I’m trying to decide which power supply to buy. I’m planning to buy a power supply with more than 60 watts of power. It is much easier to find a quality power supply with Power Delivery, although they cost more. But 12-volt power supplies are mostly noname, and you can’t count on their reliability. And I have a question, which voltage is more optimal for powering the board. Also would be grateful for recommendations of power supplies on AliExpress
The USB PD chip on the R4 will always request 20V from the power supply.
The DC jack itself says 12V on the PCB. But simon from sinovoip said in another thread, that it actually supports up to 24V and suggest at least 19V when using the wifi NIC.
Haven’t tested that yet though. Just received my wifi NIC two days ago. And fried my usb PD chip a while ago due to a short.
My current power supply has 12V and I will test wifi using that. If that won’t work, I’m going to order a 20V 1.2A and a 24V 1A supply and test both.
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BPI R4 bare board consumes ~4W at idle and 7W with CPU 100% loaded. Adding a WiFI card (no first-hand experience) raises to 10-15W perhaps. Banana PI’s max design wattage is expecting 60W. But I very much doubt that 99% of BPI R4 users will reach that point. So plan your power supply wattage with your own usage accordingly.
If you have USB-C charger collecting dust, then use it for BPI R4. If you have 12V 1-2A dumb adaptors, using it is as good as if not better than USB-C.
If you have to buy a new power supply, think of how long you’ll use BPI R4 for. Its useful lifespan will be as long a 10+ years IMO. The estimated lifespan of my BPI R4 use case is 10 years.
So if I were you in the market for a PSU, I would go for a dumb 20V 3A adaptor. Should be plentiful on the market. All ASUS WiFI routers are standardised on ~20V power supplies.
For my BPI R4, I tap into the idling USB-C power supply from my monitor. Other than the initial unexpected behaviour, it’s rock solid after passing the startup & stabilised.
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