Different voltages on a laptop charger?
Hi, I have a Gateway MT6724b laptop, and the charger has broken. The output voltage of the charger was 19volts at 3.42amps. I have another laptop charger, which fits my laptop, however it is 20volts at 2amps. It charges the laptop fine, but is it safe to use this? thanks
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
No, it is not safe to use it. You are putting 20 volts into the unit, when it is designed to run on 19. More importantly, your old charger is a 65 watt brick (it puts ont 85 watts, or 19 volts x 3.42 amps) The other power adapter is a 40 watt brick (20 volts x 2 amps). This means that your laptop is demanding more power than this 20 volt brick is putting out. This will cause your battery to get hot, and eventually stop charging. This will cause your processor to overheat and shut down the unit.
But then again, you are probably already convinced that since it appears to work fine now, there's nothing wrong with using it.
You SHOULD replace the power adapter with one that was made for the unit, but as we all know, people can convince themselves of ANYTHING.
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Your laptop will need to have a DC voltage of 19 volts to operate correctly if you plug in one that is only rated at 12 volts that PSU (charger) will be outside it's rated currents and would probably just over heat or burn out. your laptop will draw too much from the PSU and as the volts would be low then the AMPS would be a lot higher and that is not recommended for your MB components