Need some electricity guru

[BlueByte]

I had a bit of a thought, my 360 is starting to choke on new blue ray rips especially BBC documentaries. So I was thinking of setting up a AMD FM1 for media streaming, one of the 65W ones. I have a PICO power supply, and it would be ideal if I could run 12V from my home server room. but I know just enough to be worried about what line size I need to run 12V that far and what I can get away with. It would be ~70' from the server room to the TV in question.

I am thinking this route to save on space. we lose power often enough that I have battery backup on things I don't want to go down, ie middle of a movie. So this would save me space on a battery, and a power brick. Just have the TV on the wall and hide the media box. but if I have to run 10gauge wire or lower I will start to think twice about this thought. I think I still have a roll of 12 that would cost me $0 to use.

[Arinoth]

In a nut shell I wouldn't advise you doing something like this, over say spending the money and buying the AC to DC adapter.

Even if it's an enclosed wire you're going to be running a cable outside your server case down along to another device. How are you going to run the wire, in your wall? It's the safest place to do it, but unless you run it with your other wires it may not be up to code.

Not to mention the fact you'll be adding an extra 70 ohms resistance (assuming 10 Gauge) or 111 Ohms resistance (12 gauge) on the line that the PICO power supply won't be used to seeing (or potentially your power supply either). Also remember you're going to be running 2 cables, one for the 12V the other for the return ground.

[BlueByte]

Oh I have conduit in my walls and can easily put a jack on the wall in behind my TV. it is a recessed wall panel for TV setups. As for the server room I have a 42U 2 post I will be going into and will most likely put it in flex conduit I have left over from building this place. As far a setup I can go overkill on things that's not a problem. Its the resistance I don't know about, and two wires is fine. If people think I will burn out the pico that is where my thought ends and I have ugly bricks by my TV.

[Arinoth]

I honestly don't believe the PICO is designed to have that much source resistance due to how long you want to run the wires. A buddy of mine from college agrees with me that you really should just go with the brick solution over running the wire due to the possible large complications. Remember the PICO has no fuse so if it goes there goes your HTPC at the same time.

[BlueByte]

Hmmm how about something 10-15' then I could put the brick in the basement? I just want a clean TV ;-)

[zoob]

Why not do it like this instead?
HDMI EXTENDER 30M 1080P Cat5e cat6 Lan cable 3D 1080p network HDTV PS3 Bluray | eBay

HDMI over CAT6. I have this setup with ~50ft of cabling and it works well. Plex on my file server/HTPC and Plex on my phone to control it using Wifi.

[Arinoth]

That actually would be the better way of doing things actually. If you run say xbmc on your htpc you can control it using a phone or tablet connected to your wireless network.

[BlueByte]

Is there any degrade in signal quality with these HDMI extenders?

[zoob]

You might get sparklies (white pixels flashing) if your cables are low quality or if they run along any AC lines. Mine used to go nuts when my fridge kicked on until I rerouted the CAT6 away from my electric panel. My server is right next to the electrical panel.

[NyteOwl]

There is a reason power is generally distributed as AC and not DC. That reason is line loss. If you want to see what I mean just look at the size of the wires used to carry power to a trunk mounted audio amp or subwoofer. While you wouldn't be using the number of amps an amplifier would, you'd need to carry the power over considerably further, requiring a higher starting current and larger wires to minimize loss at the destination.

I'll add to the chorus - just use a PSU as intended. If you're worried about power loss, get a UPS for it. In the long run it will be easier, safer and cheaper.