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Thursday, July 26, 2018

DIY Mini-ITX Supply (12V Input)

Projects /  PSU  Original post date:07/26/2014


Power supply design is a rarely touched subject these days. 

The design is shared to show the general idea and not as a copy/paste cloning example as your requirements are going to be very different than mine. Also the parts are very old and there are better/cheaper/higher specs parts by now. 

This was one of my first Eagle CAD projects. It was an very old design for a low specs 500MHz VIA Mini-ITX motherboard with the parts I had on hand. i.e. $0 budget for me. 

Note: The input is 12V regulated as it is fed from a 12V brick. Do not connect this to a "12V" car battery directly as its voltage is rarely at 12V +/- 5%. 

There was some funny power sequencing issues with that MB which locks up the Ethernet port. I connected a 5V fan to the 3.3V rail (see bright brown 4 pin connector in picture) and that cures it. I would probably design it differently these days. 

If you have to buy new parts for this, you are better off buying a supply e.g. pico itx supply.  There are Chinese ones too.


The 12V input is switched by a P-MOSFET to the +12V rail.  At idle, R4 pulls the gate of Q1 high which keeps Q1 off.  Q2 is a NPN transistor with its base biased at 3V with R1 & R2 voltage divider.  This is arranged in a Cascode configuration and serves as a voltage translation between the logic level control ATX on/off control from the motherboard and the 12V level.  Its emitter is connected to a logic level active low ATX on/off control signal.  When the signal is pulled to logic '0', Q2 conducts and pulling gate of Q1 low via R5.  When the signal is above ~2.5V or so, Q2 is off.

The voltage divider R4/R5 sets the MOSFET gate voltage at about "-10V" (relative to its source) turning the P-MOSFET on.  C4 is used as a feedback and together with the Thévenin equivalence resistance of the divider controls the rise time of the +12V rail.  This controls the inrush current if you have a lot of capacitance bulk decoupling caps at the output.

See here for inrush control article: 


A high current switch cap inverter (Microchip part) is used to provide a -12V rail.  Hardly any new boards uses it.

U2 is a TI (PowerTrans) POL (Point of Load) non-isolated DC/DC  module that convert the 12V input to 5V.  It is always on to power the 5V Standby rail in the ATX supply.  A N-MOSFET Q4 is used to switch the output to the main +5V rail.  It is controlled by the switched +12V output rail.  R3/C5 controls the inrush current. 

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