Is it possible to Run PC and Prusa i3 Hephestos off same pc power supply

I have a spare pc which i am going to dedicate to my 3d printer, i was hoping i might be able to put the tower flat on the desk and place my prusa i3 hephestos on top of it i would also like to run the 3d printer from the atx inside the pc. The reasoning behind this is i will have it in another room and i would like to be able to network boot the pc and when it turns on it will also power up the prusa i3 hephestos. I am hoping to be able to use a remote desktop connection to print things and monitor the prints via a netwrok camera.

Some facts about my setup:
The PC
The PC is relativly old by today standards but its running Windows 8.1 on a intel Dual core 1.6GHZ with 2GB Ram.
Power Supply is 450W but i can upgrade if needed.

Prusa i3 hephestos
Standard issue only had it a few days, no heated bed or anything fancy like that so its not drawing to much power.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance for any helfull info.

That´s a pretty smart idea.
It would work, if your PC doesn´t have one of these power demanding graphic cards. If it has one of those, it is still worth a try
Putting the printer directly on the housing will be pretty noisy. Some vibration damping would reduce that.
It will be a tight fit for the printer, maybe double sided servo-tape helps the printer to stay.

When you´d put the controller in the PC housing, this would eliminate the need for a separate fan.
-Olaf

Hi Olaf thanks for your feedback. I may put a sheet up rubber or something under the printer to remove the vibrations.

I'm just using onboard graphics so no issues there.

Do you know how many of the black and yellow wires I will have to use to power the printer?

Thanks

Oh my.. oh my..

as a person who's fried.. 4+ PSU trying to jerry rig old PC PSUs (I've learned a bit about what not to do with Wiring)

My only question is how would you feel if you fried your tower, instead of buying a dedicated PSU?
[store.makerstoolworks.com]
worth it. Note thats the 24V not a 12v

That said, some lessons have to be learned first hand. Buy real connectors, don't do this half assed like I did the first time. Make sure the connectors can handle the load, another lesson. Go all out with your shrink tubing too.
You're going to be cutting a 12v rail normally for a high end graphics card (usually..) that will have 2 - 3 black, ditto for yellow. Those will be enough. Less wires, more resistance at the connectors, more chance for FWAHOOM! 12v to ground is very exciting!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2015 08:18PM by L4nce0.

I´d say 1 yellow to 5A, two yellow to 11A input. Same for black. Use ferrules everywhere to make safe clamping contacts.
You can also route one black and red to the servo-terminal block of the RAMPS. This way, you can overcome problems with the weak 5V regulator from the arduino mega.
-Olaf

@Lance
How could one fry the hole tower with a shortcut or failing PSU? The onboard connector stays untouched. As long as you don´t drop a live 12V cable on the mainboard, there is no risk.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2015 03:11AM by o_lampe.

Quote
o_lampe
I´d say 1 yellow to 5A, two yellow to 11A input. Same for black. Use ferrules everywhere to make safe clamping contacts.
You can also route one black and red to the servo-terminal block of the RAMPS. This way, you can overcome problems with the weak 5V regulator from the arduino mega.
-Olaf
.

If you take a look at this diagram it shows the wiring provided by the manufacturer BQ i am currently only using the the 5A terminals to power the whole printer, so shall i just use 2 yellow and 2 blacks. The power supply they provide is just like a standard laptop charger and its output is 12V 8.0A,

Thanks again for your info, once we get this last question out of the way i will feel confident enough to start putting my idea into practice.

Your diagram doesn´t use/have a heated bed. If you want to use a heated bed, you will have to populate the other two power terminals, too.
-Olaf

At this moment in time i will not be using heated bed. I did say at the in the original post that the printer did not have heated bed.

Thanks for your help, i will test this tonight.