I think I need a 500W quiet PS...

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 9:37 am

Hello,

I've had it with hard drive failures, so I'm building up a system with a RAID5 array. The system will be:

-4 Maxtor 6B300S0 (300GB SATAII) Drives in RAID5 array
-2 WD Raptor 74GB drives in RAID0 array (for OS/apps, don't care about failure here)
-Radeon X600 card of some sort (dual-DVI if I can find one)
-Asus nForce4 non-SLI mobo
-2 NEC dual-layer burners

Anyhow, I'm guessing I will need at least 500W (correct me if I'm wrong). What do people recommend?

Thanks,
BoB

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 10:10 am

Buy some earplugs. 2 WD Raptors + 4 Maxtors is going to make one hell of a noise. You won't hear the PSU anyway.

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 10:56 am

My current system has 2 1st gen 15k SCSI drives in it. Somehow I think the new machine will still be quieter.

BoB

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 11:08 am

You're wrong, you don't need a 500W PSU.

You'll draw a LOT of power when you boot up, but once running 10W per drive is an overkill estimate. By my calculations, that's about 60W for your hard drives. Let's just say it takes 30W on spin up, that means you need 180W for spin up. This is a paltry amount of power compared to 500W. Even compared to 400W. Trust me, you don't need that powerful a PSU.

I can't find much information on DVD drive power draw. I do remember trying to calculate and not getting a big change there.

freak_in_cage · Post by **freak_in_cage** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 11:41 am

if your having that many hard drive failures, then perhaos question just WHY they are failing? chances are they are running too hot. below 40 is ideal. maybe its your prev PSU- was it a good quality one?

do you really need the speed of 2 raptors in raid? it mayes about 3% performance difference in about 10% of all applications- what are you using this pc for?

if your REALLY worried about loosing the data on the drive, why not just have the 2 maxtor drives in raid such that you get no perofrmance increase, but a backup! seems to me buying all these drives will cost a lot and be a pain in the ass to silence, and is probably unecassary

lm · Post by lm » Mon Dec 13, 2004 11:56 am

BoB-O wrote: I've had it with hard drive failures, ...
BoB-O wrote:
-4 Maxtor 6B300S0 (300GB SATAII) Drives in RAID5 array

Maxtor is not so reliable brand in my book. Seagate has 5 years warranty on their drives.

jimbobUK · Post by **jimbobUK** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 4:34 pm

I've suffered from a system crash that has nuked hdds in various ways 2-3 times now... it all seemed to happen when using dvd decrypter, i assume getting too many parrallel devices working..

I've used a QTechnology 300watt PSU for years and did like the volume of it.. or lack of...

Deciding to upgrade for Half Life 2 to a Radeon 9800 Pro (should of gone higher but its enough for that game and i hardly play any other PC games) made me rethink things.. I've got a watercooled system, with a mess of cabling (as can be seen here when i was recently tinkering with it having brought a mobile athlon chip http://jimtreats.com/pc/) and in the end drive temps of 40+ even tho they have fan cooling made me decide to trim down the number of drives in my system..

Anyways I brought an OCZ 520watt PSU.. its got a reasonable review on here and is one of the quietest PSUs when you start to hit using 300watts of power... I can't recommend it enough.. it has around 30amps on the 12v rail.. this is crucial i believe for numbers of hdd and other factors of performance motherboard (like my new fussy DFI lanparty motherboard) ... this 30amps compares to others PSUs 15-18amps typically on those rails..

I was previously running 5 hdds, 2 optical drives in the system with the 300watt PSU.. i'm now only running 2 hdds having moved the others to another machine in a coolermaster stacker case with a new IDE raid card that has 4 channels... ironically and something i'd not thought about, i've just moved the PSU demands to the other machine that has the stock 250watt PSU.. it now beeps at me when it boots in a way that i assume means voltages are too low.. so i need to try different PSUs in that one, probably an OCZ one again..

As for silence of this PSU.. it IS noiser than my qtech one but its not too bad.. the bigger bad is the fan on my 9800pro has made the entire system quite a lot noiser... I may WC it but its the management and hassle of it thats putting me off.. i certainly have the watercooling power to do it with the current rig..

In short, can't recommend the OCZ enough.. for demanding work i think its up there with the best of them... there is PC&P i believe or something that make even better quality PSUs but as for how quiet they are i dunno, and i think they're at least twice the money of the OCZ which is already near the mid to high end of PSU prices...

hightower · Post by **hightower** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 7:36 am

how about a tagan 480w. pretty quiet and powerful.

jimbobUK · Post by **jimbobUK** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 8:26 am

I wish there was a more precise way to figure all this stuff out but needless to say if you are going to go for 6 hdds and 2 optical devices along with CPU and a reasonable graphics card then you need to add up the amps of each device and possibly the 12v amp strain..

I'd love a website or program that let you build a hypethetical PC with components and then it told you the approximate wattage usage and 12v rail dependancys..

I believe that each hdd adds 2-3amps onto the 12v rail... that puts you at 18amps before adding optical drives, cpu, graphics card etc.. so having 30 or more amps on there is definately a good idea..

It'd be great if Silentpcreview could host a java applet or something that would do this for you.. really let you have a good idea where your wattage & ampage usage would lie and then you could look at PSU reviews and know roughly where your system would lie in the DBA table of wattage being used... as for how hard it is to gather all that information and write the thing, i'd imagine the former would be more difficult than the latter..

Tephras · Post by **Tephras** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 3:41 pm

jimbobUK wrote:I'd love a website or program that let you build a hypethetical PC with components and then it told you the approximate wattage usage and 12v rail dependancys..

There are several such sites, but I don't really trust any of them, IMO some of the power estimations for system components that these sites use can be questioned.

http://takaman.jp/D/?english <---This one gives figures for the voltage lines.
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/
http://www.adecy.com/psu/

Edward Ng · Post by **Edward Ng** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 5:27 pm

jimbobUK wrote:Anyways I brought an OCZ 520watt PSU.. its got a reasonable review on here and is one of the quietest PSUs when you start to hit using 300watts of power... I can't recommend it enough.. it has around 30watts on the 12v rail.. this is crucial i believe for numbers of hdd and other factors of performance motherboard (like my new fussy DFI lanparty motherboard) ... this 30watts compares to others PSUs 15-18watts typically on those rails..

I take it you mean amps?

-Ed

jimbobUK · Post by **jimbobUK** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 5:38 pm

yes sorry... amps, watts damn my stupidty.. i'll fix it

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:27 am

BoB-O wrote: -Athlon 64 3700+ (San Diego), OC'ed
-4 Maxtor 6B300S0 (300GB SATAII) Drives in RAID5 array
-Areca ARC-1210 PCIe RAID card
-1 WD Raptor 74GB drive
-Passively cooled XFX 6600 dual DVI card
-Asus nForce4 SLI mobo
-2 NEC dual-layer burners
-2 Nexus 120mm case fans
-1 Nexus 92mm CPU fan (on XP-90)

Reviving this thread. The consensus was that I don't need 500W. I'm a few weeks from plunking down the coin for this. I updated my system details in the quote above. I'm planning to put this all in a SLK3700-BQE. Will I be good to go with a Seasonic S12-430?

Thanks,
BoB

Post by **MikeC** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 9:44 am

jimbobUK wrote:I believe that each hdd adds 2-3amps onto the 12v rail... that puts you at 18amps before adding optical drives, cpu, graphics card etc.. so having 30 or more amps on there is definately a good idea..

A clarification now that we've been measuring HDD power draw in the lab. We've never seen anything like 2-3A draw -- at startup or at any time from any drive. The max current draw is maybe 1.5A absolute tops on the 12V line at startup; there's some current pulled off the 5V line as well. See SPCR's Hard Drive Testing Methodology - under Power Consumption on page 3

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Tue Jul 12, 2005 3:35 pm

MikeC wrote:
jimbobUK wrote:I believe that each hdd adds 2-3amps onto the 12v rail... that puts you at 18amps before adding optical drives, cpu, graphics card etc.. so having 30 or more amps on there is definately a good idea..
A clarification now that we've been measuring HDD power draw in the lab. We've never seen anything like 2-3A draw -- at startup or at any time from any drive. The max current draw is maybe 1.5A absolute tops on the 12V line at startup; there's some current pulled off the 5V line as well. See SPCR's Hard Drive Testing Methodology - under Power Consumption on page 3

So it sounds like you're saying that 430W will be plenty?

BoB

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 11:53 am

BoB-O wrote: -Athlon 64 3700+ (San Diego), OC'ed
-4 Maxtor 6B300S0 (300GB SATAII) Drives in RAID5 array
-Areca ARC-1210 PCIe RAID card
-1 WD Raptor 74GB drive
-Passively cooled XFX 6600 dual DVI card
-Asus nForce4 SLI mobo
-2 NEC dual-layer burners
-2 Nexus 120mm case fans
-1 Nexus 92mm CPU fan (on XP-90)

I just decided to get the Athlon 64 X2 4400+. Should that scare me away from the S12-430 into the arms of the S12-500?

Thanks,
BoB

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 1:45 pm

12V power makes or breaks it:

-Athlon 64 4400+ (Toledo) TDP 110W (9A) (probably less in reality)
-4 Maxtor 6B300S0 (300GB SATAII) Drives in RAID5 array 4 x 1.5A at spinup
-Areca ARC-1210 PCIe RAID card (No idea. Can't be more than a couple of amps, surely?)
-1 WD Raptor 74GB drive 1.5A spinup
-Passively cooled XFX 6600 dual DVI card 4A
-Asus nForce4 SLI mobo 2A max
-2 NEC dual-layer burners 2 x 2A max, (while spinning up?)
-2 Nexus 120mm case fans (negligible)
-1 Nexus 92mm CPU fan (on XP-90) (ditto)

The most your system can conceivably draw is 28A, but you'd have to be working at full load in poor thermal conditions and have all your drives spinning up at the same time. In normal use you'll be well within the maximum rating (29A combined) so it should be fine, but I don't blame you if you want the safety net of the 500W.
Please point out any corrections in the above

cotdt · Post by **cotdt** » Sat Aug 20, 2005 4:08 pm

300W will be plenty. try getting an antec phantom 500, and you will probably notice that the fan will never even start spinning. hard drives don't eat up that much power.

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 10:48 am

cotdt wrote:300W will be plenty. try getting an antec phantom 500, and you will probably notice that the fan will never even start spinning. hard drives don't eat up that much power.

I feel like sticking with SeaSonic. Since I'm going to O/C a little bit for fun, I don't want any extra heat dumped into the case from a passive PS.

Has anybody built a similar PC with the S12-430? No problems?

Thanks,
BoB

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 11:51 am

Well, I just took the dive and bought the S12-430. I figured out that the RAID card was only 0.5A at 12V, so that gives me some headroom. I'm also not putting in 2 DVD drives right now (and likely will never do so), so I should be fine in the short term. Also, the RAID card supports staggered spinup, so that should limit the inrush current as the machine powers up.

Thanks for all your help!
BoB

BoB-O · Post by **BoB-O** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 5:19 pm

So, the S12-430 is putting out a little more heat than I'd like. I'm RMA'ing it with Seasonic for a straight-through PS (Super Silencer). They don't have any of the 460's in stock, but they do have the 400W (22A on the 12V line). The S12-430 has no problems at all with my system, but it has 29A split across 2 12V lines. Would people hesitate here or worry about the SS400? I do understand that the SS400 will be a little louder; I'll cope.

Thanks,
BoB

I think I need a 500W quiet PS...

I think I need a 500W quiet PS...

Re: I think I need a 500W quiet PS...

Re: I think I need a 500W quiet PS...