20-pin ATX plug for 24-pin mobo? PicoPSU questions.

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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resistante
Posts: 34
Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2018 6:28 am

20-pin ATX plug for 24-pin mobo? PicoPSU questions.

Post by resistante » Wed Feb 16, 2022 9:21 am

I'm considering buying a PicoPSU as it's recommended, but I'm wondering why almost all models they have seem ancient. They have 20-pin ATX connectors and often floppy drive connectors, no 4-pin CPU connectors, only one SATA. The descriptions on the mini-box website mention support for CPUs such as Pentium 4 and Core 2 Duo and they are overpriced. What is it with this company?!

I'd like to buy the PicoPSU-120 version as the power draw on the machine is small and it will likely lead to better efficiency too, but the motherboard has a 24-pin ATX connector. Should I buy a PSU with a 20-pin connector? Is this 100% safe, standard compliant or are there any gotchas? Wikipedia tells me the old connector was for PCs that heavily used 5V and 3.3V lines and 12V are weak on such PSUs, meanwhile I use modern hardware and 3.5" HDDs too. The max loads listed in the manual aren't below the range of what my hardware lists though.

The PSU would be used in either of these machines:
1: 10W CPU, 2 PCIe NICs
2: 10W CPU, 2 3.5" SATA HDDs
3: 35W CPU, 2 2.5" SATA/M.2 SSDs

On a side note, is it true that PicoPSU passes 12V unchanged from the brick to the mobo and therefore the DC-DC circuitry is barely used on modern systems and therefore the choice of DC-DC device not very important for efficiency or stability? Does PicoPSU include any typical protections such as overcurrent and so on on which my physical safety depends? In other words, can a DC-DC device burn due to lack of some protection or only due to burned brick/mobo? Asking since there's many brands that produce these devices, fe. Akyga or Chinese brands and I just don't see any point in buying this ancient overpriced thing. Especially that my energy is fully solar-driven and I can't care less about efficiency. I only check efficiency markings because efficiency=quality.

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