PSU to power car amp in home?

[IH8PunkRok]

here is an idea i had to be cheap

psu's have two outputs that are +12v

and it is possible to get a decent amount of amperage from one fairly cheap

so... is there anything horribly wrong with hooking the 12v sources up to a car amp?

just thinking and couldnt think of a better place to ask than here

[Big Lo]

here is an idea i had to be cheap

psu's have two outputs that are +12v

and it is possible to get a decent amount of amperage from one fairly cheap

so... is there anything horribly wrong with hooking the 12v sources up to a car amp?

just thinking and couldnt think of a better place to ask than here

You can hook it up but can't turn it up too much depending on PSU and amplifier

Edited May 11, 2010 by Big Lo

[97SSBlazer]

Any good PSU will have the Amp rating of the Rail(s) on the side. A good PSU can put out ~30 Amps per rail so you might be able to CAREFULLY power a smaller amp. I would recommend a 12V car battery with a little charger on it, that how we do our test bench in my shop

[dugee81]

you can connect it that way, i did it for awhile to just play with speakers in my room. made a cardboard vented box for a $7 8" i bought lol. youll want to just connect all of the power wires and grounds to one amp though, so it can get all the power it needs. it depends on what PSU you buy, you could buy a 500 watt PSU that would produce around 50 amps of current. the voltage usually sticks around 11.50~ or so when playing music.

[jeyrapboy]

I have a buddy that did it with psu's but there wasnt enough power to power a 200 watt amp with 3 linked together. So he wound up using like 97SSBlazer said and hooked up a 12v batt to a charger and did it that route.

[Guest]

if you use ALL the 12v leads in a PSU i dont see why you cant power a 300-400w amplifier. hell you can daisy chain PSU's by hooking them up to the amplifier (not twisting + and - together and shit, just all the yellow wires to the + on amp and same amount of black wires that are next to yellow wires to - on amp)

[BulletInjection]

People do it all the time, I don't know how good it can be for an amp though

[Big Lo]

Just got to look at the amperage a PSU can provide on the +12 volt rails, add if it has multiple rails add up the values, and then look at the fuse rating on you amplifier and this will tell you if your PSU is good enough for the amp.

Take a look at this: http://www.lehigh.edu/~evb209/projects/jlsubs/jlsubs.html

I found that a long-ass time ago and by looking at it and like two more he has on his website I was able to hook something up in my house.

What I also do is put a pair of resistors in series through the 4 volt rail (red wire) to "stabilize" the 12 volt rail, I learned it through another website but I don't know if I got a link or not. Can't remember the ohm value on the resistors but I can check tomorrow if you want.