NP9150 Power Adapter

I hear you guys and I'm going to try and set something up to get a sense of the demand. The odds are a bit high against since I got work, research and SO maintenance (mainly the last part), but I like working with my hands and this would be an interesting "manly" project. This is a great community and I would like to contribute to it in some positive way.

I would like to doublecheck with a moderator to get clarification as I was going over the forum rules and seems to be languages against the offering of services. I like this community and really don't want to run afoul of any customs here. If there is any suggestions of any particular moderator to check with, feel free to let me know. Any other advices, pointers, relevant comments, etc are welcome, even via PM.

Please be patient while I work through the various details not just for the forum but also for the necessary logistics of delivering. My apologies in advance to the OP for sort of hijacking this thread and morphing it beyond its intended function. I might owe you a discount if this becomes real.

 

You could also write up a tutorial for some of us to do it ourselves. Or is this is a trade secret? Some of us do know how to use a soldering iron and heat gun.

Trust me, this is something P150EM P170EM owners, maybe P150HM and P170HM have been looking for well over a year now. We knew about using the Dell powerpack, but I think many like me were not comfortable with taking apart a powerpack, seemed dangerous.

Thanks.

 

Right on man, totally understandable.
I just ordered one of those Dell bricks myself; looking into seeing how I could modify it. (If successful, I would still be very much interested in your mod)

As for this thread, I'm very glad you came along and hijacked it, hah! It definitely gives us Clevo owners some much deserved hope that we could enjoy our machine's unmatched performance at the same time as being able to pack up our newly travel-worthy powerhouse.

So whatever the consequences of your schedule/forum rules, thank you for emerging from lurker-status and sharing this!

 

I suggest posting a tutorial on how to do it. I don't understand on forums how some people hold their mods to themselves like treasure. If the only way to get this mod is to pay you, fine, but it seems you have are having issues with time availability, so please, just take the 10 minutes it takes to write a tutorial and let us know how to to do it. Be a nice fellow and share your knowledge with us.

 

I did actually, with pictures and disclaimers

 

Somehow I find this a little offensive... It's us (me, and a few other people) who offered to pay for the adapter if @ scruffidog could save us the hassle of finding the right components and soldering stuff -- and also for his time taken into doing this.

A good tutorial definitely takes more than 10 minutes to write up. At least you need to take the photos and find out part number / model for each component. Usually you'll also have to cover the testing and troubleshooting when things do not work as expected

 

I write tutorials all the time, it doesn't take long.

And you NEVER provide any warranty or guarantee or support if it works. You provide it as is. Period. You'd be stupid to do anything else otherwise.

I know you did, but yours involved taking apart the PSU.

 

I just took this dell adapter over to a buddy who is very experienced with soldering and he crafted this amazing mod that works beautifully.. Although my only regret is not getting a black tip.


Going to do a little more cleaning up, can still see some hot glue and such on the outside.
But it's very sturdy, and sill flexible.

Adapter tip, heatshrink tube and hot glue in the middle.
Amazing!

 

Can you ask your friend what tip to get and I'll order some heatshrink to do it also once I order the Dell pack.

Thanks clanderson.

 

You want a heavy duty 5.5*2.5mm barrel type tip.

Replacing the cable looks far more professional and is more durable.....

 

Type N connector from Radio Shack, 5.5mm*2.5mm like Meaker said

Yea I agree, it could look more professional with just another cord, but I didn't want to open up the power brick, this was pretty simple. Also don't need to order another charger

 

5.5mm*2.5mm - this is for Clevo side right?
What socket spec is needed to match the original plug on this Dell PSU?

 

Because people like having an edge over others when it comes to benchmarking I guess, the thing is, if you go after those people it's funny how eventually people will stop sharing anything new and interesting on that forum and it withers and dies, so if you like this community I would not go down that road, I have seen it happen.

 

Wow, that's how it's going to be? Holding it over others, haha, I know how to do this, you don't! My secret, my treasure, you can't have it?

I'll go down Clandestine's route. A trip to RadioShack, sounds good to me.

 

I don't unless I think something is just going to get things killed but I don't see what those people owe you.

 

I wonder if Dell 180W adapter can handle our machine? On the original Sager adapter it says 19V / 9.47A, but Dell adapters has slightly higher voltage output at 19.5V so the 180W one has 9.23A current output -- a little bit lower than that of the Sager. Would there be any problem with that?

180W adapter


240W adapter


Another question is: Are the size of 180W and 240W adapters the same?

 

ive been running off the dell 240w for several months now and the difference in voltage is the same compared with the stock clevo 180w psu. no problems so far
also, i highly doubt that the 180/240w psus are the same size,even though icant provide any specific data on that.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

If you are bothering with the MOD, go for the 240w so you have a supply that will last into the future and lets you play with no power worries.

 

Bought a Dell 240 for $35 with free shipping. Should be here on Sat, and I'll make a run to RadioShack and do some soldering.

Is this the right part? http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?partnumber=120-086

 

Good luck, let us know how you get on, make sure you look at the PCB and cable to understand the wiring and see if you need to add anything in due to the control circuitry.

 

Is this the right part? http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102488

 

It seems to have the right dimensions.

 

I'm running on the 240 watt. Took about 15 minutes to attach the type N 2.5mm 5.5mm plug. This 240 watt PSU is amazingly thinner and lighter and the stock. Very happy I decided to give this a go. And it's way cheaper than buying the stock PSU if your PSU dies too.
- I won 't show a pic yet since it looks AWFUL... I'll clean it up a bit later. Or maybe get an L plug dunno.
- Good news is for $40, you can get yourself a 240 watt PSU, even if you have no experience with soldering. I recommend using flux though, it won't stick without it.
- Shipping was free and arrived in 2 days, pretty sweet.

 

Where did you get the PSU?

 

this is the connector I used for the non-angled connector

 

Ebay. Lots of them on Ebay.

It's easy. You just strip the plastic off the plug.
- And take note of how it's soldered on.
- The round piece with small wires, that's just for RF, you don't need it, can get rid of it.
- The green wire in the middles is for the center pin. You don't need this either, this just helps Dell laptops identify it's the right PSU for it.
- The white is the positive, and the black is the negative.
- Solder the white to the small inner part, and black on the outer part. That's it.

Some hints if you haven't soldered before
- Use regular rosen solder. It melts fast and easy to use.
- Use flux. You dip the wire and brush some flux onto the pins you are going to solder onto.
- Remember to put everything onto the cable before you starting soldering in reverse order. Say we are looking at a cover, strainer and plug. You'd slide the cover on first, then strainer and then solder onto plug.
- Use heatshrink over what you solder, for each wire, this will make sure the wires won't cross or any stray wires touching each other.

 

It's probably a bad project for your first ever soldering.....

 

Its so worth it though. The 240 PSU is so much thinner and lighter than the stock PSU.

I recommend using the right angled adapter. The straight plug from Radioshack is actually too short. Connection not good, the L adapter is same length as stock.

Use the one Clanderson shows in his pic. You can get them in black too.

 

just saw this, are you still planning onmaking a batch scruffidog?

 

So I finally got the adapter -- with some help from my electronics-savvy friend



It works fine but does get a little bit warm when running on dGPU. However, it's perfect for my daily trip since I won't be playing games at the office anyway

Thanks @ scruffidog for sharing your idea.

 

This is what it looks like when you mod the cable:

 

Anyone care to share an opinion on PSU upgrades? Is this the best option?

 

If you are tweaking your system to the point your warranty is void anyway putting a new cable in a brick if you do it properly is the safest and nicest looking option.

 

I'm reaching the time limit of my warranty, so yes - I am tweaking away with a good deal of care. I realize that can still end up in a bad place, but - I've found with a good deal of diligence in the past, things usually turn out alright.

Guess I'm going to be going this route then, thanks! 240 watts should be plenty.

 

Yeah it will be and you get the bonus of it being smaller.

 

Though for the extra little bit of change i'm thinking about going with the 330 just for the extra headroom/no worries.

 

Unless you go for a 3940XM and plan to clock that too the 3630QM and 7970M have no hope of stretching the 240W brick.

 

I haven't yet eliminated the XM processor from my "possibility" list so that's why I'm thinking of going that route just as a way of making sure I will definitely not have any issues. Not to mention when I build desktops I've always been a fan of buying a PSU with more then enugh wattage enough though I usually stick to higher end PSU's like the Seasonic Gold Series.

Though I am curious why this PSU is giving my throttling issues when I just talked to someone with the same laptop, cpu, gpu, etc and they do not have throttling issues with the 180 watt stock PSU. Must be just on the cusp for both of us, and for me its just a few watts to much.

 

When you go beyond the rating of a device it comes down to individual part differences which can be random.

It took me a 680M running way over volted and over a 50% overclock with a 3940xm @ 4.3ghz to stretch the 240W and that was just a benchmark run and too hot for 24/7 clocks.