This post wants to highlight the versatility of relying on a PC power supply unit (PSU), to provide to your home cockpit a versatile and stable power supply.
Introduction
Home cockpit are often quite power demanding. The circuitry most of the time is (to say the least) at hobbyist level, hence relying on what your PC can provide is somewhat limiting/risky. There are some dedicated solutions to the job, but in my experience, relying on an external, dedicated PC power supply unit is a great solution, as it provides quite a lot of different tensions, stable power supply, and relatively easy integration.
ATX connector
The workhorse of the PSU is surely the ATX connector. To be clear, you may take advantage of whatever connector of your external PC PSU, but the most versatile is without doubts the ATX. In 99.9% of PSU sold, ATX connector goes directly to the PC’s motherboard, and provides a lot of dedicated ports (useful as we will see later).
The power rating (wattage etc) of the PSU really depends on the model, so it is difficoult to estimate a priori how much power can handle each and every pin of the ATX. Nevertheless it is possible to provide a general indication, bear in mind that the reason why there are a lot of 5VDC connectors or 12VDC connectors is due to the fact that each connector is expected to be loaded by a different component, hence you may rely on multiple 5VDC to handle higher power loads.
Startup the PSU
The PSU always features a protection circuit that must be closed to power the power supply. The motherboard of your PC usually takes care of dealing with the PSU, but since here we are going to do everything on our own, we must provide the bit to the board. This is achieved by shortcutting the PS_ON# pin with ground, this will power the PSU. In my home pit I’ve a dedicated switch which powers the PSU, to still provide the ON/OFF feature.
Wire the connectors
To wire the connector you need a dupont clamp and the right type of connector: those will do the job.
Obviously it will be useful having a female ATX 24 pin female plastic connector as well.
Multipliers
There are on the market some really neat multipliers connectors, such as the one that I show below. They can be used to short cut wires in a range between 24 to 12 AWG.
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