Anyone else using a low-watt PSU in their build?


wisem2540

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I have a norco 12 drive system (10 attached) based on an AMD Phenom 1045T.  Had a PSU failure (7 years old).  It was a 2U 450w Athena Power with a 26A 12v rail

 

I had a 400w ATX, 25A Rail coolermaster just laying around, so I rigged it up, since it doesn't physically fit in the case.

 

I know alot of people prefer to go with 700-1000W PSUs, but I am curious if anyone is running anything in the 300-400W range with a dozen drives?

 

My KillAwatt meter only shows usage of about 140w, 

 

 

In the near future, I plan to move to a norco 20 bay case (Standard ATX size).  I will likely go with a 700-800w PSU with a 50-60A 12v rail so that I can support a GPU and 20 drives

 

 

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I monitor my power quite closely when making hardware changes - I run 12 hard drives in each server using 430 and 450W power supplies with no issues.  With a variety of power meters I only see just of 200W at the start of the drives spinning up.  Even if I miss the absolute peak measurement because it's quite short, I am pretty sure that I am below 300W peak.  I should point out that the rest of the hardware is pretty basic - no graphics cards, for example.   The 450W was replaced (from a 430) about 18 month ago.  Power supplies do age, and I would not reuse an old power supply in a new server build.

Edited by S80_UK
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If you are not running multiple graphics cards, then stick with the lower wattage power supplies. 400-450 watt sounds just fine for you. Power supplies are in their peak efficiency around their mid-point of output, so try to keep your power-supply sized as close to your average demand as possible, while still staying within your peak demand. For example, I have a dual processor e5-2670V1, 11 HDD and 3 SSD, GTX 1050 Ti and 7850 HD and do just fine with a 750 watt. It is higher than needed for my average demand but within my peak demand. Server typically sits around 200 watts.

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My advice would be to look at several of the psu calculators that can be found here:

 

https://www.bing.com/search?q=coolermaster+psu+calc&form=EDNTHT&mkt=en-us&httpsmsn=1&refig=3a5686a1e094472affe20f60e8cf6e3c&sp=5&ghc=1&qs=AS&pq=coolermaster+&sk=SC3AS1&sc=8-13&cvid=3a5686a1e094472affe20f60e8cf6e3c&cc=US&setlang=en-US

 

 and look at an average of several. There are a lot more components that go into deriving power requirements than the number of drives. Not something you want to be on the wrong side of.

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