The Power Supply Thread


dgaschk

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A high quality 600w PSU is plenty for 14 drives.  I've got 16 in my older Media server using a 650w Corsair TX series PSU, and it doesn't use drives nearly as efficient as modern WD Reds.

 

The Seasonic X series units are also excellent choices.    Either of the following would be good choices for what you're planning to build:

 

Seasonic:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088

Corsair:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010

 

The Corsair's a particularly good deal right now ... with the rebate, the 750w unit costs the same as the 650w HX unit normally would.

 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Seasonic makes several Corsair models. Channel Well is a real big manufacture also, but not as good (I don't think) as Seasonic. I can't find a more updated list, but this is a good guide to see who makes what. Since some Corsair's are made by other manufacture's that don't use good Chinese capacitors I would just stick with Seasonic all the way. I've had several high-end Corsairs blow on me that never should have. Corsair even said their whole RM series had some flaws, and they replaced all my RM series PSU's I had with their better HXi series for free. I had 6 RM-1000's and 4 of them died early. Corsair replaced them all for free for their HXi 1000 model which did me right.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-supply-oem-manufacturer,2913.html

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

Obviously garycase doesn't like Corsair PSUs.

 

I, on the other hand think they're great.

 

I have:

 

CX450 - 24/7 use in my mother's PC, just under 4 years.

CS450M - 24/7 use in my server

CX750 - 24/7 for 3 years at 90% load running a number of bitcoin miners

RM750 - 4/7 for about a year in my severely overclocked gaming rig.  It rarely spins it's fan, and it gets a hammering from the 4.5GHz i5, and two GTX780s.

 

I've had zero issues with any of them, and the modular PSUs all use the same cables, so I've no fuss figuring out which cables belong to which PSU.

 

Then again, I also really like Corsair RAM, my AIO water cooler is Corsair, and I have a few Corsair cases. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

After about 5 years I had a power supply fail.  My system was designed with redundant 2U/3U power supplies. So all that has happened so far is a whistling noise to tell me that the redundant power supply system is down to one supply. The supplies are made by Emacs (originally Zippy) and my system is R2W6500P. It consists of two independent R2W6500P-R units which are hot swapable.  Everything in my case is hot swapable except the cables the Controller card and the motherboard. Perhaps some day in the future I will be able to swap the drives too if and when the unRaid software permits it.

 

I started to hunt for a replacement.  I found one new for $278.50.  I then tried eBay.  It seems that a lot of server farms are being upgraded and that exact power supply system is becoming available at very low prices.  I picked up 3 of the R2W6500P-R units for a total of $52 including shipping. They are used but tested and guaranteed working.  When they come in I will slip one into the RM case from the rear and plug the power cord in and the whistling should then stop. No down time.  A nice complimentary system to the Unraid 

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Yes, redundant supplies are very nice.    It's certainly true that if we're building fault-tolerant servers, with fault-tolerant memory (ECC ... not everyone uses it, but I consider it essential for a server), that it also makes sense to use fault-tolerant power supplies  :)    Unfortunately they aren't generally available for desktop form-factor cases ... and we don't all have racks for rack-mount equipment.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yes, redundant supplies are very nice.    It's certainly true that if we're building fault-tolerant servers, with fault-tolerant memory (ECC ... not everyone uses it, but I consider it essential for a server), that it also makes sense to use fault-tolerant power supplies  :)    Unfortunately they aren't generally available for desktop form-factor cases ... and we don't all have racks for rack-mount equipment.

 

I'm looking to buy a power supply for my new rack mounted server case and I'm interested in the idea of redundant power supplies.  However every review I read on them, people complain about how loud the fans are on them which turns me off because my server is not in a dedicated server room.

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Yes, redundant supplies are very nice.    It's certainly true that if we're building fault-tolerant servers, with fault-tolerant memory (ECC ... not everyone uses it, but I consider it essential for a server), that it also makes sense to use fault-tolerant power supplies  :)    Unfortunately they aren't generally available for desktop form-factor cases ... and we don't all have racks for rack-mount equipment.

 

I'm looking to buy a power supply for my new rack mounted server case and I'm interested in the idea of redundant power supplies.  However every review I read on them, people complain about how loud the fans are on them which turns me off because my server is not in a dedicated server room.

 

You can get ATX form factor redundant power supplies. They're not cheap.

Redundant power supplies are noisy because they typically can not fit even 80mm fans in them. Smaller fans are noisy.

To me, they are not worth it, if you do not have redundant power to separately feed them, and a UPS. You're better off with a quality spare PSU on the shelf.

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Yes, redundant supplies are very nice.    It's certainly true that if we're building fault-tolerant servers, with fault-tolerant memory (ECC ... not everyone uses it, but I consider it essential for a server), that it also makes sense to use fault-tolerant power supplies  :)    Unfortunately they aren't generally available for desktop form-factor cases ... and we don't all have racks for rack-mount equipment.

 

I'm looking to buy a power supply for my new rack mounted server case and I'm interested in the idea of redundant power supplies.  However every review I read on them, people complain about how loud the fans are on them which turns me off because my server is not in a dedicated server room.

 

You can get ATX form factor redundant power supplies. They're not cheap.

Redundant power supplies are noisy because they typically can not fit even 80mm fans in them. Smaller fans are noisy.

To me, they are not worth it, if you do not have redundant power to separately feed them, and a UPS. You're better off with a quality spare PSU on the shelf.

 

Yea that's what I've decided to do.  My Seagate 8TB drives pull a max of 7.5w each and I've got 10 slots for them.  My CPU being only 45w means I can probably get away with a pretty low wattage PSU.

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... Yea that's what I've decided to do.  My Seagate 8TB drives pull a max of 7.5w each and I've got 10 slots for them.  My CPU being only 45w means I can probably get away with a pretty low wattage PSU.

 

Agree ... the main driver in how much power you need is the potential spin-up current for a fully loaded system (e.g. 10 drives).  The Seagate SMR drives are rated at 2A of startup current, so with 10 drives that's 20 amps => 240 watts of 12v draw for spinning up.    Since during drive spin-up a lot of other electronics are likely also drawing their max initial current surges (CPU, GPU, etc.) I'd want at least 75% more current available on the 12v bus.    Any high-quality 80+ power supply with a single 12v bus will meet that requirement.  For example, this excellent Seasonic can supply 37 amps on the 12v bus:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151124

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is a great thread, answered a lot of questions I already had. I still have some questions that I didn't see answers to though, so hopefully one of y'all can help me out. I'm going to apologize upfront for some of the stupid questions to follow.

 

1) I plan to eventually fill all 24 drives in a Norco 4224 with green drives (i.e. <7200 rpm). Tom said the next major unRAID update will have a capacity of 30 drives, so I want to prepare for that. I plan to expand past the 24 drive capacity of the Norco 4224 by simply buying another Norco 4224 and linking it to the CPU/MOBO from the 1st Norco.

 

I plan to use green drives (i.e., < 7200rpm), so my power calculations come out to:

 

24 drives x 2A + 5A + overage ~ 60A

30 drives x 2A + 5A + overage ~70A

 

Should I just buy a 70A PSU or can I buy a 60A now, and when the need arises buy a 10A PSU to cover the additional power 30 drives will need compared to 24 drives. Is it possible to add multiple PSU's together to achieve the total power requirement? 

 

2) If answer to #1 is yes (multiple PSU's can be additive to achieve total power requirement), is it also possible to have a redundant power supply?

 

3) Am I correct in that a redundant PSU for an ATX system is literally 2 PSU's in a single ATX form factor and not 2 separate PSU's connected in a redundant fashion?

 

4) If I use a redundant PSU for my 24/7/365 system, does the 2nd PSU draw power? If so, how many watts can I expect to waste?

 

5) The Norco supports ATX PSU and a "mini redundant power supply." Does anyone know what this "mini redundant power supply" is referring to?

 

http://www.norcotek.com/product/rpc-4224/

 

6) Is there any benefit to using a "server" PSU instead of the ATX PSU (Newegg makes a differentiation between server PSU and non-server PSU)? I suppose this is more of an issue of whether your case supports ATX or the larger "server" PSU.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

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This is a great thread, answered a lot of questions I already had. I still have some questions that I didn't see answers to though, so hopefully one of y'all can help me out. I'm going to apologize upfront for some of the stupid questions to follow.

 

1) I plan to eventually fill all 24 drives in a Norco 4224 with green drives (i.e. <7200 rpm). Tom said the next major unRAID update will have a capacity of 30 drives, so I want to prepare for that. I plan to expand past the 24 drive capacity of the Norco 4224 by simply buying another Norco 4224 and linking it to the CPU/MOBO from the 1st Norco.

 

I plan to use green drives (i.e., < 7200rpm), so my power calculations come out to:

 

24 drives x 2A + 5A + overage ~ 60A

30 drives x 2A + 5A + overage ~70A

 

Should I just buy a 70A PSU or can I buy a 60A now, and when the need arises buy a 10A PSU to cover the additional power 30 drives will need compared to 24 drives. Is it possible to add multiple PSU's together to achieve the total power requirement? 

 

2) If answer to #1 is yes (multiple PSU's can be additive to achieve total power requirement), is it also possible to have a redundant power supply?

 

3) Am I correct in that a redundant PSU for an ATX system is literally 2 PSU's in a single ATX form factor and not 2 separate PSU's connected in a redundant fashion?

 

4) If I use a redundant PSU for my 24/7/365 system, does the 2nd PSU draw power? If so, how many watts can I expect to waste?

 

5) The Norco supports ATX PSU and a "mini redundant power supply." Does anyone know what this "mini redundant power supply" is referring to?

 

http://www.norcotek.com/product/rpc-4224/

 

6) Is there any benefit to using a "server" PSU instead of the ATX PSU (Newegg makes a differentiation between server PSU and non-server PSU)? I suppose this is more of an issue of whether your case supports ATX or the larger "server" PSU.

 

Thanks for the help guys.

 

1) getting power from case to case is not easy or good. Plan the PSU for the case, and get an additional for any additional case. 10A is very small.

2) it is possible to get redundant power supplies. I do NOT recommend them unless you have separate power sources for each power supply. Redundant power supplies are expensive. It is more cost effective to keep a high quality replacement PSU on the shelf.

3) Yes, hence the expense, and noise. The fans are smaller and thus noisy.

4) Yes, the redundant PSU draws power, and the fans too. But less than 100W.

5) It means a redundant PSU in an ATX form factor.

6) "Server" can mean many things, duty cycle, form factor, capacity, etc. ATX is spec and you need ATX. Still not recommending redundant PSU of any kind. :)

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1) getting power from case to case is not easy or good. Plan the PSU for the case, and get an additional for any additional case. 10A is very small.

 

Thank you for the response! I will plan the PSU for the case (24 drives for the Norco 4224) and NOT for the total drive capacity of the system.

 

3) Yes, hence the expense, and noise. The fans are smaller and thus noisy.

4) Yes, the redundant PSU draws power, and the fans too. But less than 100W.

5) It means a redundant PSU in an ATX form factor.

6) "Server" can mean many things, duty cycle, form factor, capacity, etc. ATX is spec and you need ATX. Still not recommending redundant PSU of any kind. :)

 

I'm convinced to stick with a single, non-redundant PSU. Thanks!

 

2) it is possible to get redundant power supplies. I do NOT recommend them unless you have separate power sources for each power supply. Redundant power supplies are expensive. It is more cost effective to keep a high quality replacement PSU on the shelf.

 

My main motivation for wanting a redundant PSU is this notion I have that if a PSU fails while a hard drive is being used (e.g., spinning up for read/write operation) then that hard drive can be corrupted beyond repair. If this notion is true, then the thought that 24 drives can all become lost beyond repair in a single PSU failure is scary. Is my fear unreasonable or misinformed?

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My main motivation for wanting a redundant PSU is this notion I have that if a PSU fails while a hard drive is being used (e.g., spinning up for read/write operation) then that hard drive can be corrupted beyond repair. If this notion is true, then the thought that 24 drives can all become lost beyond repair in a single PSU failure is scary. Is my fear unreasonable or misinformed?

 

A very excellent question.

 

The concern is actually for "data in flight". The data being sent to the drives, but not yet written to the media. It is only data being written, not read traffic. Partially written data can be difficult to unwind, or back out. There are a few things you can be to reduce this risk.

 

1) use a UPS, power outages are far more common than PSU failures.

2) use unRAID, each drive is a complete filesystem and writes are to a single drive, not all drives.

3) use a journaling filesystem (XFS/BTRFS), partial transactions are usually rolled back automatically.

4) disable drive cache (not cache drive), that 32/64/128MB of memory where the loss occurs. Performance impact can be dramatic.

5) use a drive with supercap (or add one). This very small energy source keeps the drive running to complete the transaction after PSU fails, more common on SSDs.

 

Again I would point out the use of a redundant PSU without separate sources leaves you exposed to the most common cause, power outages. #1 use a UPS

 

Standard installation/usage of unRAID includes 2,3.

 

Hardware raid controllers with cache, typically require/strongly recommend cache batteries and disabling drive cache. The raid is under the filesystem, thus a in-flight corruption can be a corrupt journal.

 

With unRAID, any drive not being written to is out of danger. The drive or drives being written to have filesystems which can roll back transactions, or in extreme cases, undergo filesystem repair with standard tools.

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My main motivation for wanting a redundant PSU is this notion I have that if a PSU fails while a hard drive is being used (e.g., spinning up for read/write operation) then that hard drive can be corrupted beyond repair. If this notion is true, then the thought that 24 drives can all become lost beyond repair in a single PSU failure is scary. Is my fear unreasonable or misinformed?
c3 covered the cases of a gentle failure where the power supply stops supplying voltage like turning off a switch. That probably covers 99.99% of failures, the other very small probability is a catastrophic failure where a severe over voltage surge is sent through the whole machine, in which case, yes, you can fry everything at once. A UPS will put the probability of that happening even lower, but even then, the mechanicals of the drive are fine, and you can get replacement circuit boards for the drives for much less than a clean room recovery fee, typically less than $100 per drive recovered.

 

Bottom line, get a good name brand single rail PSU with a healthy margin of capacity, a good UPS, and power supply issues should be rare to non-existant.

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The concern is actually for "data in flight". The data being sent to the drives, but not yet written to the media. It is only data being written, not read traffic. Partially written data can be difficult to unwind, or back out. There are a few things you can be to reduce this risk.

 

1) use a UPS, power outages are far more common than PSU failures.

2) use unRAID, each drive is a complete filesystem and writes are to a single drive, not all drives.

3) use a journaling filesystem (XFS/BTRFS), partial transactions are usually rolled back automatically.

 

Sweet! I've already got a UPS and unRAID will cover #2,3 like you said.

 

4) disable drive cache (not cache drive), that 32/64/128MB of memory where the loss occurs. Performance impact can be dramatic.

 

How do I do this? It sounds like the performance hit outweighs the potential benefits since my original notion that a hard drive that is being written to during a PSU failure will become broken wasn't true.

 

With unRAID, any drive not being written to is out of danger. The drive or drives being written to have filesystems which can roll back transactions, or in extreme cases, undergo filesystem repair with standard tools.

the other very small probability is a catastrophic failure where a severe over voltage surge is sent through the whole machine, in which case, yes, you can fry everything at once. A UPS will put the probability of that happening even lower, but even then, the mechanicals of the drive are fine, and you can get replacement circuit boards for the drives for much less than a clean room recovery fee, typically less than $100 per drive recovered.

 

This is another benefit of unRAID I didn't consider. Other than family photos, I don't deal with any data that is too important to lose. I was more concerned with having 24 drives become broken during a PSU failure (since that is lots of $$$), but my notion wasn't correct, I'm much more reassured with having a single non-redundant PSU on a UPS to cover power outages.

 

Thanks guys.

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I'm trying to perform a more accurate power calculation for my MOBO/CPU setup, but I'm a little confused. It's been mentioned several times to save 5A for the MOBO/CPU.

 

The CPU I'm purchasing is the Xeon® Processor E5-1650 v3 (http://ark.intel.com/products/82765/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v3-15M-Cache-3_50-GHz) which has a TDP of 140W (which divided by 12v becomes 11.67A).

 

The MOBO I'm purchasing is the Supermicro X10SRA-F (http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRA-F.cfm), but I don't see any information about power requirements.

 

So far, the CPU seems like it will use up a lot more than 5A. And how much amperage should I account for if I end up buying a dedicated GPU in the future? What about for SATA cards?

 

Please educate if my power calculations are incorrect. Thanks.

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I'm trying to perform a more accurate power calculation for my MOBO/CPU setup, but I'm a little confused. It's been mentioned several times to save 5A for the MOBO/CPU.

 

The CPU I'm purchasing is the Xeon® Processor E5-1650 v3 (http://ark.intel.com/products/82765/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v3-15M-Cache-3_50-GHz) which has a TDP of 140W (which divided by 12v becomes 11.67A).

 

The MOBO I'm purchasing is the Supermicro X10SRA-F (http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRA-F.cfm), but I don't see any information about power requirements.

 

So far, the CPU seems like it will use up a lot more than 5A. And how much amperage should I account for if I end up buying a dedicated GPU in the future? What about for SATA cards?

 

Please educate if my power calculations are incorrect. Thanks.

 

If you are going to purchase the Norco 4224 case I suggest make sure you try to get the updated version. Norco didn't change the model number or skus on it, but made a few changes.

 

Each backplane (4 drives) is powered by one 4pin molex not 2.

2.5" internal hard drive tray

120mm fan board, old version only had 80mm.

 

I removed all the noisy 80mm fans from the board and installed 3 120mm Noctua fans. Stock fan board comes with 4 80mm noisy fans with plastic grills. I flipped the fan board around so the fans were on the other side and removed the 4 80mm and installed 3 120mm. That helped with the wiring and noise, but took away the 2.5" drive plate which I don't use anyway. I did post some pictures I think in the OCD/build thread but can't find them. Here they are again.

 

Remember the Norco SAS cables are pretty short and thick. I bought them and was able to use them, but were hard to work with in getting around corners and such. I did buy another brand that was longer and had the same spec but was much more easier to bend and work with. They were blue in color, can't remember where I got it, but they are easy to find online.

 

Picture1

Picture2

Picture3

Picture4

Picture5

Picture6

Picture7

Picture8

 

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If you are going to purchase the Norco 4224 case I suggest make sure you try to get the updated version. Norco didn't change the model number or skus on it, but made a few changes.

 

Each backplane (4 drives) is powered by one 4pin molex not 2.

2.5" internal hard drive tray

120mm fan board, old version only had 80mm.

 

I removed all the noisy 80mm fans from the board and installed 3 120mm Noctua fans. Stock fan board comes with 4 80mm noisy fans with plastic grills. I flipped the fan board around so the fans were on the other side and removed the 4 80mm and installed 3 120mm. That helped with the wiring and noise, but took away the 2.5" drive plate which I don't use anyway. I did post some pictures I think in the OCD/build thread but can't find them. Here they are again.

 

Remember the Norco SAS cables are pretty short and thick. I bought them and was able to use them, but were hard to work with in getting around corners and such. I did buy another brand that was longer and had the same spec but was much more easier to bend and work with. They were blue in color, can't remember where I got it, but they are easy to find online.

 

Thanks for the tips! I didn't realize they updated their models.

 

I'm trying to perform a more accurate power calculation for my MOBO/CPU setup, but I'm a little confused. It's been mentioned several times to save 5A for the MOBO/CPU.

 

The CPU I'm purchasing is the Xeon® Processor E5-1650 v3 (http://ark.intel.com/products/82765/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v3-15M-Cache-3_50-GHz) which has a TDP of 140W (which divided by 12v becomes 11.67A).

 

The MOBO I'm purchasing is the Supermicro X10SRA-F (http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRA-F.cfm), but I don't see any information about power requirements.

 

So far, the CPU seems like it will use up a lot more than 5A. And how much amperage should I account for if I end up buying a dedicated GPU in the future? What about for SATA cards?

 

Please educate if my power calculations are incorrect. Thanks.

 

If anyone has knowledge about the above, I'm all ears! Thanks!

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If you are going to purchase the Norco 4224 case I suggest make sure you try to get the updated version. Norco didn't change the model number or skus on it, but made a few changes.

 

Each backplane (4 drives) is powered by one 4pin molex not 2.

2.5" internal hard drive tray

120mm fan board, old version only had 80mm.

 

I removed all the noisy 80mm fans from the board and installed 3 120mm Noctua fans. Stock fan board comes with 4 80mm noisy fans with plastic grills. I flipped the fan board around so the fans were on the other side and removed the 4 80mm and installed 3 120mm. That helped with the wiring and noise, but took away the 2.5" drive plate which I don't use anyway. I did post some pictures I think in the OCD/build thread but can't find them. Here they are again.

 

Remember the Norco SAS cables are pretty short and thick. I bought them and was able to use them, but were hard to work with in getting around corners and such. I did buy another brand that was longer and had the same spec but was much more easier to bend and work with. They were blue in color, can't remember where I got it, but they are easy to find online.

 

Thanks for the tips! I didn't realize they updated their models.

 

I'm trying to perform a more accurate power calculation for my MOBO/CPU setup, but I'm a little confused. It's been mentioned several times to save 5A for the MOBO/CPU.

 

The CPU I'm purchasing is the Xeon® Processor E5-1650 v3 (http://ark.intel.com/products/82765/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v3-15M-Cache-3_50-GHz) which has a TDP of 140W (which divided by 12v becomes 11.67A).

 

The MOBO I'm purchasing is the Supermicro X10SRA-F (http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRA-F.cfm), but I don't see any information about power requirements.

 

So far, the CPU seems like it will use up a lot more than 5A. And how much amperage should I account for if I end up buying a dedicated GPU in the future? What about for SATA cards?

 

Please educate if my power calculations are incorrect. Thanks.

 

If anyone has knowledge about the above, I'm all ears! Thanks!

 

If you aren't sure of what exactly you'll be adding slap another 200-300 watts. I still and will always recommend Seasonic as the best power supply out there. I own over 20 of them running Bitcoin miners 24/7 at around %80-%90 and not once ever had an issue. I've burnt through several brands, including Corsair's. Seasonic does make a lot of other models, including Corsair. I've checked all the Corsair models I've burnt through and none were manufactured by Seasonic. They were made by Channel Well. If you are calculating down to the AMPS and WATTS you may as well just spend the $200 on a really good 10 year warranty high watt PSU and be done with it. In the grand scheme of things $200 is pretty small and the part is very crucial.

Good luck.

 

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The TDP for your CPU is FAR more than the CPU will typically draw => that's the max power when the CPU is running at 100% load, which, with that CPU, will be VERY rare (if ever) in UnRAID.

 

The chipset has a TDP of 7 watts, and the rest of the motherboard's draw will be pretty nominal.    Then you'll have the memory modules, any add-in cards, and your GPU.    I think any power supply that has enough current capability to handle the startup load for 24 drives is going to have PLENTY of total power, as the actual consumption will be far lower than that initial load.    The biggest potential "extra" load you'll add is if you decide to install either a high-end graphics card; or perhaps multiple graphics cards (for VM pass-thru).

 

I'd think a quality 750w unit is plenty for this system, but you could go to 850 if you want to have even more "headroom".    The Corsair HX or AX series, or a Seasonic X series unit would all be good choices.

 

You absolutely want to use a quality UPS unit ... this almost completely eliminates the likelihood of the kind of failure you're concerned about, as MOST power supply failures are either caused by power spikes (virtually eliminated by the UPS) or by startup transients (during which time the drives are all just spinning up ... no writes are in process).

 

 

 

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The TDP for your CPU is FAR more than the CPU will typically draw => that's the max power when the CPU is running at 100% load, which, with that CPU, will be VERY rare (if ever) in UnRAID.

 

Thanks for the info garycase, this is exactly what I needed to know.

 

The chipset has a TDP of 7 watts, and the rest of the motherboard's draw will be pretty nominal.    Then you'll have the memory modules, any add-in cards, and your GPU.    I think any power supply that has enough current capability to handle the startup load for 24 drives is going to have PLENTY of total power, as the actual consumption will be far lower than that initial load.    The biggest potential "extra" load you'll add is if you decide to install either a high-end graphics card; or perhaps multiple graphics cards (for VM pass-thru).

 

Got it, I didn't consider that if the PSU is enough to start up all the drives, then there is likely enough power for the MOBO and CPU considering most drives won't be spinning at a given time.

 

I'd think a quality 750w unit is plenty for this system, but you could go to 850 if you want to have even more "headroom".    The Corsair HX or AX series, or a Seasonic X series unit would all be good choices.

 

I'm taking your advice and plan to purchase the SeaSonic Snow Silent 750W ATX12V (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151154). It's fully modular, platinum efficiency, and the fan is hybrid (from what I understand it doesn't turn on at low loads).

 

You absolutely want to use a quality UPS unit ... this almost completely eliminates the likelihood of the kind of failure you're concerned about, as MOST power supply failures are either caused by power spikes (virtually eliminated by the UPS) or by startup transients (during which time the drives are all just spinning up ... no writes are in process).

 

Roger, already have a UPS so covered there  :)

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