Laptop charger

Belspe3

Member
I wanted to charge my gaming laptop in the car but I think the charger draws too much power from the outlet because it goes into sort of a safe mode so the fuse doesn’t blow, but won’t charge my laptop. The car already has a wall styled outlet to plug in, but i was curious if I could get something that would make the charger maybe not pull so much power from the car, and charge my laptop slower? I don’t really know a lot about electric things so I don’t really know what I need.
Thx!
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
How large is the fuse or rated limit out of the socket? What wattage is the charger?
 

strollin

Well-Known Member
Since you say you have a wall styled outlet in the car, I assume the car has an inverter and you are trying to use the standard laptop charger. Unless the inverter is hardwired to the battery with fairly heavy gauge wire, meaning it's plugged into one of those cigarette lighter outlets, it's limited to delivering about 75 Watts of power regardless of the rating of the inverter. Many typical laptop chargers pull around 90 Watts so too much power. Try wiring the inverter directly to the battery with 8 or 6 gauge wire (use a fuse) and the inverter will be able to deliver it's full rating. The rating in Watts of the inverter is what you need to know to determine exactly what gauge wire and fuse you need to use. A shop that installs stereo systems in cars should be able to set you up.
 

_Pete_

Active Member
You will also need a true sine wave inverter. Laptop power supplies are finicky things. Most inverters fitted into cars are either square wave or modified square wave because these are the cheapest ones. But laptop chargers like to see a nice clean sine wave which is what you get from your domestic electricity supplier. I had a 12 volt laptop power supply that I bought from Maplin, I don't know what your equivalent electronics store would be, but they are available from Ebay, again this the Brit Ebay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_...charger.TRS0&_nkw=car+laptop+charger&_sacat=0
 
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