Will my PSU handle a 4th hard disk?

Soldato
Joined
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Hi,

I currently have 3 hard disks attached to my computer's psu (antec trupower 550w).

Would my power supply unit be able to handle a 4th?

My system:
Intel C2D [email protected]
Nvidia 7900GS
3 Hard disks
2 x 1GB Ram
2 optical drives

Thanks.
 
Surely it will? well I hope so I had 5 HDDs, 1 DVD-RW, 4 sticks of oced RAM, oced and overvolted CPU & GFX, 2 PCI cards and a bunch of LED fans all powered by a 530W.
 
Excellent.

I was just worried that if I added another hard disk I would start to get random reboots, etc.

Its so much cheaper to buy a 2nd 500GB hard disk, rather than replace the existing 500GB hard disk with a 1TB model.

Incidentally, in my system (listed in the original post), what is the maximum amount of hard disks that my PSU should be able to handle?
 
Each 7200RPM HDD taks as much as 1.5A from the PSU's +12V rail IIRC. So it really depends on how much amerage your other components take from the +12V rail (CPU, GFX, Mobo).
 
No problem at all, Myself have 6 hdd's, 4 ddr2 modules, 2 dvdrw, 6usb's, an overclocked dualcore pD ( wich draws a lot more as the average core 2 duo), and a 6800gs,, and all the fan & led & cold cathode bunch, and it all runs fine on an akasa 550w)


The ammount of hdd's depends on the amps on the 5V and 12 V lines, check the top of the hdd to see what currents a hdd is drawing, usually this is around 0.7 amps for 5 volts, and 1.5 amps from the 12 volt line, so if you've got a psu with plenty of amps on the 12 volt rails, it sohuld be fine with a lot of hdd's, you can do the maths yourself actually...
 
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I have a overclocked P4 Northwood, 2 sticks of DDR, 7900GS, 1 DVDRW (used to be 2), loads of USB devices, 3 HDD's, fan controller and 4x 120mm fans on a 400w and its fine ;D
 
JackRegan said:
This is something I use which will give you an idea. A lot depends though on strenght of your PSU rails.

Jack.

PSU Calc
Never really did like that calculator myself, think it's a *little* off. Such as I just put what I'm using in at the moment, and it tells me I use 640w, which is interesting considering I'm using a Antec 500w PSU :P
 
It tells me I use 369 watts IIRC and I am using a 400w fine. Dont C2D's use a l lot less watts than an old P4C northwood? Makes me laugh at people with 620w + psu's :)
 
But if you move to multiple hard disks, with 2 video cards and an overclocked cpu, its quite possible that you will need a 600W+ psu.

Now, a 1000W psu - thats overkill.
 
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