Downsides to picoPSUs

[tuomaspt]

Have you ran into any unexpected problems with a picoPSU unit? For example because of the relatively non-powerful 3.3V and 5.0V lines.

Using a picoPSU-150-XT instead of any regular PSU I tested makes a DVB card (Technotrend DVB-C Budget C1500) I have unable to tune to channels on one PC, which draws far less power than the capacity of the unit and the power brick. The card, however, works fine with the picoPSU in another computer. I've basically no idea what causes the issue. The voltages itself seem fine as reported by the motherboard monitoring chip.

EDIT: The exact same problem with a brand new completely different DVB card.
EDIT2: Solved by removal of ISA Roland SCC-1 card from the computer (removing everything else didn't help).

[doveman]

I had exactly the same problem, with a Pico150 apparently unable to cope with my Nova-T 500 DVB-T tuner card.

I solved this by getting a EF28 DC-DC board, which had more juice on the 3.3v/5v lines, but after about a year it's developed a problem and has destroyed 3 hard drives!

So I've gone back to using a normal PSU for now, until I get time to test the EF28.

[kieran45]

I have also seen this behaviour with a pico 150. It will not allow my tuner to receive one of the channel groups. All tune fine with normal PSU.