Power for drives?

rich.h

rich.h

rich.h

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Joined
15 Mar 2013
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23
I am going to be redesigning my system soon and building a custom case that will be taking into account future drives. My main system also dubs as a media server and has all my storage drives attached and will stay this way.

I intend to allow space for up to 20 3.5" hdd so will be using a fair amount of power. Will my best method to by a very large single power supply for the entire system or is it possible to run a separate power supply for the additional drives?

Overall the system is not that power hungry and will likely not ever change too much over the next 3 years or so.

Core i5 3570k
16gb ddr3
HD 4850 1gb gpu
Creative SB Z
2 x Crucial M4 SSD

The only real changes will be double the ram and a shift to perhaps a 7700 series gpu. Would a 1500w range psu be suitable for a system with such a large amount of drives? Also I would have to use a fair amount of sata splitters which does make me wonder if they will be safe enough to load?
 
20 hds ??? Seems a little excessive...what size are the individual drives? Do you actually need 20 drives or would you be better having some sort of hot swap out drive system?

A single PSU simply doesnt have the number of connectors needed to connect to that number of drives and you would need to use multiple PSUs or as you say a large amount of splitters. Its not something I would suggest.
 
What would be the general procedure for using multiple psus? For some reason I can't see it being as simple as just plugging in the extra drives to a solitary psu.
 
As I understand it you either have to alter some of the cables youself or you can get some pre done. As basically you want it all to power up at the same time so you need the motherboard to recognize both PSUs at the same time.
If you google search it shows some DIY methods or there are some cables for sale.
 
Even the least power efficient drive these days doesn't use much more than 7W so you won't need a 1500 W PSU.

A decent 600 W PSU would cover your system, 20 drives and a half decent GPU(200 W) upgrade if you wanted.

EVGA 600W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply £43.99
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-008-EA
Would do the job, I have the 500 W version as a spare for work. :)

Seasonic X-Series 650w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £109.99
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-027-SS
If you have money to spare and want a reasonably silent system.
 
How well do psu's like those handle the load being split? Obviously I only have two routes either multiple psu's or using lots of splitters.
 
Have you considered how you're going to connect 20 HDDs to the mobo? Might be worth thinking about a raid card (or cards) which supports staggered spin up of the drives to take the spin up load off the PSU.
 
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