Hi All,

Been scratching my head over this for a few weeks now, and finally had the courage to sign up & ask the experts.

I am wanting to run a small PC in an arcade machine.

The PC is going to be run from a picoPSU, which converts all the necessary voltages for the PC from a single 12V input. The input current is 5A.

Now, the PSU I have in the arcade cabinet has the following outputs:
3.3V@12A, 5V@10A, 12V@2A

My initial thought was to use a 5V to 12V DC to DC converter, such as the
AM2D-0512. The issue is that the output current is only 167mA.

Can I just use a transistor (or Darlington Pair) to up the current, or am I going about this totally the wrong way.

Many Thanks

John

 

Is there some reason why the PC (understood as meaning Personal Computer) does not have a functional power supply? Most PC supplies output dual polarity voltages, such as +/- 5VDC, +/-12 VDC.

Perhaps I have misunderstood what -

run a small PC in an arcade machine

- means.

 

Hi,

I have a Sega Arcade machine, which has a SUN PSU giving the outputs mentioned above.

I have a case from an old Arcade Game motherboard (Sega Naomi) which I am putting a mini-itx motherboard into, to run some older arcade games.

To make things easier for me, and to avoid having to have multiple PSUs in the cabinet, I want to use the PSU in the cabinet to run the PC.

If the 12V supply had a high enough current, then I'd have no issues, but I need to get a 5A 12V output from any of the PSU outputs, so I can run the PicoPSU.

So basically I need to get 12V 5A DC from any of the following:
3.3V@12A, 5V@10A, 12V@2A

Cheers

John

P.S.
You are correct, PC - Personal Computer

 

You say you need 12V, 5A. Thats 60W of power. Proplem is

3.3V@12 is ~ 40W
5V@10A ~ 50W
12V@2A ~ 24W

Technicly if you could settle for ~ 12V, 4A you could use a dc:dc converter on the 5V@10A output and thus end up with aprox 45W if its pretty efficient.

 

You'd need a 5v to 12v boost converter that's at least 96% efficient at 4A output. That's going to be difficult to find.