I currently have a combined fileserver and HTPC which I'm looking to split up to keep the noisy part (currently 5 hard drives, moving to 7 shortly, more later on) out of the living room.
So the current setup is an AMD A8-3850 on an MSI A75MA-G55 and 5x 2Tb drives, running off an (iirc) Antec 'trueblue' 450W PSU. The only fans are the 120mm fan on the heatsink which runs at the lowest speed 99% of the time and the PSU, but I believe most of the noise is actually coming from the hard drives still.
So, plan is to move the hard drives to a 'new' machine cobbled together which I'll put in the office. The new HTPC will be just the AMD chip/MSI mobo plus an SSD for the OS, nothing else, as yet I've not decided if I'll just leave it on or sleep/hibernate/shut-down when not in use but that shouldn't make too much difference I don't think.
So the options for PSU are:
1) Use the current Antec PSU in the HTPC side, it has a fan but isn't *that* loud? In which case I'd need to get a new PSU for the file server side, which ideally would have many sata cables (using lots of splitters/molex adaptors at the moment), as mentioned 5 drives currently, got 2 more to add already and more at some point, so a minimum of 7 sata cables would be nice, I'm guessing modular is the way to go here?
2) Keep the Antec in the fileserver for the time being, buy new PSU for the HTPC. Obviously here noise would be the main point but also cost. Looking around I think fanless PSU's are too expensive generally (seemingly £100+?) but tempted by a picopsu, the 160W variant should provide enough power and is obviously passive? Also just been reading about the SuperFlower Leadex series that apparently shut down the fan when at low load (basically all the time in this instance?)
So yeah, which PSU should I pick for each choice, and what option is better?
So the current setup is an AMD A8-3850 on an MSI A75MA-G55 and 5x 2Tb drives, running off an (iirc) Antec 'trueblue' 450W PSU. The only fans are the 120mm fan on the heatsink which runs at the lowest speed 99% of the time and the PSU, but I believe most of the noise is actually coming from the hard drives still.
So, plan is to move the hard drives to a 'new' machine cobbled together which I'll put in the office. The new HTPC will be just the AMD chip/MSI mobo plus an SSD for the OS, nothing else, as yet I've not decided if I'll just leave it on or sleep/hibernate/shut-down when not in use but that shouldn't make too much difference I don't think.
So the options for PSU are:
1) Use the current Antec PSU in the HTPC side, it has a fan but isn't *that* loud? In which case I'd need to get a new PSU for the file server side, which ideally would have many sata cables (using lots of splitters/molex adaptors at the moment), as mentioned 5 drives currently, got 2 more to add already and more at some point, so a minimum of 7 sata cables would be nice, I'm guessing modular is the way to go here?
2) Keep the Antec in the fileserver for the time being, buy new PSU for the HTPC. Obviously here noise would be the main point but also cost. Looking around I think fanless PSU's are too expensive generally (seemingly £100+?) but tempted by a picopsu, the 160W variant should provide enough power and is obviously passive? Also just been reading about the SuperFlower Leadex series that apparently shut down the fan when at low load (basically all the time in this instance?)
So yeah, which PSU should I pick for each choice, and what option is better?