coldflame Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 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. Link to comment
pfennigcat Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 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. Link to comment
Rajahal Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 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? Link to comment
Joe L. Posted November 4, 2010 Share Posted November 4, 2010 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. Link to comment
mimwdv Posted November 5, 2010 Share Posted November 5, 2010 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. Link to comment
Rajahal Posted November 6, 2010 Share Posted November 6, 2010 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. Link to comment
jtown Posted November 6, 2010 Share Posted November 6, 2010 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. Link to comment
lensman Posted December 6, 2010 Share Posted December 6, 2010 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 Link to comment
mimwdv Posted December 28, 2010 Share Posted December 28, 2010 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 Link to comment
hklt Posted December 28, 2010 Share Posted December 28, 2010 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. Link to comment
wsume99 Posted December 28, 2010 Share Posted December 28, 2010 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. Link to comment
hklt Posted December 28, 2010 Share Posted December 28, 2010 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! Link to comment
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