Recommended PSU for 8 HD's

MolDog

MolDog

MolDog

Associate
Joined
4 Sep 2006
Posts
45
Hi

I have currently got a 600w supply in my machine which I originally purchased due to a power hungry Radeon 2900. I have now increased the amount of storage in my machine and at points can have as many as 8 HD's in at once.

However, I have experienced no end of problems with drives failing, losing partitions etc which seemed to dissapear once I disconnected a couple of drives and any other none essential thing in there and now its working fine.

Has anyone got a good recommendation on how much power I should be aiming to get. Will an 850w supply do or will I need a 1000w to power everything.
 
Hmm, not the best around yet not the worst. I think the Amperage drawn by the HDD's is causing the Voltage rails to drop. It's only got 35A combined on the rails whereas something like the Corsair HX620 has 50A. That's hell of a difference for just "20W" between the two models.

Simply getting a PSU that has 1KW etc won't solve your problem as it isn't as simple as that. I've got an Enermax 720 and I'm running 6 HDD's, a quad core overclocked, a 8800GTX overclocked, BD/HD drive, DVD RW drive and a watercooling loop and it won't draw much more then 400W full load.
 
Hard drives at spin-up kill the rails...hard. They will normally draw a good 2-3A each. Multiply this by 8 and you get 16-24A for the HDU's alone. After this, they will only need 1.5-2A to run, however this is all drawn from the 12V rail, which most components draw from in modern computers e.g. graphics card. A lot depends on your config. A good brand PSU with about 800W should do fine, but this depends on the 12V and how it is split/combined.

Is your sig current?
 
Hi thanks for the replies

Rig in sig is current except for the Graphics card which is a Radeon 2900pro clocked to XT speeds.

As for my needs for 8 hard drives, I have a lot of music, do some recording occasionally, rip quite a lot of my DVD's as I usually destroy the originals through scratches, record freeview etc, the usage is ongoing. Had two 250GB drives in RAID0 which I was filling up pretty quickly and now have 4 250GB in RAID0, plus a couple of raptors for boot and two drives which I stick in now and again when I want 2 move large amounts of data about.

So rather then just power your saying its what the rails will support? Also I will be eventually upgrading at to a quad at some point so will want this power supply to have that in mind as well. Would something like this antec do the job.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-084-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1088

edit: also have an adaptec 1430SA PCI-express card in case anyone was wondering where the other 4 sata ports came from.
 
Last edited:
If you use anything like 850w on that thing wont it need more then

- 80mm low noise cooling fan
Click to expand...

that wont be low noise if its taking that much load I reckon.

Have you considered transferring to 1 terrabyte drives
 
MolDog said:
Hi thanks for the replies

Rig in sig is current except for the Graphics card which is a Radeon 2900pro clocked to XT speeds.

As for my needs for 8 hard drives, I have a lot of music, do some recording occasionally, rip quite a lot of my DVD's as I usually destroy the originals through scratches, record freeview etc, the usage is ongoing. Had two 250GB drives in RAID0 which I was filling up pretty quickly and now have 4 250GB in RAID0, plus a couple of raptors for boot and two drives which I stick in now and again when I want 2 move large amounts of data about.

So rather then just power your saying its what the rails will support? Also I will be eventually upgrading at to a quad at some point so will want this power supply to have that in mind as well. Would something like this antec do the job.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-084-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=1088

edit: also have an adaptec 1430SA PCI-express card in case anyone was wondering where the other 4 sata ports came from.
Click to expand...

Have you any kind of backups running? That's an awful lot of Data to lose if one of the drives packs in :eek:

Get something with 50A+ on the 12V rails and you'll be fine. I don't see why the Corsair 620 would struggle.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-004-CS
 
Last edited:
Ye I have two drives I back essential stuff up 2 and have a wallet of DVD backups which I NEVER touch unless I really need to restore something from them. However have been using RAID0 for a while with 2 250's and never really had a problem with it except once when vista drivers destroyed it during setup.

Would have gone 1 terrabyte but as I said I already had 2 250GB Drives which I had for quite a while (2 years at least) so was a cheaper option for me just to buy 2 more 250's and RAID them (at least that was the case till I realised I had power issues).

So you think the corsair 620W will be enough then? The only other thing I thought I might add is that in addition to all the other stuff its powering Its also in a coolermaster 810 stacker with all its many fans and the drives are all in caddies which have fans, plus have an X-fi with the front panel.
 
So thats the be all and end all recommendation is it. Only thing thats puzzling me is the current rating table on my current supply is showing pretty much the same as the max current rating table the corsair shows for the hx supply (18A on each 12V rail).

http://www.corsair.com/products/hx.aspx

Just want to be 100% sure I don't go out and buy a PSU that doesn't do the job and then find I can't return it cos' I've tried to use it.
 
The server has got 6 drives running off a 380w Enermax jobbie here, have had 7 in for data transfer in the past, but can't really fit that many in the case :(
The desktop has 6, graphics card and overclocked E6320 running off a 600w Seasonic, again had 9 in there with no issues.

If your PSU can't handle 8 then TBH I'd be suspecting a fault with the PSU. Drives don't take nearly as much power as some people would like you to believe, 600w should be more than enough.

-Leezer-
 
Well thanks for the advice guys. I went for a zalman 850W in the end. Not meaning to go against your guys advice but the extra cost doesn't bother me to much and the amount of 4 pin molex connectors this provides is ideal for all the ones I need for the fans, HDD caddies etc in the case. Plus who knows what I'm gunna get when I upgrade mobo, graphics, processor etc. Just for my own piece of mind that theres enough I guess.

Cheers anyway. If no one had pointed out that the rails can take different loads i'd be really stuck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom