Eurorack High Power Supply

The Eurorack High Power Supply is a low-noise solution for powering large, power hungry systems. The Build Guide is located here.

The Eurorack High Power Supply is a low-noise solution for powering large, power hungry systems. The Power Supply supplies a total of 5 AMPs (5,000mA) of +12v power, 2.5 Amps (2,500mA) of -12V power, Ground, and 400mA of +5V power to your modules via 12 shrouded connectors, and multiple chain points to other distribution boards. Three LEDs indicate status of the four power rails, and the Power Brick is included. The Eurorack High Power Supply uses super quiet DC to DC converters to turn one powerful DC brick into four reliable, quiet, power rails:

• +12V A: 2.5 Amps
• +12V B: 2.5 Amps
• -12v: 2.5 Amps
• +5V: 400mA

Headers 1-6 Draw their +12V from +12VA, and Headers 7-12 draw their +12V from +12VB.

Why this design?

In the early decades of eurorack, most modules were analog, and only needed a few mA per module to operate. A simple Wall Wart Supply was an inexpensive (yay!) way to power a good size analog modular system with VERY low noise (yay!). As Eurorack progressed, digital modules became common, even ubiquitous, and 1AMP of power could not power these hungry, hungry, systems, so Switching Supplies started getting used. Switching supplies are amazing at generating a lot of Amperage (yay!), but they are noisy (boo!). Did you ever listen to a 90s PC with headphones? Remember all that noise? That was the switching supply in there. Not ideal for an audio system. For the past few years I did A LOT of research trying to get a quiet switching supply that could power a good sized eurorack system. The two I narrowed it down to were either a) using two power bricks kind of like batteries to make a bi-polar supply, or b) using DC converters.

Using two power bricks is cheap (yay!) and works great when you have quiet bricks, but that turned out to be like playing the lottery (boo!) so I didn't go that route. Using nice DC to DC converters is more expensive (small boo) but works every time (yay!) and is the quietest way to use a switching supply that I have found.