Wanna buy 2 terbayte HDDs, will I need new PSU?

Lister2020

Lister2020

Lister2020

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22 Jan 2007
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:DI bought a machine off here cpl of months ago. Got it for about 605 with two discounts, has a 4850 in it, 500 gig hard drive, quad core at 3 ghz ( I cant remember the model).

I really want the main 500 gig hdd to be system files and the odd game only, and to store music video etc on the other drives. Could I put in two terabyte HDDs and still use the same power source?

Oh and erm any xmas discounts floating about at the moment :D

I think the name was Titan accelerator. It came with a hd/blu ray reader. It is a TOTAL Jesus rig :D
 
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Hard Drives use no power "watt-so-ever" ( oh dear...). Roughly 8-15watts each.
 
But there is a surge at power on, unless your drives/bios do a staged power up. I have measured it to be around 230 watts powering up an Socket A board with 8 IDE hard drives attached, and 2x SCSI, which then subsides down within a few seconds to around about 60-80 watt at idle IIRC.
 
whitecrook said:
But there is a surge at power on, unless your drives/bios do a staged power up. I have measured it to be around 230 watts powering up an Socket A board with 8 IDE hard drives attached, and 2x SCSI, which then subsides down within a few seconds to around about 60-80 watt at idle IIRC.
Click to expand...

right - so about 20w a drive then. spread that over the 5v and 12v lines, two drives, and you have nothing to worry about unless the psu is already at it limits.


what psu is it?
 
Actually, in the interests of accuracy I just checked - still have the meter thing plugged in to the wall... The Max draw was 272 Watts, this was at power on. The Min draw is 157Watts, and it's currently flicking between 158-160 Watt, so double what I wrote above :) !!

This machine has a Sempron 2600+ 8 ide, 2 SCSI, SCSI card, 2x IDE cards, 4 or 5 fans...

Uptime is 59 days - and according to my calculations, has costed approx £30 to run.. It's in the cupboard, it's noisy and expensive. Hence my replacing with a singel 1.5 TB drive later in the week.

PSU can't get the exact model, but it's a cheapy Casecom unit, 350 or 400 watt (no marking on outside)

This server has been in use one way or another for the last 6 or 7 years, upgraded everything along the way.
 
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Ouch power consumtion is a little high, but probably right for the aging kit.
I have an AMD X2 6000+ with 2gb ram (Used to fold on it!) running WHS and now has 6 drives in it (3x1tb, 3x500gb) has 4x120mm fans intel/pro pci card, pci vid card + 16 port gigabit switch, wireless access point and a cable router all on the same plug and it only draws ~90watts when idle. Usually around 120-150W when its all getting used at once. I serve all my DVD's and music from the same box. Only has a 380W Antec Earthwatts PSU in it.
 
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