Replacement PSUs for 12V only OEM units

[Syran]

I've noticed that HP, Lenovo, and DELL have all switched (at least on some of their lower/mid level units) to power supplies that only provide a 12 volt rail, and use a new connector, then feed devices off of the motherboard. Most of the time, I only get a 1 year warranty on pc's because the main failures are typically PSU or HDD, the first can be switched out faster then dealing with the OEMs support, and the latter we have to keep HDD's due to the information that may be contained on it; our information security policy does not allow RMAing HDD.

That said, I haven't played with one yet outside of the case to see if one size fits all, but is this a standard pin configuration, and is anyone making replacement supplies outside of going through the OEMs for one? Just wanting to look at what I might need to do in the future.

 

[Syran]

Wow, 2 weeks, and no one has anything?

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's what sucks about clones/prebuilt PCs they do a lot of stuff proprietary.

Don't think they'd let this fly in a business environment but I'd bright it up anyway, could look into getting a matching (or higher) wattage regular PSU, that is single rail, and then splicing one of the 12v to the old connector. Could be done in a clean and safe manner with the right techniques and tools. I'd do a military style splice, solder it, then add shrink wrap.

 

[Syran]

That's what sucks about clones/prebuilt PCs they do a lot of stuff proprietary.

Don't think they'd let this fly in a business environment but I'd bright it up anyway, could look into getting a matching (or higher) wattage regular PSU, that is single rail, and then splicing one of the 12v to the old connector. Could be done in a clean and safe manner with the right techniques and tools. I'd do a military style splice, solder it, then add shrink wrap.

I doubt that they would let me do that with PSUs to get it working alas. I'd build our own, but they won't let me go that route either, so I'm stuck with what I'm allowed to do, which puts me in this new conundrum. For a while, they had gotten away from the proprietary PSUs of the past (mainly dell), so I'm not happy to see that happening again, I'm *hoping* that it's at least a standard deal, since both the Lenovo & Dell computers i've seen work in the same way, so that at some point, we might see retail power supplies built to replace them.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Open the PSU and replace the swollen caps, with long life ones or good ESR caps. if the HDD goes you can use a clone software, like it was said proprietary.