Nazo
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2002
- Messages
- 3,672
I hooked up a cigarette lighter plug on my PC primarily just so I had something nice and simple to plug my portable DVD player into (this comes in handy because it has a video in and can act as a very poor quality monitor in an emergency or something, but, mainly I'm just lazy and wanted somewhere handy to plug it in.) Well, I have no idea how much current it draws when hooked up to 12V, but, since the manual says it absolutely will not charge the battery when hooked up to a cigarette lighter, I imagine it's nowhere near to the 13.5 watts it runs at on the 9V adaptor that came with it for charging. I feel pretty confident that this particular device uses a very minimal amount of power really, but, it gave me a thought that now I have a cigarette lighter plug hanging out of my computer and theoretically I might be able to use it with other things as well. I don't know how much power is left over after all other devices in my PC are considered, but, I do suppose it's more than the highest universal adaptor I've seen for a car so far (800mA max @ 9V max.) From what little I've seen about car cigarette lighter plugs, they are considered unreliable and it sounds like they aren't expected to be able to provide a lot of power, so I'm thinking that maybe a lot of things designed for them really won't use much power. It looks like it's causing no noticable effect since I can open up my temperature/etc monitoring program and watch the fan speeds (latest bios, or maybe the mb itself, no longer has a 12V sensor) and, as before I plugged in the player, the fans stay almost rock solid on the same speed with no more variance than before (I think the most I've ever seen them drift was around 50 RPM. This PSU is amazing IMO.)
Also, just to be sure, there's not any chance that they could do damage to the system, right? I'm pretty sure there isn't, but, better to ask and make sure than to find out the hard way. The thing to bear in mind is that I'm talking about simply plugging in a standard car adaptor style plug, which goes to a molex connection.
Also, just to be sure, there's not any chance that they could do damage to the system, right? I'm pretty sure there isn't, but, better to ask and make sure than to find out the hard way. The thing to bear in mind is that I'm talking about simply plugging in a standard car adaptor style plug, which goes to a molex connection.