Building a Radio Power Supply with a Computer Power Supply?

[SKYNET156]

For some reason i am unable to win anything at all ever on ebay,
I was looking for an astron power supply to power my Spectra UHF at 45 watts out, Being unable to win anything i went out to the flea market and i purchased for $5 a

Silencer 750 EPS12V Computer power supply

It has a power switch I/O,

I would like to use this as my home base supply for my spectra, Does anyone know what conversions need to be made and what it would take to get this working?

 

[n0nhp]

The biggest problem is that to get the rated power from your transceiver you need to feed it the power it is rated at. That would be 13.2V. At 12V (which is what the computer supply feeds) you will be down several watts. If that doesn't matter (probably around 4 to 5Watts at the antenna port) all you need to do is pull Power on (pin 16 (ATX - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)) to ground and use several of the +12 lines to feed your radio.
A problem I have heard reported is that some of the supplies are constructed is such a way that if some load is not placed on the other voltage supplies some supplies will fail. I have not had the problem yet but have not used any old supplies for other than light duty work.
Sounds like a fun project. Report back on how it works.

Bruce

 

[K9WG]

I would be very careful. I have had two computers destroyed by power supplies going bad. I would not want to rig one up for my $400 receiver. There is another thread on this subject.

http://forums.radioreference.com/do-yourself/205087-converting-pc-power-supply.html

 

[davidgcet]

your power supply will give the current rating for each voltage, unless it is made to supply a MINIMUM of 15A( a 45w UHF is going to draw close to 10A and you want wiggle room) on the 12v line you don't want to use it to power a transmit radio, but will be fine for an RX only setup. the yellow wires are +12V, but they are not each rated at xA. they are simply parallel wires off the 12v side. you will need to hook up several of them to dissipate the heat if you can TX on it, trying to use just 1 will likely melt the insulation.

good luck, you are going to need lots of it trying to use this setup.