The Power Supply Thread


dgaschk

Recommended Posts

Hi all, I have a question. I've got a machine that I put together back in 2016 which used this now-discontinued 660W PSU, the Seasonic SS-660XP2. The PSU recently failed, and I'm wondering if I might have been running too much hardware on it.

 

When I first set this up, it was running 4 WD Reds (6GB) plus a NVidia GeForce GTX 970 (not used often, just for gaming in a VM). Everything worked fine. Then a while back my motherboard failed and I wound up uninstalling the GPU. Recently after a disk failure I decided to add in a 5th HDD and pop the GPU back in. I started it up and everything seemed to be working fine, but then after several days of happiness it just shut down, and refused to POST, and after a bit of troubleshooting I realized the PSU had failed.

 

I've RMAed the power supply, but I'm wondering if I might have been hovering just on the edge of how much power I needed, and if adding in the 5th HDD might have pushed it over the edge and caused the PSU to fail. So I thought I'd get some advice. Does 660W sound like a big enough power supply for that amount of hardware? Should I upgrade to a beefier model now and save whatever replacement Seasonic sends me for a different machine?

Link to comment
22 hours ago, thither said:

Hi all, I have a question. I've got a machine that I put together back in 2016 which used this now-discontinued 660W PSU, the Seasonic SS-660XP2. The PSU recently failed, and I'm wondering if I might have been running too much hardware on it.

 

When I first set this up, it was running 4 WD Reds (6GB) plus a NVidia GeForce GTX 970 (not used often, just for gaming in a VM). Everything worked fine. Then a while back my motherboard failed and I wound up uninstalling the GPU. Recently after a disk failure I decided to add in a 5th HDD and pop the GPU back in. I started it up and everything seemed to be working fine, but then after several days of happiness it just shut down, and refused to POST, and after a bit of troubleshooting I realized the PSU had failed.

 

I've RMAed the power supply, but I'm wondering if I might have been hovering just on the edge of how much power I needed, and if adding in the 5th HDD might have pushed it over the edge and caused the PSU to fail. So I thought I'd get some advice. Does 660W sound like a big enough power supply for that amount of hardware? Should I upgrade to a beefier model now and save whatever replacement Seasonic sends me for a different machine?

You have to add up the current draw (mainly on the 12V line(s) ) and then see if the specs of the supply you're getting can handle the max current draw of the card and the hard drives when spinning up. -> All specs will be on the associated manufacturer's website.

 

But FWIW, I run a 680Watt Antec High Current Gaming supply, and have 12 hard drives, and have a 1050ti (that is barely used) with no problems.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • 2 months later...
On 8/21/2019 at 8:25 PM, thither said:

Hi all, I have a question. I've got a machine that I put together back in 2016 which used this now-discontinued 660W PSU, the Seasonic SS-660XP2. The PSU recently failed, and I'm wondering if I might have been running too much hardware on it.

 

When I first set this up, it was running 4 WD Reds (6GB) plus a NVidia GeForce GTX 970 (not used often, just for gaming in a VM). Everything worked fine. Then a while back my motherboard failed and I wound up uninstalling the GPU. Recently after a disk failure I decided to add in a 5th HDD and pop the GPU back in. I started it up and everything seemed to be working fine, but then after several days of happiness it just shut down, and refused to POST, and after a bit of troubleshooting I realized the PSU had failed.

 

I've RMAed the power supply, but I'm wondering if I might have been hovering just on the edge of how much power I needed, and if adding in the 5th HDD might have pushed it over the edge and caused the PSU to fail. So I thought I'd get some advice. Does 660W sound like a big enough power supply for that amount of hardware? Should I upgrade to a beefier model now and save whatever replacement Seasonic sends me for a different machine?

I have the same power supply, originally had a Ryzen 2700X, 1 GTX 1080, and one GTX 1070 (was mining) plus about 4 hard drives and now have upgraded to a RTX 2070, Ryzen 3900X and still no problems. 

Link to comment
  • 2 months later...

Hello,

I'm most likely looking for an inexpensive power supply recommendation for a 24 drive unRaid system. 

 

Newegg Canada if possible. 

 

in the last few unRaid releases I’m getting random shutdowns of the system. 
powers down and I have to switch off the power supply to get it to power back on. 

 

XFX power supply currently ... stopped getting them because I got one with mis-wired connectors.
(molex peripheral with red black yellow black - reboots really fast)


minimum I’m guessing would be 750W single rail power supply?

 

i found an inexpensive micronicsglobal one at 700W but it has IDE not molex peripheral connectors?

http://micronicsglobal.com/post/125

 

thanks for your time,

Bobby

 

Link to comment

Assume 2A max startup current for the drives, which the P/S has to be able to handle.  24x2A = 48A on the 12V line.  The 700W supply linked can only handle 52.5A, excluding that damn near everything else (CPU, vid cards if installed) also run off of the 12V rail.  I'd go larger.  (And supplies as they age will also lose the maximum current they can handle)

 

Beyond that, personally, I'd only go with supplies from manufacturers that you know and trust.  Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, ThermalTake et al.  Way too many other manufacturers that cut corners on what is actually far and away the most important component in any system.  Don't cheap out.  You get what you pay for.

Link to comment
  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Aight guys I've got a question about the HX1200i that I have recently purchase I plan on making some custom cable to power all the hard drives for cable management would it be possible to power 10x sata drives from a single connection on the power supply? I will eventually be running 22 drives 10 in the left rear of the case 10 in the right rear of the case and 2 up from for parity. I plan on making 2x cable psu > 10x sata power for the left and right banks in the rear. If it makes any difference I'm planning on using 17-AWG hook up cable and the drives are all ironwolf 12tb.

Link to comment
  • 1 month later...
On 4/3/2020 at 3:21 AM, TeCH-Guruz said:

Aight guys I've got a question about the HX1200i that I have recently purchase I plan on making some custom cable to power all the hard drives for cable management would it be possible to power 10x sata drives from a single connection on the power supply? I will eventually be running 22 drives 10 in the left rear of the case 10 in the right rear of the case and 2 up from for parity. I plan on making 2x cable psu > 10x sata power for the left and right banks in the rear. If it makes any difference I'm planning on using 17-AWG hook up cable and the drives are all ironwolf 12tb.

how about two cables, four sata connectors and one cable, two sata connector?

Link to comment
On 5/24/2020 at 4:36 AM, Mark W said:

how about two cables, four sata connectors and one cable, two sata connector?

Thats a possibility but to be honest a single cable would look much tidier plus the fact that I will need to make some custom cable to power my sas expanders. The sata expanders only require a single molex each but they are on opposite sides of the case. I'm not even sure if I would have enough connectors on the psu since I will need to run a total of 27 sata power cables. 26 for drives and 1x for my cpu cooler. 

 

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about I've attached a couple of pics. The 10x hdd's in the rear are identical left and right side they will be connected to a sas expander which is at the bottom just below the HDD cages. You can see the 2x 3.5" drive bays at the front which I will be using for my parity drive and will be connected direct to the motherboard. Kind of hard to see but to the left and right of the parity drives there are 2x 2.5" mounts on each side and they will also need sata power. 

IMG_2455 2.jpg

IMG_2813.JPG

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

Hey everyone,

 

Since biting the bullet and deciding to upgrade my entire system after random reboots (it was time, anyhow), I’ve come to the following crossroads and parts. Right now, I’ve got two questions of which one fits best in this thread. 
 

My 2020 build consists of:

 

Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C (cheaper than R6, simply won't hook up the USB-C connector since I can't)

Asrock Rack X470D4U

2x Kingston KSM26ED8/16ME

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 ** question: stock cooler or better to plunk down on the Noctua NH-U12S which fits the board/ram layout? Went with bequiet! Pure Rock cooler because it doesn't need a backplate that I'd need to heat up and try to remove off.  Still blocks one of the RAM slots but I'm not adding more than 32GB, anyhow,

5x 10TB Seagate Barracuda Pro

1x Kingston 120GB SSD for cache drive Sabrent Rocket 256 NVMe drive (although it's gonna hit the max threshold) for cache.  Might use the Kingston as a scratch drive for data, etc., or simply retire it.

 

There will come a time when I need to add more drives but for the immediate future, the 5 will suffice. 

 

Did some PSU research both here and in the "competition's" forums and originally thought about purchasing a Corsair HX750 or RM750x (about a US$10 price difference in favour of the latter) or, because it's probably better efficiency, the Seasonic SSR-550PX. It's also about US$30 cheaper than the RM750x (and about US$40 cheaper than the HX750).  Everything I've read states that the Focus+ Platinum 550 is more than sufficient for what I'm doing and what I plan to do down the road (I don't see myself adding more than 4 or 5 more drives and even then that'll be in the years to come since I'll have about 10TB free on the current build).  Considering I'm aiming for 275W (50%) on average, I think the 550W PSU is the best option especially since the comparable Corsair PSU at 550W (RM550x) is listed at less than $10 less than what I was able to get the Seasonic Platinum for.  

Right choice on the PSU? I already ordered it and got it held for me since they're darn near impossible to find right now.  Supposed to pick up the case and CPU tomorrow along with the PSU.

 

** Update: Purchased the SSR-550PX simply because I could get it. Had to order some extra power cables from BTOS Integration (not risking generic crap with my build).  Complete side note: MemTest86 Pro 8.3 had no issues with my build and Ubuntu 20.04.4 is running mprime right now at 13 hours in with no issues.  Looks like I'm closing to restarting the build/migration.


Thanks all!

Edited by AdrianF
Updated what I did.
Link to comment
  • 10 months later...
On 1/1/2020 at 7:07 AM, Squid said:

Beyond that, personally, I'd only go with supplies from manufacturers that you know and trust.  Antec, Corsair, Seasonic, ThermalTake et al.  Way too many other manufacturers that cut corners on what is actually far and away the most important component in any system.  Don't cheap out.  You get what you pay for.

Unfortunately it's not as simple anymore.

The above-mentioned "trusted" manufacturers are not manufacturing all of their models in house (and some don't make anything themselves at all).

They outsource manufacturing of at least a portion of their products to third parties.

Even Seasonic does that.

As far as I know there's only a few of PSU brands that don't outsource - Super Flower (maker of EVGA) is being one of them.

Super Flower was totally unknown in North America.

Until very recently, they have been contracted by EVGA to supply PSU's for the N.A. market. They've been sold and marketed as EVGA units.

Now that the deal is over, Super Flower has started to market PSU's under its own name.

btw, even Super Flower's lowest product lines are super problematic.

IMHO. if you're in the market for a new PSU, you should spend some time reading reviews on the hardware dedicated forums.

This is a very dynamic market and even the most trustworthy brands can not be blindly trusted anymore. They're constantly adjusting their product lines and switching third party partners.

Making it even worse, there are examples of the exact same PSU models that significantly vary in quality due to being sourced from different third-party manufacturers.

That's when the reviews could be of a tremendous help.

As a part of the reviewing process the PSU's are being taken apart and closely examined, including the inner components. Then tested.

IMHO it's unwise to buy any model without checking those reviews first, regardless of the brand.

Edited by Lolight
Link to comment
  • 1 month later...
On 11/26/2016 at 7:11 PM, sonofdbn said:

In the end I went with a Corsair RM650X. One thing that I hadn't thought about was the number of SATA connectors that provided on the cables.

I know this reply is for your post from 5 years ago.

 

I have the same power supply and am thinking of proactively replacing mine(from 2015 and my APC battery from 2015 just went too).  Have you had any problems with the Corsair RM650x?

 

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

Hey all, quick question. 

Currently setting rebuilding/upgrading my unraid build.

I have the following set up :

12x HDDs

3X SSDs

1x LSI Raid Card 

AMD Ryzen 7 3700x

Rosewell 4U Case.


Currently i am going to use the following PSU if you guys think this will be enough... Let me know please. Thank you!
100-W1-0500-KR_XL_6.thumb.png.0d4660458d59a0b6b829c45dedb1f4c4.png

 

Link to comment
  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/15/2021 at 9:17 AM, Paul_Ber said:

I know this reply is for your post from 5 years ago.

 

I have the same power supply and am thinking of proactively replacing mine(from 2015 and my APC battery from 2015 just went too).  Have you had any problems with the Corsair RM650x?

 

Just saw this post. No problems with the RM650x. In fact, I got another one for my then new PC build and one for my daughter's PC a few years ago, and all three run fine. (Also meant that I got to use the unused cables for my unRAID server 😉.)

Link to comment

Hi, I think I may need to replace my PSU.  Recently I had issues with drives dying and I have been replacing them with new drives only to find that there was nothing wrong with the old drives. I replaced cables and tried different SATA ports but had the same issues.  I redistributed my 7 drives evenly across two rails versus before having 6 HDDs on one, and the cache SSD on another.  This seemed to fix the issue with failing drives.  The other day I had a power failure and lost another drive, the smart status was fine so I rebuilt it and it is running fine again.

 

I want to replace the PSU for good measure.  Would a 750w be good for a system with 9 drives?

Link to comment
  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I have this NZXT 750 watt PSU. Looking at its specs it shows 60amps on the 12v rail. With new expansion coming this next week my system will have the following.

 

Intel i5-11600k

4x16GB DDR4 memory

2x512SSD

1x1TBSSD

Asus Tuff mATX motherboard

3x120mm intake case fans (Rosewill 2500u case unsure of specs)

2x80mm Exhaust fans

1xBeQueit! Black CPU cooler (Forgot the name but has one fan)

15x8TB 5400rpm HDD of various eBay grabs

2x LSI 9211-8i cards

 

Would my current PSU listed above have any issues running this? There will be no GPU added.  I'm a fan of the PSU so would like to keep it but obviously stability is the issue.

 

 

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, NAStyBox said:

I went from a 550 Seasonic to an 850 Corsair and I'm actually using about 4 watts less on idle, which is weird but nevertheless the case. 

Must be different in the 80 Plus ratings.

A 550W Bronze rated PSU will be significantly more inefficient as compared to the 850W Titanium or Platinum rated one.

 

425680764_80plus.PNG.fdfecf902da2b349b3d2df96b75f0439.PNG

Link to comment
  • 4 months later...

Currently i'm running the following cunfiguration:


Intertech IPC 4U-4420 Case
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
10x Sata drive
1x NVME
be quiet! System Power 9 (500 W)

When i add one more drive, then i suddenly get issues with my drives, they disconnect and are giving read errors etc.

i suspect that my PSU is not strong enough to handle all of it.
My Case can fit 22 HDD's and 2 NVME and i plan to fill them one after another.
In this case i have 5 Molex connectors, each of them powers 4 drives.

Do you have any suggestions about a power supply that can handle all this stuff?

Thanks a lot for you help
 

Edited by Visuals
Link to comment
  • 2 months later...
On 5/4/2022 at 12:13 PM, Visuals said:

Currently i'm running the following cunfiguration:


Intertech IPC 4U-4420 Case
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
10x Sata drive
1x NVME
be quiet! System Power 9 (500 W)

When i add one more drive, then i suddenly get issues with my drives, they disconnect and are giving read errors etc.

i suspect that my PSU is not strong enough to handle all of it.
My Case can fit 22 HDD's and 2 NVME and i plan to fill them one after another.
In this case i have 5 Molex connectors, each of them powers 4 drives.

Do you have any suggestions about a power supply that can handle all this stuff?

Thanks a lot for you help
 

@Visuals

Using this: https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

When i punch in your data + random stuff in the places you didn't tell (memory eg), with 2nvme and 10 sata 7200rpm I get you need 17,2A on the +5v

https://www.bequiet.com/en/powersupply/1280 says your PSU is max 15A on +5v... Could very well be your issue.

Also, I get a combined 3,3+5v to be 131W, your PSU max is 110W

 

Same spec but bumped to 20 HDD +2 NVME, we hit:

+3,3v: 13A

+5v: 22,5A

 - Combined 157w

+12v: 26,1A

 

I have had great experience using Intertech's ASpower PSU. This model fits your case model: https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/psu/server-psu/aspower-r2a-mv0700 (There are other models, look up your model and look under acc.)

The specs says:

+3,3v: 30A

+5v: 30A

 Combined max: 200w

+12v: 58A

 

This should keep you well in the clear, unless you have some crazy poweruser in the rack you didn't mentioned... Plus, its redundant.

 

 

Notes:

The website is a calculator, take everything as an estimate. (with 20+ drives the difference between power hungry and power-saving drives becomes a thing...)

Edited by hoejholm
  • Like 1
Link to comment
  • 1 month later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.