PC Power Supply Mod.

[BrianG]

Originally Posted by Arct1k

Brian - I never loaded the 5v rail and do get some drop... would a couple of these work in parrallel screwed or thermal epoxied to heatsink?

10 ohm 30w

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/Dk...MP930-10.0F-ND

http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/US2010/P1994.pdf

Yeah, those can work, but they seem to be a bit pricey. I would just get a couple/few 10 ohm 10w power resistors from radioshack and parallel them onto a heatsink. Even those "transistor-style" resistors need to be on a heatsink, so there's really no benefit to using them IMO.

The idea is to load them down only to the point where it is needed. Too little and the 12v line isn't rock-solid enough. Too much and it doesn't help and you are just wasting electricity (and money) as heat. Unfortunately, this "sweet spot" takes a little experimentation. Not a big deal for me since I have tons of resistor combinations and other components to test with. But, from experience, anything between 1-2A is enough.

BTW: The only power supplies I've seen that don't benefit from loading the 5v or 3.3v lines are the kind where there is an extra sense wire for each of the rails. It is easy to tell because there will be the normal larger wires going to the mobo connector, but paralleled into the same connection will be a smaller gauge wire which measures the voltage at that point to compensate for any voltage drop along the wire. In this style of PS, regulation in each rail is independent, so loading the other rails is unnecessary and useless (except as a space heater, lol).