Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

[Dannyx]

Re: Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

You can simply power the PC with just a 12v supply (provided it can deliver enough current) and not bother with the green wire. It worked in my case. I assume if you have a normal ATX supply which requires turning on, you could short the green wire to GND permanently and use the 12v output to power the PC. This would also mean the fan on the PSU runs permanently !

Alternatively, you could probably connect the after-market ATX to the PC "the right way" and make use of the green wire too to switch it on/off, but I haven't tested this to confirm, because it doesn't make sense for this to work as long as there's no STBY voltage - there would be no way for the PC to control the PSU. I imagine what the green wire does is toggle the original PSU between a full power and a low power state to keep power consumption as small as possible, despite the output always being on and fixed at 12v...this makes more sense, since there's no other STBY wire.

[Cloggy]

Re: Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

Thanks to your tip I got it to work! It would be ideal if we could actually switch on/off the PSU with the motherboard.

I actually just tried what you said and I put the PS_ON from my ATX power supply on the motherboard where the green wire of the PCH018 connects to the motherboard but there is no luck. Basically the PC doesn't start when I press the PWR_BTN.

[Dannyx]

Re: Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

I actually just tried what you said and I put the PS_ON from my ATX power supply on the motherboard where the green wire of the PCH018 connects to the motherboard but there is no luck. Basically the PC doesn't start when I press the PWR_BTN.

Yes - makes sense, since there's no power going into the board at that point, so it can't "do" anything to that green wire...

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

One note on HP switching power supply you can not always get these power supply’s to work with out the the mother board hooked up sometimes it works but not constantly by this method so do not be surprised if you can not get it to work correctly this way for external power supply

[Cloggy]

Re: Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

Thanks for the additional tips! I'm eager to continue diagnostics to get full ATX compatability.

One of the things I'm considering is buying a DC-DC converter 5V to 12V to give the board the standby power it wants. However, it would have to do some switching as soon as the 12V line from the PSU comes on otherwise it shorts the +5V standby to 12V line through the HP motherboard.

Any suggestions?

[Dannyx]

Re: Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

TBH, I'd just use a single 12v supply that's always on, as this is probably the only way of doing an aftermarket conversion on this PC - Meanwell works "Well" for this task Sure, if it has a fan, then you'll probably need some way to switching the fan on/off. You can do what I did and run the fan off the power connectors for the HDDs/CD, if the supply is always on by nature and the only way to get it to shut off is to kill its mains power. The MB, as far as I can tell, doesn't make use of an on/off signal pin (green) like traditional PCs do, or at least it doesn't use it in the same way, as there is no standby voltage present - I THINK it just toggles the PSU between a low power state and a high power state by adjusting it switching frequency or whatnot to make it "green"...just a theory.

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Mini Lenovo PC Dead Power supply (ACbell PCH018)

One other note that if you decide to go that route you might get an error message that says that you have the wrong power supply when you first turn on the computer before you load windows