Power Supplies

BIGFOOTTELL · 23 Nov 2009 at 16:33

Hi to everyone I'm new here.
Anyway does anyone know what is best between a single 12v rail and a multi 12v rail power supplie ?
Thank's in advance with any help with this

roop128 · 23 Nov 2009 at 16:54

Most of the time 12 volt rails are actually just single ones that are split up, but the good thing about the mulit 12v is that is provides more stable voltages, and i believe they are lot lesss messier than single 12v rails, and have less cables

and Welcome to the forums

JonJ678 · 23 Nov 2009 at 17:14

Untrue.

Three types of power supply. Single 12V rail, behaves as you'd expect. Multiple dependent 12V rails, exactly the same as before but with various lines artificially limited to 20A. All it does is turn off if you overload one rail, this is perhaps safer. Multiple independent 12V rails. The ideal, load on one has no effect on the others. Cleaner power output.

The multiple rail psus you're looking at are the dependent ones. A true multirail design would cost well over what the pc power supplies cost. As a real multiple rail psu would be better, and since the term is sufficiently ill defined to allow this, people will buy one with multiple rail written on it. Even though it's not better. Marketing at its finest.

So the only difference you're looking at is that the multiple rail supply will turn off if you draw more than 20A from one of the rails, and a single rail one will keep working. Source

BIGFOOTTELL · 23 Nov 2009 at 17:27

Thanks for quick reply I look forward to taking part, There are so many different opinions on this quite confusing, I've always thought as you do and have many rigs and always used Hiper psu's with multi 12v rails unfortunately they have now gone out business so I now use corsair as in my sig I believe it's a single rail one