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Pc power suply to power car amp?

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arcadeboy0000:

I have done this twice already with great results. I was not too satisfied with the existing tutorials so I just created mine. Its a nice no solder solution.

http://www.virtualdynamics.net/arcade/poweramp.htm

Feel free to post any other questions...

Redseven80:


--- Quote from: Crazy Cooter on May 22, 2005, 09:24:25 am ---An electric car seat draws an incredible amount of current.
--- End quote ---


paigeoliver:

Also, all that car stuff is 12 volt, I am pretty sure PC power supplies put out most of their juice on the 5 volt ines.

Car battery and automatic charger makes a lot more sense.

Really not sure why you need to use a car amp anyway, why not just use a home amp. Heck, I don't even know why you would need an amp at all? Even a cheapo set of PC speakers with sub has a lot more potential sound then I would ever want coming out of a game.

elvis:

PC power supplies are switching supplies that auto adjust load by need.  If you draw all your load from the 12V line, that's just fine and dandy.  Consider that all modern P4 motherboards use a secondary 12V power header for the extra 12V needed on these energy-sucking boards.  Likewise, IDE hard disks all run on 12V.

Car amps on PC power supplies work just fine.  I've been running my setup that way for over 12 months now without issues.

Common sense prevails here.  Every amplifier and power supply is different.  *READ* the max ampage draw on your amp, and max ampage load available from your power supply.   When it comes to electricity: don't guess.  Electricity humbles anyone who doesn't take proper precautions.

My amplifier (2 channel, 200W total "max" [ie: PMPO] ) draws a max of 5A, and my 200W AT PSU can handle a max load of 8A.  So I'm well within safety limits there.  I run my computer of a separate ATX power supply so as not to damage my PC (or overload the power supply and possibly start a fire).   That said, if you had a whopping big 500W quality PSU (enermax, or other reputable brand and not cheap Codegen or Sparkle crap) you could safely run a low-end system and a low-end amp like mine.  Still, with PSUs being relatively cheap, I'd err on the side of caution and always have two power supplies.

A car battery and trickle charger is (a) bloody heavy/huge and (b) means having a tub full of HCl in your cab.  That's not something I feel comfortable doing with kids around when the alternative of a computer PSU is plenty safe (from a tip-over/spill point of view).

http://benchmark.mameworld.net/cab1/computer.html


paigeoliver:

If you have a cabinet that can tip over easily then I would think THAT would be a bigger saftey hazard than whatever might come out of the battery (which should be both inside the cabinet, at the bottom, and SECURED).

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