PicoPSU

[coldflame]

Is anyone here running their Unraid system with the PicoPSU? I just picked it up at local Fry's and it is rated at 150w. I'm able to spin my AMD-based Unraid system with 4 disks (2 WD Green, 2 misc 7200 RPM drives) and it seems to start and work fine.

 

Has anyone found a practical limit of what amount of hardware PicoPSU can support?

 

I love the efficiency of this little thing, my system consumes 15-20w less with it than with Antec SmartPower 500w PSU.

 

[pfennigcat]

I also am very interested in the picoPSU.  My system (see sig) is new and currently has only two disks installed, but is pulling less than 75 watts max.  Yet I had to go for a 400w PSU to get a good quality single-12v-rail model.  I see 35w idle with disks spun down - if I could drop another 10w with the picoPSU I would be very tempted.

[Rajahal]

PicoPSU review

 

Wow, that is truly pico!  Impressive.

 

Peak output on the +12V rail is 10A, so I would expect that it could support up to 4 or maybe 5 green drives.  Not sure it is really worthwhile for unRAID, unless you are building a truly tiny server.

 

I will definitely consider using one of these for one of my 3 or 4 drive builds.  I just wonder, if I did use one of these, what would I do with the massive PSU hole in the back of the case?

[Joe L.]

PicoPSU review

 

Wow, that is truly pico!  Impressive.

 

Peak output on the +12V rail is 10A, so I would expect that it could support up to 4 or maybe 5 green drives.  Not sure it is really worthwhile for unRAID, unless you are building a truly tiny server.

 

I will definitely consider using one of these for one of my 3 or 4 drive builds.  I just wonder, if I did use one of these, what would I do with the massive PSU hole in the back of the case?

Max output on the 12 volt line is 7 Amps...  I'd figure on three drives or less...  don't forget, the motherboard also uses 12 volt power, and so do the fans.  You might have 5 or 6 amps available for the disks.

[Rajahal]

Ah, right, I misread.

[mimwdv]

I"m running my UnRaid server as below:

 

X2 4000+ (undervolted to 1.0V)

M2A-VM HDMI

1x2GB RAM

4x WD Green drives

PicoPSU120, fanless 80W brick

 

It was my HTPC for 3 years, until I converted it to UnRaid a couple of months back.  It works just fine, I've had zero power problems.  I've just bought a 160W Pico and 150W brick in preparation for adding more drives.

 

Mind you, as Joe says, you need to be wary of how much power your mobo takes - some of them suck scary amounts.

 

I've found silentpcreview.com to be a really good resource.  Silent needs cool components which needs low power, so they look closely at power consumption of components.

[Rajahal]

Sweet!  Sounds like a nice little setup.  Do you have a kill-a-watt or volt meter?  I would love to see what your power usage looks like.

[jtown]

If you're using it for power efficiency, keep in mind that it's your 12VDC transformer that will dictate how efficient your system is.  The pico supplies are extremely efficient at their DC-DC conversion but the power bricks are sometimes amazingly inefficient and it's often difficult to find efficiency ratings for them.

[lensman]

Here are two good reviews of the PicoPSUs with assorted compatible power bricks:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=207

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article601-page1.html

[mimwdv]

Hi Rajahal,

 

Sorry, it took a while to get my kill a watt back from a friend!

 

I get:

startup: 101W (peak)

booting: 75W

spun up: 50W

spun down: 39W

checking (but not writing) parity: 82W

 

That's with the with the 80W brick (edac EA10953A).  Swapping in the 160W brick (ST-C-150-1200-1250-CT) saves me another 1-2W.

 

Cheers,

Miriam

[hklt]

This looks quite interesting. Anyone have any thoughts on whether one of the 160W models could power one of these?

 

http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid/tr8ub.html

 

It comes with a 300W PSU which - imho - is quite noisy. I'd LOVE to swap it out with a silent PSU.

[wsume99]

Not if you plan on using 8 drives in it.  The 12v rail on the 160w model is rated for 8A max load and 15A peak (according to the manual).  A green drive uses ~2A when spinning up so I'm guessing that if you filled up the unit with 8 drives it would overload the PSU on startup unless it can stagger the spinup.  If you can get past that hurdle, all 8 green drives spinning plus any fans and the mobo/cpu would probably draw more than the 8A max load.  I would say that it could handle something like 5-6 drives but that is just a guess.

[hklt]

Not if you plan on using 8 drives in it.  The 12v rail on the 160w model is rated for 8A max load and 15A peak (according to the manual).  A green drive uses ~2A when spinning up so I'm guessing that if you filled up the unit with 8 drives it would overload the PSU on startup unless it can stagger the spinup.  If you can get past that hurdle, all 8 green drives spinning plus any fans and the mobo/cpu would probably draw more than the 8A max load.  I would say that it could handle something like 5-6 drives but that is just a guess.

 

Bummer. Oh well, thanks for the input!