wrote:how few amps can you gat away with on a 386/486 system usually without drives?
It really depends on the CPU and motherboard.
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
wrote:how few amps can you gat away with on a 386/486 system usually without drives?
Dunno but they mostly draw like 30-40 watts (the minimum was a 386SX with 2 RAM sticks, CL VGA, a budget SB clone and a CF card as HDD) from the wall through an old school AT PSU which doesn't shine at efficiency - maybe 70% or even less...? If it was 100% efficient they'd need like 6-8 Amps. But actually they draw much less. At 70% it's more like ~5 Amps.
A high power PCI VGA (like a Voodoo 3) can somewhat change the picture and need like 3 more Amps. A monster can change even more but I don't have any data about those. My PCI Radeon and TNT2 and GF2MX aren't worse but I have no monsters.
Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts
thanks, the exact configuration will probably depend on what I can still find, but as a guideline it should be at least 5A? ... I was just wondering if you could run an AT system off a modern picoPSU since I still have a few of those lying around, but I think the strongest one only does 7A on 5V
for anything with a potent cpu/gpu I will stick to proper PSUs, just wondering about the 386 and 486 build with an appropriate gpu.
The problem with a modern picoPSU is that it will be 12V heavy.
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
