1000w 12v power supplies on the cheap for those who run car audio in home

[skylineTT 10+ year member]

Dells N1000P power supplies have 5 12v rails that run on 18A continuous.. when combines, they will produce 1080w at 100% efficiency. Dell says theyll run 950 continuously so you can assume 88% efficiency. These power supplies can run any amp upto 1000watts at *full or nearly full* tilt continuously and will power up 3K amps as well (although you will only see 1000 watts from them).. I have been using this method for years now and it is cool if youre in a college dorm or just mess around. I would NOT recommend this to most of you who enjoy high dollar Home Audio equipment of course, but anybody wanting to play around in the house or get a nice lilttle home audio power source will enjoy this. I personally run an ed Nine.1 on one of these and its a 1200 watt amp.

note that some amps do not like being run under 14v and some are perfectly fine. not my fault if you eff your ish up!

they are going on sale for about 50-75 bucks now which is WAAAYYY cheaper than other ATX power supplies so i thought i would drop you guys a tip and see if some of you might need help wiring stuff up

if they are out of stock, run a google search or amazon search for the Dell N1000P-00 and you can find more with similar pricing.

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[xxxbasshead 10+ year member]

good info been wanting to do a little in house build

 

[Cruzer 10+ year member]

ive researched this in the past and i would love to do it.

why would running an amp below 14v ruin it? happens all the time in car audio people say their voltage drops to 13s

 

[skylineTT 10+ year member]

right, but PSU's run at 12v constant. there is no changing that. some amps wont even power up if the current (amperage) isnt strong enough. at 12v, youll need a good current to turn on big amps. I just tried powering up an Audiopipe 3k with a 300 watt power supply and it wouldnt even turn it on. the power supply would kill every time i tried. this 1000 watt supply has more current at 12v so it might sustain the amp draw that big amps use during the power-on stage. some amps will stay in protect at 12v because their circuitry will not allow them to run at 12v, even if it has 80 amps of current backing it up. its not that it will really RUIN it, but it wont turn on. a lot of amps in the 300-2000 watt range will power up with a power supply that can throw 600 watts out. my main s

PSU was a 600 watt and i ran a 1700 watt amp off of it (mind you i was only getting about 600 watts from the amp) but it did keep it pumping. my weaker 300 watt power supply wouldnt even run the amp.

 

[Cruzer 10+ year member]

ic, can u use 2 psu per amp or anything to increase the voltage?

 

[Wingman0121 10+ year member]

Some power supplies have an internal dial that adjusts voltage, maybe this one has it also?

 

[skylineTT 10+ year member]

i dont believe this one has a regulator. i would not recommend paralleling power supplies yet until i test a few. i wanted to try adding 2 to double the amperage and keep the voltage at 12v. idk if they will barf it up though.

 

[brian84corvette 10+ year member]

this sounds like the ticket if you have rca line outs on the back side of your tv

then you can just plug em in to your car audio amp for the imput signal right ?

or for I pod - use rca to I pod connector cord ? and run the remote wire to a toggle on / off that feeds off the powersuply 12v ?

 

[skylineTT 10+ year member]

youre correct about the line outs on your TV to your amp, or Ipod cord. you can buy the belkin cord at walmart for 4 bucks that has the RCA to headphone jack adaptation so that you can listen to anything from the amp and sub. you can run RCAs to a diff amp for bookshelf speakers too. thats what i did. as far as the remote turn on, you just put a short wire from the remote wire location on the amp, to the 12v input on the amp and it will turn the amp on when the power supply turns on. I have a 1000w power supply for a subwoofer amp and sub combo, then a 2ch amp driving 6 speakers that are wired to where 3 are on one channel and 3 are on the other. each channel is seeing a 2ohm load too.