What are your thoughts on this mini 300w PSU

HDPLEX 300W Hi-Fi DC-ATX Power Supply (Wide 16V-24V DC Input)

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I don't know much about them but @snowBlind623 bought one and posted it in the "Post what new thing you acquired recently?" thread a while back and may have some insight on them.

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/post-what-new-thing-you-acquired-recently/88085/4163?source_topic_id=114520
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Im confused does it mount in a pc or is this for kit building other electronics?

They are usually used in small fanless cases for HTPCs/small client machines and for anything that needs a tiny fanless PSU.

Not meant for a PC. Meant to output power for desktop-grade hardware in a much smaller package (using an external PSU).

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I can't give any first hand opinions on it yet because the build STILL hasn't happened. I will say the build quality appears to be top notch.

If you're looking to squeeze everything you can out of it then you'll want a beefy power brick. The Dell/Alienware 330w (p/n Y90RR) bricks are popular, but be careful if buying refurbs off eBay because apparently not all of those are using high quality internals and as a result can't handle the higher wattages. Unfortunately, I can't find the post talking about that on SFF forum at the moment.

just found this, this guy seams to think you can run a full fleged pc off it

It's literally just a DC-DC converter, so you'd need an external power supply to run it.

I honestly don't see the point in it because of that reason. An SFX or TFX power supply will be easier to setup and aren't that big.

Or just a PicoPSU.

For a lightweight system those aren't a bad idea either. They max out at 160 watts or something though, so it's a little limiting in componentry. Good way to reuse old power bricks though.

I dunno from what I see of the systems out o them, get a nice A12 and then a mITX board that has USB3 and you can hook up a GPU if you ever need one. Otherwise you have a pretty gud system.

I use Pico PSU's, and while I doubt many computer enthusiasts would be looking to build low power PC's that these can power, I have found them to be very awesome!

It seems counterintuitive, but I tried out several regular ATX PSU's with a few low power PC's (undervolted Core2Duo, Haswell Celeron, Bay trail, Braswell) and ran numerous tests multiple times on each machine to measure power consumption with a Kill-A-Watt meter. I then dug up an old Pico PSU I had bought for another project, along with the power brick I bought for testing. I get lower power consumption using the Pico PSU + power brick vs standard ATX power supplies of varying wattages and qualities.

Again, for people using 200+ watts this might be quite different. I haven't used the exact PSU mentioned above, but I have 3 systems that use ones from mini-box. I believe the best efficiency range on many ATX PSU's is way too high for machines that max out below 100 watts. I kept running into wildly different numbers back when I was looking to buy a J1900 based board, with some people claiming ~20 watts max while others as high as ~45 watts.

On my Celeron and my old C2Duo both I was averaging around 10 watts less usage with the Pico PSU(125 watts) + brick vs ATX PSU's (200-700 watts). 10 watts may sound like nothing, but if you consider my idle power consumption on this PC went from ~40 watts to ~30 watts then that is a 25% reduction in power consumption! I never used the ATX supplies on the J1900 board, but it hits ~22 watts full tilt as hard as I could push it.

That was when it really hit me how many enthusiast places have a test bench and always use the same hardware to keep comparisons similar. That works great for measuring performance and benchmarks, but trying to throw an Atom based board into the mix and measure power consumption with a power supply dozens of times overpowered for the task isn't really appropriate. Some motherboards have a dummy load so ATX PSU's will work for them which is just throwing energy away, and creating heat in the process.

The reason this was important to me is because I am now running a Braswell board (and a Braswell laptop and other stuff) off of solar. The numbers from various websites at the time were unusable to me. After seeing the difference on my other machines, I took a chance buying the J1900, and it worked fine.

I gave that away and bought myself a Braswell N3150 to replace it, which now runs fine with no moving parts. It has no power brick and connects to my batteries with only a fuse in between. The only moving parts on my HTPC is a 1TB storage drive and CPU fan. The power brick does have a fan, but this machine (G1850 Celeron, undervolted) doesn't create enough of a load to make it kick in. Living in Florida, any excess heat from devices needs to be cooled with a greater amount of energy. I currently have no need for anything more powerful, and if I did I would look into something similar to that HDPlex PSU.

The reviews are extensive but it is currently unavailable.