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PC Power supply

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zipdogso

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Someone is saying that if they connect three 12v wires from a single PC PSU in series they can make 36v.

I say it's not possible but they are adamant till I provide some proof funny thing is I cannot find anything.

Any takers ?

EDIT - Note I am refering to taking the PSU apart at all....we are refering just to the trailing wires of the PSU. He is not talking about converting it to a stand alone supply either - he wants to use in his PC and connect three 12v lines in series somehow and get 36v.
 
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The three 12V outputs are wired in parallel inside the supply. There are three sets of wires just for the convenience of plugging in up to three disk drives...

There is no way to get 36V!
 
Hooking the supplies up in the manner they're prescribing will dead short the power supply, it won't even turn on =\ PC power supplies are short circuit protected so they'll spend hours trying to figure out why the supply is going into protection mode. Apparently you're smarter than your friends =P

As a side note, most PC supplies have a -12 volt rail for things like RS232 circuitry so if you run the +12 and -12 you can get 24 volts, but typical PC supplies will only provide a few hundred ma's on the -12 rail so that's all you'll get as you're limited by the supply line with the lowest current rating, even if the +12 line is rated for 10+ amps.
 
Hooking the supplies up in the manner they're prescribing will dead short the power supply, it won't even turn on =\ PC power supplies are short circuit protected so they'll spend hours trying to figure out why the supply is going into protection mode. Apparently you're smarter than your friends =P

As a side note, most PC supplies have a -12 volt rail for things like RS232 circuitry so if you run the +12 and -12 you can get 24 volts, but typical PC supplies will only provide a few hundred ma's on the -12 rail so that's all you'll get as you're limited by the supply line with the lowest current rating, even if the +12 line is rated for 10+ amps.

I have never attempted to do that so I wasn't sure what would actually happen ....I sort of assumed the in-built protection circuit might fire up.
 
It will, I've done it on accident and on purpose just to test, most of the supplies I've ever done it on all start making a ticking noise when they're in shutdown, not sure why.
 
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