550w PSU - Powering a Car Amp

[THRobinson]

No idea where to post this one...

I am building an arcade cabinet with a few old parts and a few new parts. I have a 550w PSU and will run a Core i5-3570, 8GB ram, 250GB HDD, GTX650TiBoost.

Cabinet of course needs speakers and I was thinking of grabbing an amp off eBay and using a 19v laptop power supply like many people do, then thought, how about a car amp? 12v DC... computer PSU has 12v DC...

I won't be running 500w worth of speakers or a bunch of speakers... just 2x5.25" 2-way speakers, 4ohm and about 100w max, 35w rms. Arcade cabinet, speakers are 2 feet from your head, they don't need to be max'd out.

Would that work? Run the PC off the PSU, and take one of the extra wires (rails?) and run to the car amp?

 

[jaslion]

No idea where to post this one...

I am building an arcade cabinet with a few old parts and a few new parts. I have a 550w PSU and will run a Core i5-3570, 8GB ram, 250GB HDD, GTX650TiBoost.

Cabinet of course needs speakers and I was thinking of grabbing an amp off eBay and using a 19v laptop power supply like many people do, then thought, how about a car amp? 12v DC... computer PSU has 12v DC...

I won't be running 500w worth of speakers or a bunch of speakers... just 2x5.25" 2-way speakers, 4ohm and about 100w max, 35w rms. Arcade cabinet, speakers are 2 feet from your head, they don't need to be max'd out.

Would that work? Run the PC off the PSU, and take one of the extra wires (rails?) and run to the car amp?

What psu are we talking about? I would only try this on a quality one.

 

[faalin]

It will totally work. Have a 800w EVGA PSU running two Focal Amps at work. 1 is a solid 1 running 2 JL Audio CP108LG-W3v3 subs and a Solid 2 running a set of Focal 165A33 6.5" 3-way also powering an older Pioneer headunit.


You can try and run everything off a single PSU but the computer might not like it when the amp pulls quick shots of power. If anything you could pick up a cheap generic PSU for the amp by its self.

 

[faalin]

Here are a few PSU to car audio builds I have don over the years.


this one sits under my two monitors at home, solid 2 amp with Focal 165A33 6.5" 3-way speakers


this one ran a 5 way amp with alpine/ cerwin vega 6.5 2 way speakers and 2 Alpine R 8" subs in the bottom. Used it as my portable work unit, weighed about 50Lbs and had handles on each side to make it easier to move around.

Ive built more but cant find any pictures

 

[THRobinson]

Hmm... I think I'll just use the laptop 19v power supply as recommended. I don't think my PSU is big/good enough to run the PC and amp both.

It's an old BFG power supply... lifetime warranty! until the company went belly up. Shame too... I had a GPU from them that started to have issues, sent in for warranty and they sent me one worth twice as much back saying they didn't have the old model anymore, here's an upgrade. How often does that happen? My EVGA PSU died after a month, sent it in for warranty and got a refurb one back with scuff marks all over the side. Awesome.