Pico-box Z3-atx psu

August 2, 2017

Since my desktop seems to have died, I had to find a new pico psu, or just another small psu that would fit inside my small mini itx case. I like these small psu's because my setups are on the small side. It's been a while since I put my old one together and I didn't even think about how many pins this one was, I just went ahead and purchased one to test out. As it turns out my old, very old board was a 20 pin, and so was my old pico psu. This is a 24 pin, and my new board requires a 24 pin psu. So it actually worked out.  This one has a single wire for the power unlike my old one. It was a two piece that you clicked together which also worked just fine. This is supposed to be 200 watts, but of course my system doesn't need that much, but I like having more than less since you will have problems if you don't.

 The power plug looks similar to my old one.

 The two main power wires are very thick which is nice.

 This one has two sata and one of the older ones. Also a small floppy type. This worked well for my setup as I don't need to add any more adapters.

 This is the power brick that I also ordered, but as it turned out, it has a 90 degree plug that is also a bit longer than my old one which is the same exact specs, but with a straight plug. Needles to say, this did not work or power this pico psu. It did work on my other machine which is good because I still needed one for that.
You will need  a power adapter in the voltage range for this one to work correctly.  Read about the problem I had in the gigabyte ga-z270 motherboard that I used this in.

 Here's a picture of my old yellow pico psu and the new one. It is a tad bigger.

 Here's the money shot. I was looking for an adapter to go from 24 pin down to 20 so I could test my old board, but I couldn't find one with the right connectors.

In short, it's nice to know that I can still use my old power brick with this one even though it's only a 150 watt power supply brick since this is a 200 watt power supply. The specs say it takes a 16-24v power brick, but of course I don't have one to test on it and none was suggested on the page. Although testing some random components sucks, I had an idea that it would work as I used my old brick on my other machine with a different 200 watt pico psu and it worked fine. Aside from the plug and the fan issue throttling down which I think it's a board issue, it's working fine so far.

I read in a forum somewhere that they may have a Z4 version with a heat sink somewhere, but I haven't seen it. Either way if you can just get some cooling to them you should, they do create a bit of heat even though they are small. I had to add a fan on my other one as it's  a bit tight and it did get warmer than usual. The board on the other one is also at a 90 degree angle which makes it harder to work with compared to this one. I haven't seen the other one around now. Either way, this one should be fine as long as it works. I can't say much about how long it will last as I'm just starting to use it, but I'm sure I'll update this here if something does come up.

I almost forgot to mention that it does have one very bright blue LED though, which can be annoying for many. Either way, these have been around for a very long time now and the only other issue I had was trying to take it back out. It's just the board on the top so it's hard to get a good hold on it without grabbing the board.