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deciding to do things right for once!


was just about to order some HDD's and drive controller and realized I should check my PSU and see if I even had any open hookups for a HDD

1st question (i've never even thought of this before) but you just use "Y" cable to split to 4 wire power leads?


if not, can anyone suggest a decent PSU, quiet, or semi quiet that has at least enough power leads for 1 dvd drive, and 6 or 7 HDD? (ide + sata)

You could although your device power requirements might be greater then the capability of your PSU, which can cause you all kinds of weird problems.

How many watts you will want from a power supply will depend on what internal cards you have ect.

Rough figures:

Each PCI card: 5
SCSI PCI: 20 to 25
floppy disk: 5
Nic: 4
CD-Rom: 10 to 30
Ram: 10 for every 128M
Hard Drive: 5 to 15
Motherboard: 20 to 30
Processor: varies quite a bit depending on type and speed 80 should be safe.
Graphics cards are similar to processors: ranges can go up to 150, 100 should be safe

You could get exact if you look up each piece of hardware's technical specs. In the end though a rough estimation should tell you if your power supply can handle what you want to do, if you are close I'd recommend getting a new one, if your over then you pretty much have to.

Edit: I guess I should also note that I think the most I've ever done with Y splitting was 2 Y's so I'm not completely sure that drawing power for that many drives off one lead wouldn't overload the wires but I don't think it would be an issue.

well, I'm obviously not going to use like 20 Y's or anything
I really would only need to add 2 or MAYBE 3 at the most

the PSU I have right now has enough juice to support what I want, it just doesn't have the leads

wasn't sure if I could just Y them out, or not

Ah I miss-read your 4 wire power leads statement.

I wouldn't want that much juice drawing off of one rail honestly.

Harrison wrote:I wouldn't want that much juice drawing off of one rail honestly.

why?

on some of the other hardware forums I've posted this on, people have been specifically recommending PSU's with a single rail

Only reason I can think of is air flow, more wires especially if you aren't using them means more blocked air flow, some really nice ones have detachable power leads so you don't have them junking up your case if you don't need to use them.

Lueyen wrote:Only reason I can think of is air flow, more wires especially if you aren't using them means more blocked air flow, some really nice ones have detachable power leads so you don't have them junking up your case if you don't need to use them.

they're also recommending against the modular psu's heh

You should also avoid modular cable models. The thing is, severe voltage drops occur and modular cable connections AND with multiple rail designs, making them less efficient/more lossy, and, well, hotter sometimes.

Tikker wrote:

Lueyen wrote:Only reason I can think of is air flow, more wires especially if you aren't using them means more blocked air flow, some really nice ones have detachable power leads so you don't have them junking up your case if you don't need to use them.

they're also recommending against the modular psu's heh

You should also avoid modular cable models. The thing is, severe voltage drops occur and modular cable connections AND with multiple rail designs, making them less efficient/more lossy, and, well, hotter sometimes.

Hmm did they say why? I've never used one, a coworker has one in his home machine, it's pretty slick, although it did burn out on him after about 6 months, warranty repaired ect.

no not really

I've always heard that modular are great for systems where you're trying to keep tidy, and you don't want to block the minimal airflow you're using for the sake of being quiet

I have heard that they're not fantastic for high power boxes where you're going to be using all the leads anyway