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I was looking to swap out a barrel plug on a spare Dell 240 watt AC/DC power adapter to avoid having to purchase a ~$80 replacement with the correct plug. I went off to Digikey and Mouser in search of a suitable plug (5.5mm OD x 2.5mm ID) and found plenty of options. To my surprise, none of the options were rated at the 12.3A / 19.5V required for this adapter.

I delved further and visited connector manufacturers' websites and found that even for products advertised as "capable of withstanding much higher temperarure and current than standard power jacks," the maximum amperage rating was still only 10A.

Given the ubiquity of >200 watt @ ~19V AC/DC adapters with barrel plugs, I would never have thought it would be so difficult to find a suitably rated replacement.

HanniballRun
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  • Some unheard of sub supplier stamping them out for them by the millions close to the factory? – winny Aug 29 '20 at 21:05
  • Sure, then like any other common component, distributors would be able to get a few thousand units in stock for a few cents each. But this does not appear to be the case. – HanniballRun Aug 29 '20 at 21:30
  • @HanniballRun Not necessarily. These are typically molded cables, meaning just the connector part would be a different assembly because they'd have to design a casing meant to be soldered. They aren't going to spend time/effort designing a different casing/connection method for a few hundred pieces unless somebody pays for that. – Ron Beyer Aug 29 '20 at 21:36
  • are you certain it's a 5.5mm plug? I've seen lots of oversized plugs used on laptops. – Jasen Слава Україні Aug 29 '20 at 22:55
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    @Jasen Yes, it's for a Gigabyte Aero laptop and the company has confirmed the size of the plug on their FAQ. ASUS uses the same plug for most of their laptops as well. – HanniballRun Aug 29 '20 at 23:32
  • I usually cut the plug off the broken adapter slice/ it open and solder the new wires where the old wires were and finally seal it up using with hot glue and heatshrink. – Jasen Слава Україні Aug 29 '20 at 23:51
  • https://www.digikey.co.nz/products/en?keywords=LCP6166FSILI-SR - the first one I found with larger than 18G wire. if you're prepared to read more datasheets there maybe a better one. – Jasen Слава Україні Aug 30 '20 at 00:17
  • @Jasen I actually wanted it as a secondary unit so I wouldn't have to lug it between home and work. Original is new and works perfectly fine. – HanniballRun Aug 30 '20 at 00:32

3 Answers3

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It's simple really, they have them manufactured to their specification as part of the molded cable assembly. This means that they can provide a specification (12.3A/19.5V, etc) and the manufacturer will build/mold a cable for them. They have no problem doing this because they buy hundreds of thousands of cables at a time.

Ron Beyer
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Switchcraft

If it can withstand 10A at 65C ambien, what makes you think it can't withstand 12A at 40C?

DKNguyen
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  • 1) If this were some obscure one off use case I wouldn't expect a rating specifically for my needs, but this is a common electronic device and purpose. 2) Virtually all current gaming laptops have a default throttle temperature of 90-99C, the power receptacle/plug can easily reach upwards of 65C under common gaming conditions. – HanniballRun Aug 29 '20 at 21:26
  • @HanniballRun I don't have a gamimg laptop but you'll have to forgive me if I find it difficult to believe that it is allowed to have a plug get so hot that it scalds the user in a consumer product. – DKNguyen Aug 29 '20 at 21:29
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    Would you believe a popular youtube review channel that uses a thermal imaging camera to detail laptop surface temperatures as part of all their reviews? Most reviews show that, under load, most laptops are able to maintain 50-60C in regions close to the CPU/GPU but there are poor performers such as the [Dell G5 SE that hit 65-70C](https://youtu.be/LCIyVmcR5kI) in the area where the power connector comes in. Note that these are surface temperatures on brand new laptops so interior temperatures would be higher and continue to rise as the laptop ages. – HanniballRun Aug 29 '20 at 22:22
  • Tip: Stack Exchange supports HTML entities such as `°`, `Ω`, `μ`, `±` (+/-), `≥` (>=), etc. as well as `...` (superscript) and `...` in the posts but they don't render in the comments. – Transistor Aug 29 '20 at 22:26
  • I don't trust those riveted plugs at high currents. – Jasen Слава Україні Aug 30 '20 at 00:21
  • Scratch that, I don't like them at low current either. – Jasen Слава Україні Aug 30 '20 at 00:29
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    @TonyStewartSunnyskyguyEE75 The table shows decreasing current rating with increasing temperature so it has to be the ambient temp. If it was contact temp then current would increase as you tolerated a higher contact temp. – DKNguyen Aug 30 '20 at 03:48
  • I don't trust them either. Just having a high temp plastic doesn't improve the contact reliability. I have burnt out too many of these contacts on 65W PSU's and never tried 200W. The contact area needs to be much greater. The wear is increased by hot insertion. A cheater cord would help with 20A contacts to externalize the wear point, – Tony Stewart EE75 Aug 30 '20 at 04:00
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Digikey has pre-assembled cables, if you search through all the datasheets there are some with 16AWG cables. They should work ok at 12.3A. As they're pre-assembled you'll have to either open the brick, splice the cable or disassemble and rebuild the plug,

Jasen Слава Україні
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