Hi everyone,

I am looking for a PSU that will power many HDDs/SDDs (up to 20). I can buy a PSU with 6 cables, with 4x and 2x SATA connectors but these are higher wattage PSUs that are unnecessarily expensive for my purpose.

 

Trying to avoid IDE -> 4x SATA cables, I wanted to try for my first time SATA expanders. So, I have 2 questions:
1. Is it safe to connect a 4x SATA expander to a 4x SATA cable (thus having 7 drives per cable in total)?

2. Is it better to connect the expander at the 1st or the last connector of the SATA cable. Or is it of no importance?

Thanks in advance for your answers....

Are you talking about power splitters?



Regardless, you will need enough power to deal with the spin-up power requirements. A relatively simple calculation to estimate.

One reason you may want a more expensive PSU is to have separate rails. When powering that many drives, you want to make sure you don't starve something else because you have momentarily heavy demand.

 

13 minutes ago, whipdancer said:

Are you talking about power splitters?


 

 

No, I am talking about this:

 

 

13 minutes ago, whipdancer said:

Regardless, you will need enough power to deal with the spin-up power requirements. A relatively simple calculation to estimate.

One reason you may want a more expensive PSU is to have separate rails. When powering that many drives, you want to make sure you don't starve something else because you have momentarily heavy demand.
 

 

Thanks for the info, I am aware, but even many good quality 750W PSUs usually do not have enough connectors to accommodate 20 drives. Whenever I built a PC, the last thing I use to cut costs is the PSU, but, obviously, I am trying to avoid buying something that I dont need, hence the power extenders (I also happen to have them at hand).

 

Edited March 4, 20242 yr by papnikol
grammar+context

I've never seen a PSU with 20 sata power connectors, either. At my worst, I was running 24 drives using a number of power splitters (1-n power splitters/adapter cables) on an 800w PSU. I just tried to split them between the 2 rails the sata connections were on. I've since gone for higher density and am actively reducing drive count.

There are a few but they are relatively expensive:
https://de.pcpartpicker.com/products/power-supply/#A=550000000000,2050000000000&D=20&sort=price&page=1&E=5,14

 

So, going back to the original question(s):
 

Quote

 

1. Is it safe to connect a 4x SATA expander to a 4x SATA cable (thus having 7 drives per cable in total)?

2. Is it better to connect the expander at the 1st or the last connector of the SATA cable. Or is it of no importance?

 

 

12 hours ago, papnikol said:

No, I am talking about this:

Avoid those, SATA power should not be split for more than two HDDs, connector has fairly low max amps, it would be OK with SSDs.

39 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Avoid those, SATA power should not be split for more than two HDDs, connector has fairly low max amps, it would be OK with SSDs.

 

Interesting, can you please point me to the source?

I tend to prefer Molex to Sata adapters.

Generally the cables are bigger.

34 minutes ago, ChatNoir said:

I tend to prefer Molex to Sata adapters.

Generally the cables are bigger.

And they are easier to find, but, generally, from all the comments in various forums, the common wisdom is that they should be avoided (although that is what I have been using up to now)

1 hour ago, papnikol said:

Interesting, can you please point me to the source?

Google "SATA max power 12v"

 

 

7.2k rpm 3.5 HDDs can easy reach 2.5A on spin up, and this will be mostly on the 12v rail, example:

 

 

 

7 hours ago, JorgeB said:

7.2k rpm 3.5 HDDs can easy reach 2.5A on spin up, and this will be mostly on the 12v rail, example:

 

I see. Yet, my Corsair has 4 SATA connectors on one cable. Maybe it is specifically made////

12 minutes ago, papnikol said:

Yet, my Corsair has 4 SATA connectors on one cable. Maybe it is specifically made////

I guess I wasn't clear, having a PSU cable with 4 SATA plugs (or more) is perfectly fine, splitting a single SATA plug to 4 SATA plugs is not.

19 hours ago, JorgeB said:

I guess I wasn't clear, having a PSU cable with 4 SATA plugs (or more) is perfectly fine, splitting a single SATA plug to 4 SATA plugs is not.

No, you were, I get it now. So, a viable solution would be to use a splitter with only 2 SATA connectors? Again, do you think I could use 1 splitter on every connector of the PSU cable? like that (where every "[" is a 1->2 splitter):

 

PSU
   |
   |    
   |----[
   |
   |----[
   |
   |----[
   |
   |----[

 

Edited March 6, 20242 yr by papnikol

8 minutes ago, papnikol said:

Again, do you think I could use 1 splitter on every connector of the PSU cable?

You should avoid splitters as much as possible, they can be another point of failure, but a two way splitter on each plug would be fine regarding current.