Using a Slightly More Powerful A/C Adapter?

I have a M860ETU; which comes with a 120W PSU (for the moment I'm using a 90W one, while Eurocom ships back my 120W one). Currently I have a 45W QX9300 and a 75W GTX 280M installed. Since 45W+75W=120W, it doesn't appear as though I'll have enough power.

Therefore, I'm considering purchasing a 130W or 135W PSU from Ebay.

What are the risks involved with using a 130W or 135W PSU instead?

If my laptop tries to consume more than 120W, will it be able use the extra power provided by a 130W or 135W PSU?

 

Your laptop's own power regulation probably has a fair bit of tolerance, but as long as the new PSU supplies the same voltage as the old PSU, it should work fine. The laptop will draw only as much current as it needs, until it hits the 130W/135W max.

 

Yup, As long as the voltage is the same the laptop will pull only as much current as needed.

 

The 45w rated for your QX9300 does not directly mean power consumption, thats the TDP (thermal design power). TDP is the maximum amount of heat which a thermal solution must be able to dissipate from the processor so that the processor will operate under normal operating conditions.

Same applies for the GPU.

The 120w power adapter that comes with it will suffice.

 

Wattage alone would not do you any good if the amperage is much less than the original.

cheers ...

 

I'm giggling at the responses to the OP so far. Thanks for brightening up my Friday........ Oh.My.Ghod.

 

I've run into power problems (battery to plugged in flickering), while benchmarking the 280M on my 90W PSU, and also while overclocking the QX9300 and running Prime95. I haven't attemped to do something that stresses both at once, if 90W isn't enough for running them at full loads individually, 120W might not be enough for them both. However, I still plan to wait until I receive my 120W adapter, to see if there are any problems.

 

:sigh: It's not just your power brick. It's the capabilities of the dc/dc power components INSIDE of the laptop. Secondary to that is the max discharge rate of the battery.

Just another reason why it's 'fun' to put faster/hotter/hungrier CPUs into a notebook that wasn't explicitly designed for them.

 

My purpose of this thread is to find out if a slightly more powerful PSU will be necessary, if I run into power problems with the correct 120W PSU. You're saying that, if the 280M and the QX9300 require too much power, it's not solely a matter of the laptop requiring more power, but also a matter of the motherboard's power components being able to supply the necessary power?

 

The ONLY thing that matters are the laptops internal components.

The externals can be changed or updated. The internals cannot.

 

Probably true only to certain point - if you use an adapter with less than the OEM specs, you can experience issues with battery charging and device outputs like USB/PCMCIA ports ...

Maybe that the internals cannot be changed, but they definitively are being influenced.

cheers ...

 

going kind of a long way to make a trivial point, isn't it?

We are all aware of the problems desktop machines get into with under-rated power supplies and to much ram, hot video cards, 'self powered' USB devices, and multiple hard drives.

To get a desktop out of that kind of problem, all you need is $50-75 to get a 500-700 watt power supply. Problem solved.

On a laptop, you can't do that. What most users do not realize is that the power brick is not the power supply, it's the charger for the battery. The battery is the primary power source for a laptop run through an internal power supply to create multiple DC voltages.

 

Care to expand?

...

 

How would you explain notebooks running on ac adapter alone?

cheers ...

 

im glad that some1 has made this thread cos i was JUST thinking of making one about the psu. i too have 130w one and have seen a 180w. its alot . but sometimes i think my laptop needs more power to stop it from throttling at best of times. i dont no if it has any signifcance to it but i am aware that the cpu and gpu has watts consumption why we have certain adapters. otherwise you can get full potential from the notebook if its not getting enough power.

I appreciate some1 explaining something, but then when u read on and think is that the answer....then some1 disagrees so i need more input to this. thanks

 

I missed a 'most laptops' flag in there.

But I think you know that.

The thread has me wondering about laptops that chronicaly overheat. What if it's a power problem; not enough amps/volts available to the internal dc/dc supplies making them work hotter and overtime. Substandard batteries and power bricks ruining an other reasonably designed laptop.

I wandered through the house this evening looking at the wall warts powering my two wireless nodes. Both of them are rated at 7.5v/1a and are more than warm to the touch. The charger brick for my Samsung Blackjack II phone is rated higher than that.

After a bit of lookup, the chips inside of the nodes take more power than that, almost 1.8a according to the Broadcom datasheets. I have an old ratshack 7.5v/2.5a adapter that I'm going to toss on there tomorrow and run for a few days. I'm going to bet that the larger adapter will be loads cooler and that the heat coming out of the top of the node will be lessened as well.

One test like this doesn't tell anyone anything though. If enough people got interested in this and spent the $$ and time to uprate the adapters/bricks on their home equipment we might be able to establish some kind of baseline.