Micro-ATX Power Supply

[CTX-SLPR]

Hello,

 

I have a spare Micro-ATX case kicking around.  The main reason I stopped using it was the lack of decent power supplies over 400W for it years ago (like 2010).  A quick jaunt through Newegg makes it seem like this is pretty much still the case even though I don't need tons of power anymore.  Thinking about building system out of spare parts at some point in the future and first thing to do is bring that case back into service with a power supply.  We're talking a NAS and/or CNC controller type system.  It's probably have a GTX-750Ti in it since the spare parts I have don't include a motherboard with onboard graphics and the spare card (GTX-260 OC Core 216) isn't needed and is way too power hungry for a 98% idle system.

 

Work going white box power supply on this thing or is there something decent in the micro-ATX form factor?

 

Thanks

[aisle9]

What case is it? Almost all mATX cases use a standard ATX PSU.

 

*Edit: Post 5450. I am now officially the worst GPU of all time.

[mariushm]

Modern processors and video cards use less power compared to previous generations.

 

For example, a quad core Ryzen 3 1200 will use only around 30 watts and has quite a bit of performance.  A Ryzen 5 1600x ( 6 cores , 12 threads) will use between 50 watts and 70 watts and up to around 100-120 watts when overclocked to the maximum possible (around 3.9 Ghz on all cores)

 

A GTX 750 TI will use less than 60 watts of power. A GTX 260 will be more power hungry and use up to 150 watts.

 

Newer video cards also use less power, for example RX 550 uses less than 50 watts, RX 560 under 80 watts and at nVidia you're looking at 75w for GTX 1050 / GTX 1050Ti and 120 watts for GTX 1060

 

The rest of the components in a pc (motherboard + a couple sticks of memory + a hard drive) don't use more than 50 watts.

 

So overall, you're looking at less than 200 watts power consumption for such a modern system.  A 400w or higher power supply would be perfectly fine.

 

As for power supply ... I'm not sure what power supply your case wants.  If it's a case that accepts mATX motherboards, then it should work with regular ATX power supplies. 

However, there are SFX power supplies and your case may use one of those .... if your case wants another kind of power supply, maybe it's easier to just use another case, you can buy cases for less than 30$ these days and they're decent even at that price.

 

In the SFX department, Silverstone made a lot of power supplies and Corsair started selling a bunch of them as well. FSP is also a smaller player in this niche.

 

Newegg has a sale on FSP 300w SFX psu, 39$ but kills you with 10$ shipping so it's not much of a sale if you buy just the psu : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104075&ignorebbr=1

There's others here ... for around 60$ you can get 450w power supplies that are good : https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007657 600014000 600014003 50001459 50001919 50002031 8000&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&order=PRICE&page=1

 

But again, you can get 400-450w bronze efficiency ATX power supplies at a sale on Newegg and spend 20-30$ on an case that accepts ATX power supply and you'd be better off.

For example Corsair VS 400w is 35$ , and for a pc that you won't play games and act like a nas or something, it's good enough : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139198&ignorebbr=1

 

or corsair vs 500 for 40$ or evga 500 b1 for 40$ (both on sale now) : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438012&ignorebbr=1

 

[LienusLateTips]

12 minutes ago, mariushm said:

But again, you can get 400-450w bronze efficiency ATX power supplies at a sale on Newegg and spend 20-30$ on an case that accepts ATX power supply and you'd be better off.

For example Corsair VS 400w is 35$ , and for a pc that you won't play games and act like a nas or something, it's good enough : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139198&ignorebbr=1

 

or corsair vs 500 for 40$ or evga 500 b1 for 40$ (both on sale now) : https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438012&ignorebbr=1

 

I BEG YOU, STOP

 

JUST GET THE CX 450 ON SALE FOR $20-40 

[mariushm]

1 hour ago, JDE said:

I BEG YOU, STOP

 

JUST GET THE CX 450 ON SALE FOR $20-40 

CX series at those low wattages like 450w is just a bit better than VS series... practically same shit, for a few dollars extra on sale. For a NAS box, won't matter.

CXM would be maybe a bit better but you won't get those on sale so much.

 

Certainly no reason to "shout" at me or beg me, it's not like I gave bad advice.

 

cx450 is 40$ + 4$ shipping on Newegg now, with no sale,  VS 400 is 35$ with 2$ shipping ... difference is 60w more on 12v and 2 more years on warranty on CX .. the internals are equally crap. For a NAS or low power thing, not worth paying 7$ more.  Maybe on sale it would be better value.

 

 

[LienusLateTips]

Just now, mariushm said:

CX series at those low wattages like 450w is just a bit better than VS series... practically same shit, for a few dollars extra on sale. For a NAS box, won't matter.

CXM would be maybe a bit better but you won't get those on sale so much.

 

Certainly no reason to "shout" at me or beg me, it's not like I gave bad advice.

 

cx450 is 40$ + 4$ shipping on Newegg now, with no sale,  VS 400 is 35$ with 2$ shipping ... difference is 60w more on 12v and 2 more years on warranty on CX .. the internals are equally crap. For a NAS or low power thing, not worth paying 7$ more.  Maybe on sale it would be better value.

 

 

What? CX 2017 is a lot better than VS. DC-DC and other goodies. Would take it over VS/S12II/M12II/B3 any day. You thinking of CX green?

[CTX-SLPR]

It's an ancient case and the point I think I see being made here is that for the cost of a Micro-ATX powersupply, I could just get a case that would take a regular ATX powersupply which I do have a spare of (admittedly not even 80+) to go with the i5-2500 CPU and P67 motherboard that is the spare setup I'll have as well.  Sometimes I feel like I just need to ask somebody so the answer will come to me on my own...

 

Thanks for the references to Micro-ATX supplies if I decide to go that direction.

[mariushm]

2 minutes ago, JDE said:

What? CX 2017 is a lot better than VS. DC-DC and other goodies. Would take it over VS/S12II/M12II/B3 any day. You thinking of CX green?

Yes, the CX 2017 does use DC-DC converters for 3.3v and 5v and a more modern topology (LLC resonant) compared to VS series but all these improvements are in my opinion not worth the 7$ extra (at the current Newegg prices, without any sales or mail in rebates) 

 

A low power computer will not use a lot of power on 3.3v or 5v ... so whether you have 80% efficiency on 3.3v and 5v or 95% with dc-dc converters, it won't make much difference when the system uses 15-20 watts on those voltages. Do you want to spend 7$ more because you'll save maybe 1kWh (less than 0.5$ worth) in a year due to the dc-dc converters in the power supply?

 

Also, a low power computer used for a NAS or something that doesn't use dedicated graphics for games will have a relatively constant power consumption on 5v .. for example each mechanical drive will use a constant 0.5 to 1A of current on 5v (the electronics on the circuit board), the hard drives rarely go to sleep on a nas.

 

So again, he doesn't need dc-dc converters to react fast to huge variations in power consumption on 3.3v and 5v and he won't use so much power on 12v that those extra 50-60w would actually matter.

 

He says he wants a computer for NAS or something that would not be used for gaming or something really intensive... a VS would be good enough for that.

 

And honestly, I'd take S12ii over any of these VS and CX series from Corsair, but maybe that's just me maybe i'm biased towards Seasonic. At least the S12ii has quality ball bearing fanb and japanese capacitors (well, Japanese brand capacitors, who knows where they're made these days) with long life.

 

The S12ii is old design, it is group regulated (no dc-dc converters) but that won't make a difference for a nas with steady consumption on 5v (hard drives) and if i need something that will site in a nas i'd prefer reliable fan and quality internal components, not penny pinching by using Capxon and Samxon and other cheap capacitors in the power supply.

 

[Stefan Payne]

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

Yes, the CX 2017 does use DC-DC converters for 3.3v and 5v and a more modern topology (LLC resonant) compared to VS series but all these improvements are in my opinion not worth the 7$ extra (at the current Newegg prices, without any sales or mail in rebates) 

Yes, the possibility that the voltages will never ever under no circumstances inside specified operation go out of spec absolutely is NOT worth 7$ :rolleyes:

Totally...

 

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

A low power computer will not use a lot of power on 3.3v or 5v ... so whether you have 80% efficiency on 3.3v and 5v or 95% with dc-dc converters, it won't make much difference when the system uses 15-20 watts on those voltages. Do you want to spend 7$ more because you'll save maybe 1kWh (less than 0.5$ worth) in a year due to the dc-dc converters in the power supply?

It's not about that.

It's about crossload conditions - wich are the norm. If you are very lucky you can get something like 2-3A on each minor rail.

So we have Crossload conditions here wich can get the +12V to drop - wich isn't healthy for the HDD Motor and so on.

So with a better quality PSU with DC-DC and other stuff, components might last longer, don't you think?

 

 

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

Also, a low power computer used for a NAS or something that doesn't use dedicated graphics for games will have a relatively constant power consumption on 5v ..

What does the graphics card have to do with +5V?! Nothing!
Everything use almost exclusively the 12V rail, next to nothing on every other rail.

If we talk about a graphics card or 3 doesn't change the load on the +5V rail noticable as they don't use it....

Even the PCIe doesn't have a +5V rail only +12V and sadly +3,3V.

 

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

 

for example each mechanical drive will use a constant 0.5 to 1A of current on 5v (the electronics on the circuit board), the hard drives rarely go to sleep on a nas.

No, it's less than that and barely measurable with normal things...

I've tried it with my Corsair HX750i and no HDD or 3 din't influence the +5V rail in any really masurable way. Most of the current is drawn from the +12V rail. And the electronics doesn't consume much at all - if the 0,5-1A were true, they would get seriously hot - wich they don't...

 

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

So again, he doesn't need dc-dc converters to react fast to huge variations in power consumption on 3.3v and 5v and he won't use so much power on 12v that those extra 50-60w would actually matter.

You are missing the point...

 

Just take what Jon posted in his Forums about Haswell compability - no group regulated unit will/can pass Intel testing for that. And crossload conditions are the norm not the exeption because the load on minor rails is THAT low.

And it seems that with modern components it also can happen that next to nothing is happening on the +12V rail because CPU is power gated...

 

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

And honestly, I'd take S12ii over any of these VS and CX series from Corsair, but maybe that's just me maybe i'm biased towards Seasonic. At least the S12ii has quality ball bearing fanb and japanese capacitors (well, Japanese brand capacitors, who knows where they're made these days) with long life.

No, the S12II have Hong Hua Rifle/FDB Fans, no 2BB no more.

And no serious protection for anything - no OCP, no UVP on +12V thanks to the shitty HY-510N.

And the fan starts reving up at around 100-200W Load thus getting really loud.

 

Yeah, that's really something you want these days. Especially if you can get well protected units that are independently regulated for the same price or less than the S12II things...

Here a review:

http://en.gecid.com/power/seasonic_s12ii-520_bronze_ss-520gb_2015/

 

And those "Wapanese" caps - made in CHINA - don't make this unit any better.

In the olden Days, there was a Review of a unit that failed miserably on Jonnyguru.com wich had japanese caps. 

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

The S12ii is old design, it is group regulated (no dc-dc converters) but that won't make a difference for a nas with steady consumption on 5v (hard drives)

That's only what you believe.

But you forget that the S12II doesn't have OCP on minor rails, Corsair CX and others do. So if something fails on those rails, the PSU will not switch off unless it's way too late and the voltage drops so far that UVP can do something.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

and if i need something that will site in a nas i'd prefer reliable fan and quality internal components, not penny pinching by using Capxon and Samxon and other cheap capacitors in the power supply.

 

Again, we are talking about believing and faith - nothing based in hard evidence.

Especially when taking a look at the tiny heatsinks of the Seasonic unit and the positioning of some capacitors that touch the (hot) secondary heatsink.

 

It just doesn't make any sense no more because almost every PSU of a named brand is better than this old thing. Cooler Master B-Series or Master Watt Lite for example - both should be more silent and have better protection than the S12II...

 

And there are other units for the same Price - Enermax Revobron (wich seems to be based on the Plattform Cooler Master used for the G-Series), be quiet Pure Power 400W+, Corsair CXx50W and so many more units...