply instead of the amps. You need to adjust the volts down a little bit but you maybe pleasantly surprised by the improvement

 

[Chumpy]

Safe suitable stiff PSU the most important thing - almost.

 

[Crom]

You got the 19v which is the best for music! 12v brick is used for some which doesn't have the overhead for some motherboards. I've used a few of these and they've been great. Unless you want to build/buy a linear psu for the p24 and p4 motherboard connectors then in my book it's the best solution. If you want to improve things then you can solder Panasonic FM range electrolytic capacitors between all the voltage rails and ground. This gave me some more space between instruments and was a fun experiment.

 

[dan1502]

I have recently built two units with Streacom cases and Nano power supplies; one is a Vortexbox server which also acts as a player for a second system and the other is a HTPC connected to my Benchmark DAC1 HDR etc. It's early days but they've been fine so far. The HTPC is totally silent. The Vortexbox motherboard (Biostart E350 based) has a small fan and I added a quiet case fan just to keep temps very low as absolute silence isn't necessary where it is.

Regarding mains 'dirt', I use Schaffner filter based units. For details search on Ian Mac filter on cyrusunofficial. They work out about £10 each and are easy to build.

 

[Chumpy]

Yes, buy-use safely - enjoy what works for your stuff-YOU.