The picoPSU
January 15, 2006

The picoPSU-120 from Mini-Box is the world's smallest snap-in 12V DC-DC ATX power supply unit. It measures just 31 x 45 x 20mm - about the size of two AA batteries - and plugs straight into the ATX connector on your motherboard. As a fully compliant 120W DC-DC ATX PSU it can power the current range of C3 motherboards, as well as the forthcoming C7 boards and AMD and Intel based Mini-ITX boards.

Strictly speaking, it's actually a DC-DC converter, and is used in conjunction with an external AC adapter. The AC Adapter converts 110V or 240V mains power to 12V power. This goes into the DC-DC converter via (the black and white) 12V cable and is converted into 12V, 5V and 3.3V lines for the motherboard. In addition to the yellow 20 pin ATX power connector built into the picoPSU, there is a small wiring harness with two standard 4 pin Molex HDD connectors and one FDD power connector, to power hard and optical drives.

The secret of the picoPSU are state of the art, patent pending SMT components and highly efficient power MOSFETS. The use of shieded SMT inductors and Special Polymer (SP) capacitors further reduce the overall size, keeping emmisions and heat dissipation low.

We've had these for a few days now and can already think of many uses for it. We can see this thing being great for Mini-ITX projects, and as a retro-fit replacement for cases with power supplies with cooling fans - making them completely silent. As a bonus, it's 96% efficient, so barely gets warm.

The picoPSU-120 at the Mini-ITX Online Store

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