PSU advice

As some of you may know from last Mojo’s - I am having PSU problems. My trusty Antec 550 Truepower cannot cope with 8HDD, 2DVD-RW, AMD X2 and X800XT PE

I was going to follow Sarge’s advice and get an Akasa 600W jobbie, but that did not do too well in the Custom PC PSU review this month.

I was also toying with getting a PC Power & Cooling 850W jobbie on the basis that it should last for a while but that got knocked back in the above review for being noisy.

Now I am toying with getting a CoolerMaster Stacker and two Seasonic S12 600W PSUs and powering some of my kit from 1 and some from the other (the stacker apparently has the necessary to allow 2 PSUs to work together). The Seasonic came top in the Custom PC review. I can buy the Stacker and 2 Seasonics for less than the PCP&C PSU above.

What do you guys think?

Depend’s if you need something now… or prepared to wait abit longer, there as some
interestings PSU’s comming to market, new models from Akasa in a 650watt version that
as an engineering sample is getting some prise.

Hexus mentioned Aopen have an engineering sample of a new design to be brought to market that will see 700watt’s of true power.

The 850Watt PCP&P is not your normal PSU form factor so you could run into probs anyway with it actually fitting as its at least 50% longer.

If changing cases is not an issue then I would certainly go with a 2PSU setup if your happy
having a different style of case.

I’ve a CM Stacker that I got from Deaky, I can’t see me buying another case tbh. 2 PSU setup sounds good for that kinda power you’ll need. Power the sata drives non-op sys drives from one of them and if one goes pop ever then you’re covered :chin:

DT.

Do you have only one computer? I ask this because many people with custom built rigs like yours actually design the rig with a specific purpose (or purposes) in mind. You seem to have designed your system for maximum power consumption and PSU torturing.

What do you use that rig for? Everything? If I were you I’d figure out the tasks you need it to perform well and restructure it a little. For instance, if you game heavily and still need great crunching, multitasking, CD ripping, etc… then an X2 and a 7800GTX is the hottest setup. If you don’t care about crunching, multi-tasking or CD ripping that much but gaming and extreme overclocking and benching are your priority I’d go with SLI and a nice single-core FX. If you primarily want crunching and decent gaming and PCMark04/05 benching your current rig is great, but I’d question the need for 8 internal hard drives.

How do you have those configured? Is it two sets of 4-drive RAID 0 arrays mirriored? I would suggest cutting the OS drives to (2) 74GB Raptors in RAID zero and a couple of 250GB+ storage drives. Then I’d use Norton Ghost or the equivilent to back everything up onto a 400GB USB drive. You may even consider taking some of the internal drives outside, putting them in their own powered case and converting them to USB drives for backup, etc…unless you just really love having 4 or 5 extra drives in your computer at all times.

If you insist on having so many drives internally I’d try the OCZ Powerstream 600 with adjustible rails. They work very well. Also, my favorite workstation PSU (OCZ Modstream 520) has been tested with 10 drives in an FX-57 with a 7800GTX all on an Asus A8N-E (only one DVD burner though) and the rails are very stable even under 100% CPU load. This system also has 2 120mm case fans and an 80mm blowhole fan, as well as a TT Venus 12 running at almost 6000RPM.

Alta … If you have not sorted anything out by the next Mojo’s
Your welcome to try my PCP&P 510DLX and If I can find the lead
I will bring my Multimeter and I will be able to measure your Rigs Actual load
requirements.

Nope - I have 4 PCs.

I have 3 external drives already and a further network drive. I have a lot of data sored on my system and find it useful to store it thw way I do.

I hope you don’t patronise your clients the way you just patronised me - if you spoke to me like that I would be buying my PC off your competitor not you.

I have been building rigs for many years, and until recently mine performed very well. I have researched the options and those seemed the best for me.

For info the OCZ PSU’s did not do nearly so well as you might think in the test, hence they are not even on my list.

PMM - thanks. I may well take you up on that offer :slight_smile:

if you want any internal pics of the stacker case Alta, let me know. Just to allow you the exploration of both options :smiley:

DT.

Couple of quick links for you Alta…


Both may be of some interest to you :wink:

I have the PCP&C 510DLX also…It runs quite fine with the following, just for comparison purposes…
see rig in signature for details, with 2 raptors, 2 80gig hdds, 2 optical (dvd rw, rom) floppy, 2x120mm 1x80mm led case fans

and though not the most accurate, MSIs Corecenter reads my rails as:
+3.3v 3.15v
+5v 5.05v
+12v 11.98v

much better than my antec truepower 430 (though I only had 2 hdds and a 9800pro at the time)

Its a shame you cant stagger the spinups for your storage drives to reduce the initial strain on the psu.

If I had the money and the amount of hardware you have, I personally would get the 850w monster…that way you KNOW if you have a problem, its NOT the psu, lol

Mr Alta Sir…

Have you seen PCP&C latest offering :boggle:

1Kw PSU 1100watts peak… Pre-orderable at Extreme Prometeia a snip at £350 :eek:

Yes, sir. I have. :eek:

On a slightly related subject :wink: - I have a 5 year old Compaq server with 2 1100W PSUs fitted…