Linear Power Supply for Mac Mini Roon Server

[mitch751]

6 hours ago, Superdad said:

Just be sure that whatever supply you choose is truly capable of delivering at least 4.5A at 12V.

And there must be no droop because a Mac min will turn itself off right at 11.5V; can’t tell you how many people buy our Mac mini DC-conversion/Linear Fan Controller Kit and then come back to us complaining that their Mac either won’t boot or turns off under heavy compute loads—and that is always due to the inability of their inexpensive LPS not being able to deliver enough current.

Most of the Chinese LPS units that you see on eBay/Amazon/AliExpress are incapable of delivering on their promised output current ratings (I have benched a whole bunch of them with my programmable load box; results published somewhere here on the forum).

The HDPLEX unit is a very good value and does fully deliver on its current rating—but I think they have been out of stock for a while.

I recognize that our lovely choke-filtered, dual-output JS-2 is not cheap, but it is robust and we have not raised the price on it in the six years of production (though our costs have go up a lot). And it can reliably deliver 7.4A at 12V all day long without even getting more than modestly warm. Finishing up and shipping another 13 this week. Two left from this batch… 

I totally agreed with Alex, and I did have the experience of inexpensive LPS did not able to boot or turned off, and finally bought a JS-2. My Mac mini 2012 being charged by JS-2 24/7 for almost a month, have not shut off once. To me, either go for a better LPS, otherwise I would stay with the original stock power supply. I tried a few cheap Chinese LPS, hardly heard any improvement .. but just waste of money.