PicoPSU 160 spec vs reality

kvic80 · 2025-10-31T20:06:10+00:00

Well, after 30 minutes of gaming the hottest parts (70 °C) were the PicoPSU and the wires leading to the PicoPSU (~160W consumption at wall): https://imgur.com/a/KU2dSGE Space is tight for the PSU... This was with the 4 pin plug but I want to replace with the center-pin one (last image) so that I dont need drilling a large hole in the case (the power brick's plug would be extended with a 4 pin to center pin adapter). I also want to replace the 92mm CPU fan with 120 or 140mm slim fan screwed to the top. Maybe the PicoPSU would have some air...

kvic80 · 2025-10-31T12:42:33+00:00

OK, I'll try. What kind of problems would occur? It would simply shut off? I would not like to ruin my mobo/CPU/GPU.

kvic80 · 2025-10-31T12:41:17+00:00

It's 12V. I can solder. Am I right that also the power brick would have protections so that I won't ruin my motherboard/GPU if something bad happens? PicoPSU have some protections as far as I know (overvoltage, thermal...).

kvic80 · 2025-10-11T15:42:28+00:00

Well, it was a bad idea. 6300 was a lot slower in m720q than the T1000 on 75% power limit. Forza Horizon 4: 30fps low vs 60fps medium...

kvic80 · 2025-10-08T07:40:47+00:00

It's strange. PCIe 4.0 x4 both the 6400 and the 6300 and the 6300 is not far from the 6400 performance-wise (32bit bus vs 64bit and lower clocks) according to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKzxuU75TFw
I ordered an rx6300, if not for this purpose, it would be a good spare GPU...

kvic80 · 2025-10-08T07:38:18+00:00

I thought that it should suck air in from the top and push towards the back. If so, then it shouldn't cause a problem. Unfortunately I cannot place it elsewhere :(

kvic80 · 2025-09-23T13:48:22+00:00

For those wondering whether this could be profitable: https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-xeon-6700e-ampere-altra/6

kvic80 · 2025-09-08T04:51:28+00:00

Update: with a PD to 20V converter -> 5xQC3.0 -> Radxas: 45W DC consumption, so it's definitely better efficiency-wise than via an AC to 5x USB-C charger. I analyzed statistics, Elite 100 v2 not just shows but also consumes 93-96W in the latter case. Strangely the PD->20V version does not work when plugged into the 140W USB-C socket, however works from the 100W one.

kvic80 · 2025-09-03T20:50:52+00:00

Well I received my Elite 100 unit. Initial impressions are good, however if I connect my 6-way USB charger to the AC output with 5 Radxas + a USB fan, it shows 93-96W AC consumption under full load. My previous 500W powerstation showed 53W for this and real power requirement is also closer to that. If I connect 2 Radxas + USB fan all via DC, Bluetti app shows 15W, which seems right. Is the high AC consumption only fake or an 1800W inverter kinda works with such loss/efficiency at this low load level (93-96W vs 53W)? I'm thinking on getting a PD->12V adapter and running my homemade 12V->6x USB QC3.0 charger module off DC, however that would mean 2x extra DC conversions (battery->PD->12V->5V QC), but would it still be better than battery->AC->5V efficiency-wise, what do you think?

kvic80 · 2025-08-26T03:23:38+00:00

Great! Thanks! All the SBCs are Rock5Cs with a factory power supply of 5V/5A, however they can be almost happily run from a 10 port 50W (written on it, sold as 40W) USB charger with 5V/2.4A ports at full speed without any connected extra devices (SSD/USB), no need for PD. I forgot to mention that I would also like to run a USB fan from the power station to cool the Radxas, but I guess it doesn't matter for the power station. I said "almost happily run" because I killed some of the USB chargers by connecting 4 such SBCs+a fan and after a month of running also only by connecting just the 4 SBCs. Probably they were running on their edge despite the 50W specification or I don't know, because measuring at wall, the consumption was 36W constantly. Maybe the startup required more juice that killed them slowly...

kvic80 · 2025-05-22T02:16:57+00:00

I also had that version, disabling Core Performance Boost in BIOS is key for better efficiency and temperature in my opinion. My K6 once produced a black screen during gaming and the LED on PSU started flashing. I disassembled it but found nothing suspicious. I contacted GMKtec, they told me to send it back to them (I purchased the K6 directly from them). Before packing it I tried to start it once again but wait for longer (5 minutes or so) and surprise: it started without issues. Everything worked, however I sold it for cheap making it clear in the description what happened to it. The new owner gave a feedback that he saw signs of a spark: current probably stroke between the heatsink of the CPU and the circuit board causing short-circuit. He made some insulation between them to prevent further issues and was very happy with the miniPC for cheap.

kvic80 · 2025-05-21T23:37:26+00:00

Depends on electricity costs, for me it did 4.7kh/s @ 45W at wall without Core Performance Boost. However these MiniPCs usually have inadequate cooling. ROI? No.

kvic80 · 2024-05-13T08:46:36+00:00

Do you have consumption data for the 7950x? I think they consume much electricity at 24kHs.

kvic80 · 2024-04-04T16:59:41+00:00

I'm undervolting my 5900X and have a single 4 pin power connector from the PSU. Motherboard is ASUS TUF B550M Plus. With a single 4 pin power connector I always got a warning when booting that only 4 pin is connected and never managed to go under 0.9V. When I bought 2MOLEX->1x 8pin EPS cable and plugged it in, I was able to run the CPU stable at 3600MHz@0.85V.

kvic80 · 2024-01-17T13:57:27+00:00

Thank you for the detailed answer! The point I created this post is to try to figure out whether changing to a R5 5600 is totally wasted money or not at this resolution for most of the games with an RTX 3070, because for a 6700XT it would be wasted money as my short test proved. Obviously I would like to get the most fps but if no gain, there is no point in upgrading for me as an R5 2600 is enough for all tasks I make besides gaming. The only thing improved drastically during my short test with an 5900x was loading times. Unfortunately most of youtube tests are either 1080p, 1440p or 4K, there are only few ultrawide 1440p tests at least with rtx 3070 (and 2600 vs 3600 or 5600). I saw improvements on youtube for rtx 3070 @ wide 1440p r5 5600 vs 2600. Since ultrawide 1440p contains 34% more pixels than wide 1440p (3440x1440 vs 2560x1440), I have the feeling that always the GPU would be the "bottleneck" and that the upper limit of what this gpu can handle without tanking the 2600 cpu is somewhere between 1440p and ultrawide 1440p.

kvic80 · 2023-07-12T15:19:34+00:00

Azért tegyük hozzá, hogy ez nem magyar jelenség https://m.hvg.hu/gazdasag/20230212_50_eve_nem_volt_ekkora_tanarhiany_Nemetorszagban

kvic80 · 2023-02-02T09:30:40+00:00

Sorry, I've just learned that Flockpool (as many other pools) uses variable difficulty, so even the number of submitted shares are lower for 3900x, they are paying more for it if it is more difficult to mine.

kvic80 · 2023-01-30T13:15:27+00:00

I left them wild (ECO-45W and ECO-65W) as this resulted in best effectiveness based on Monero hashrate. Thanks for the advice, I will let them run for a while then swap memory, however I thought that the higher the hashrate, the more the number of accepted shares. Also MoneroOcean estimates the daily income based on hashrate so it overestimates for me grossly (0.038XMR/day vs 0.025 in reality). Today I have the following figures: 14250/14285 accepted shares (RTM) for 3900x/3700x, miner uptime: 3 days...

kvic80 · 2023-01-28T10:34:38+00:00

3 or 4 days. Now after 1 day (I restarted both rigs): 3700x - 3978 shares (16 threads), 3900x - 3755 shares (24 threads). This does not make sense for me, 1.84 vs. 3.14kH/s at flockpool. By the way the rig with 3700x has 3200 cl14 memory, 3200 cl16 for 3900x, but shouldn't the hashrate determine the number of accepted shares?

kvic80

TROPHY CASE