World’s Smallest ATX PSU Is Barely Bigger than an iPhone

[Tsing]

HDPLEX has launched its passive GaN AIO ATX Power Supply, a relatively tiny PSU that the company claims is the world's smallest ATX PSU using gallium nitride technology.

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[Brian_B]

Hope it's got some big cojones to power all these new CPUs and GPUs

 

[Zarathustra]

Hope it's got some big cojones to power all these new CPUs and GPUs

Im thinking it is unlikely they will. These are likely intended for compact low-power builds.

My favorite compact PSU's are still the Pico PSU's from Mini Box. They area absolutely TINY in the case sitting entirely in the motherboard power header, but on the flipside they do still require an external power brick.



The base 60w versions have been plenty to power my Haswell era 65w TDP Intel systems with CPU only, a minimal couple of fans (one slow case fan, one compact CPU fan) and a single sata SSD, even under Prime95/MPrime loads. On a couple I even installed 630GT and 720GT Nvidia GPU's without problems. They do require a molex to 4-pin motherboard power adapter to work in most modern boards though.

Higher end models go all the way up to 192w, which is plenty to power even a modest desktop system these days, as long as you don't plan on installing a thirsty discrete GPU or overclocking. Heck, you could even build an entry level APU gaming rig and fit it in under the power envelope of the largest few Pci PSU's. The bigger models also come with the 4-pin connector.




All you need to do is panel mount the power connector in a hole in the case, and plug a power brick in on the outside.

And they absolutely sip power at the wall. In Linux I had one of them idling at 6w.

This is because PSU's are generally higher efficiency closer to their max load. The lower load, the lower efficiency. So most of the idle power of PC's is lost to PSU efficiency. Less so with one of these, because you aren't as far from peak of the efficiency curve.

I use these for all of my low power compact builds.

 

[Brian_B]

Im thinking it is unlikely they will. These are likely intended for compact low-power builds.

I was joking, but the Picos are interesting

 

[Zarathustra]

I was joking, but the Picos are interesting

Someone recently pointed out to me on the hardforums that they also have another model that takes a 19v input.

These can be a great cheap way to get a mini PSU and use old Dell Latitude chargers you have kicking around and no longer have the laptop for...

They are called "wide input" models and exist in 80 and 120W models.