Can you power a Intel D410PT Mini-ITX board with a battery?

Answer 1

You can power any board with a battery. The battery just needs:

a. Enough power output to run the board and your peripherals. A battery is practically a voltage source, so you can find out it's maximum power output (in Watts) by multiplying it's current rating (in amps) by it's voltage.

b. Enough capacity (we'll use units watt-hours) to run the computer for a useful amount of time. Batteries often have a rating in mAh (milli-amp hours) or Ah (amp-hours), so the capacity in watt-hours is found by just multiplying the amp-hour rating by the voltage. Ah = 1000 * mAh

Now let's get into the specifics:

The Intel D410PT uses a standard 2x12 pin ATX power connector for power. An ATX power connector provides several different DC voltages to the board, so in order for a battery (which only has one output voltage) to power the board, you will need a DC-DC converter specifically made to convert from a single battery voltage to all the right voltages in the ATX spec. Before you start designing a DC-DC converter though, be aware that you can actually buy such a thing ready made. You can find some here -> http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC, or just Google 'DC-DC ATX'. You'll notice these typically only have 20 pins, instead of 24. That's ok, the extra 4 aren't necessary unless you're using a lot of power (ie, using a graphics card in the PCI Express x16 slot might use too much power for the 20 pin connector). And if you're running on a battery, you should be trying to minimize power consumption anyway. So, when you're choosing a DC-DC converter, you need to make sure that your battery voltage matches what the converter can use as an input. For example, many accept only 12V as input. This is the voltage of the electrical system in a car (and, a car battery). You may be able to combine multiple batteries in series/parallel to produce the right voltage and maximum current for a given DC-DC converter. Some converters can work with a variety of input voltages, so that may make it easier to find batteries that will work.

So, to get everything you need to have a battery powered system, here's what you should do:

1. Get an accurate estimate of the amount of power the system will require.

You could do this by setting up the whole system with a regular old plug-in-the-wall atx power supply, and measuring the most power it consumes when you boot it up, using a power monitor such as the Kill A Watt EZ (http://www.Amazon.com/dp/B000RGF29Q/?tag=hotoge-20). You could also just estimate by adding up the power consumption ratings of each of your components (cpu, ram), or just google around for clues. Your answer here should be in Watts.

2. Figure out how long you need the system to be able to run on the battery.

Just choose a length of time that works for you (in hours).

3. Determine what capacity the battery (or bank of several batteries) needs in order to run the computer for a while.

Multiply the answer to step 1 by the answer to step 2.

4. Choose a battery, or perhaps several batteries, to meet the requirements of steps 1 and 3.

Keep in mind you can wire batteries in parallel to increase the current they can supply (and therefore the power they can output; power = voltage * current).http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Wire-Batteries-in-Series-or-in-Parallel/

5. Choose a DC-DC converter with a power rating at least as high as necessary (from step 1), and that will work with the battery setup from step 4. Or, go back to step 4 and choose different batteries that work with the converter you want.

6. Wire it up! You might be able to find handy battery cases to make it easier, otherwise you'll have to get more creative.

Keep in mind that you'd need to do some fancier work in order to keep track of how much battery life is left at a given time.

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/cs-012037.htm

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18358/eng/D410PT_QuickRef03.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-ITX#Power

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATX#Power_supply