QuestionSuccess! My PSU came with a plethora of cords and I ended up having to complete the circuit in a sense for the main ATX power supply cable. Basically I had to connect my powers together and my grounds to other cables and connect the green wire to my ground. Then had to use a 12v cable that had two yellow and two blacks to connect directly to my amp. Too bad it couldn't be more simple. Haha. Thank you for all your feedback.
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One final question. How would I hook up my yellow lead to my amp power? Would i connect it directly or would I try to splice it together with a 6 guage wire? Thanks
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Okay just to clarify. I'm going to hook up my leads of the psu to the amp and have to manually turn off the amp by turning off the psu corrct? Also, do you have any reccomendations on how to cool off an amp? Like my amp will overheat when I turn it up pretty loud after about an hour, so any suggestions on maybe adding other fans or whatever. Thanks
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Well, I was reading one of your replies to a user asking about hooking up his amp and subs to his computer. Just a few questions. I'm going with buying an external power supply unit to power my amp. So, can you tell me in detail in how you would setup a connection. I'm assuming the yellow wire is the 12v and using the black wire as the ground, correct? Also, when buying a computer psu, is high wattage or higher amps better? i.e. having a 600 watt psu at 18 amps or a 500 watt psu at 35 amps? Lastly, I'm running with a laptop right now and was wandering in how I'm going to connect my amp to my computer to tell it, it's getting sound? Any help is appreciated.
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Sure, the wire colors are usually:
black = ground/negative
yellow = constant posative
red = switched posative (signals to your radio that you've turned the key on)
you can usually just connect the yellow and red both directly to posative.
with the computer power supply its more important that specifically the 12 volt section has more amps. the watts doesnt matter since that's a conglomerate measure of all of the power supply's volatages (5 volts, etc) you need to find one that provides the same or more amps than the fuses in the amplifier, so if your amp has 2 25 amp fuses, ideally you need a 50 amp power supply.
If you want detail on how to hook up a computer power supply let me know. as for connecting the amp to a computer or laptop, its' the same, you just get a cable from radioshack that goes from the RCA inputs of the amplifier to the 1/8" headphone jack on the laptop or computer, same thing.
good luck and let me know if I can be of any more help.
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the amp shouldn't overheat unless you're really beating the tar out of it or if you're driving its ohms too low. The rule of thumb is to turn it down if you hear distortion, then it shouldnt overheat.
As for turning the amp on and off with the PSU yes you can do that. if it makes a loud thump when turning off or on you may need to put a switch on that "remote" wire and use that to turn the amp off and on.
good luck! let me know how it goes.
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yes the yellows on a computer power supply is 12 volts and the blacks are all grounds. for 35 amps or so I would use at least 2-3 sets of yellows and blacks from the PSU. connect them direclty to the amp if possible, if the amp has screw terminals on it just cut the connectors off the PSU wires and screw them right on. dont use the reds or other colors.
To make a computer power supply turn on there should be one large connector with 1 green wire. just connect that green wire to any black wire and it should fire right up.
Good luck, again let me know how it goes.
Answeryup that's how you do it! I would use 3 sets of yellows and blacks to be on the safe side. does it have enough juice to crank it without shutting the power supply off? You may need a capacitor to filter out the bass thumps so the power supply doesnt think it's being shorted out and shut itself off.
