Xbox360 psu's to power car amp

[ryley_999]

i have a few xbox 360 power supplies, they are good for about 16.5 amps on the 12 volt rail, right now im using only one psu to run a car amp i have in the living room.
am i able to run the supplies together and combine the 12 volt rails for more power for my amp,? should i put a diode at the end of each wire coming from the 12volt rails on both supplies , then combine the rails from each supply after the diode and then run the combined rails run the to the amp? or is it gonna be more complicated then that? im not a pro with electronics, but i have an alright knowledge, ive fix amplifier, simple thing like changing transformers, output transistor, caps, im mostly a comp nerd, lol

anyways thank you anyone who could help me out with this, i would really like to be able to use all these psu to run the one amp,

 

[jackorocko]

so what are you looking for 24V output or 12V output twice the amps?

When wiring in series you will need to cut one of the grounds or this will surely short one of the PSU's out.

 

[ryley_999]

so what are you looking for 24V output or 12V output twice the amps?

When wiring in series you will need to cut one of the grounds or this will surely short one of the PSU's out.

sorry, i'm trying to keep the same voltage but combine the amperage, so insted of having jsut the 16.5 amps from one, i would like to have 33 amp from two of them together,

 

[davenn]

sorry, i'm trying to keep the same voltage but combine the amperage, so insted of having jsut the 16.5 amps from one, i would like to have 33 amp from two of them together,

Yes, ok, you can parallel the 2 outputs to still give 12V but double the current
In theory this works really well, in practice, not always. Because the PSU's may not be exactly equal in their rating, you may find one of the 2 PSU's working harder than the other, rather than the load being shared equally.
Just watch for one PSU getting hotter than the other. You may get away with it, you may not

cheers
Dave

 

[ryley_999]

Yes, ok, you can parallel the 2 outputs to still give 12V but double the current
In theory this works really well, in practice, not always. Because the PSU's may not be exactly equal in their rating, you may find one of the 2 PSU's working harder than the other, rather than the load being shared equally.
Just watch for one PSU getting hotter than the other. You may get away with it, you may not

cheers
Dave

s
ok sweet, well i cant wait to try , i was reading online about one psu will start working at full load then the other one will start picking up the slack, now how would u think this would work if i used like 5 of these xbox supplies? do u think thats asking for a bang and a puff-o-smoke ? lol

 

[jackorocko]

s
ok sweet, well i cant wait to try , i was reading online about one psu will start working at full load then the other one will start picking up the slack, now how would u think this would work if i used like 5 of these xbox supplies? do u think thats asking for a bang and a puff-o-smoke ? lol

It will still do the same thing, one PSU will more then likely run full bore with the others picking up the slack when needed. They won't balance themselves to use only 20% of 5 different PSU's. As davenn has said, you can only try and see what happens.

 

[ryley_999]

well i connected them together, and everything is working, but one is working full bore then the other one is picking up the slack just like was said to happen,

the one that is going full bore hasn't gone into protection even while the other one is running 3/4 power. ive been using these supplies for a long time to run a bunch of things, and ive noticed that have a decent amount of protection.

do u guys think it would be alright to continue running these power supplies like this, or am i asking for trouble if i continue to run them like this? i don't have a problem with them not sharing the load equally just as long as it works for what i want it to do, but if someone thinks that this could be bad, then i just wont,

 

[ryley_999]

also, I think they have a pot for output voltage adjustment, since im running these on a car amp, I would like to turn them up to 14.4 if it will let me, would it be safe to adjust it up to that voltage and run it, or should I just adjust them both to 13 volts?

 

[spiderbear93]

I was wondering the same thing for a similar setup. I have one PSU on my amp. Did you just simply wire both 12v and both grounds into the amp?