Laptop power supply dilemma! Help needed

For the laptop in my sig I orginally used the 150W PSU that came with it rated at 19.5V - 7.7A. About 6 months ago I upgraded to a 180W targus universal adaptor that I still use rated at 19V - 9.5A. The reason I did this was because the 150W adaptor couldn't give enough juice to power my Q9650 processor.

I have now bought a 230W PSU rated at 19.5V - 11.8A. To get it to work I will have to replace the power tip with one that fits. I went to a computer workshop I use regularly and they told me that they wouldn't do it because it would fry my laptop and pose a fire risk. They were surprised that the 180W works fine.

Are they correct in that I cannot and should not upgrade to 230W or are they incorrect? I am completely unsure as my research online pretty much contradicts what they said in that so long as the voltage is the same or very similar it doesn't matter if the amperage is higher. In fact having lower is worse.

Would love some discussion on this topic as I can imagine a few others would be interested too in what the truth is

 

Hmm... a higher current should usually be harmless since the laptop will not draw more than it needs. That said, there are two circumstances I can think of in which you may fry the laptop.

1) If components that are more power-hungry than the motherboard was designed for are installed, the laptop will draw the extra current and something on the motherboard may very well fry.

2) Many laptop power adapters come with overcurrent protection. With the mismatched adapter, if something goes wrong, the protection will not kick in until a much higher value of the current and this may also fry the motherboard.

 

The quick answer to your question, is as long as your voltage is within a volt (which it is) of your original power supply you will be able to run the higher watt supply. The one caveat is that you can run into trouble if you draw enough current to damage some of the internal parts. That is why the repair shop was hesitant to change your plug out. They don’t want to be liable for damage if it was to occur.

I see that you are overclocking your processor and it is already rated at 95W. You probably are stressing the Mosfets that control the switching between battery and line power to the limit of what they were designed for.

Why did you go from 180W to 230W anyway, are you still having power issues at 180W?

 

Not exactly however the other day the system did just switch off while the battery was still charging. Also the 180W brick does get pretty hot. I thought a 230W wouldn't hurt if I can reduce the stress on the brick.

I do undervolt to keep power consumption as low as possible stock volts at 1.15V and I can take that right down to 1.0375V at 3ghz and just 1.1V at 3.3ghz OC.