Add2PSU Daisy Chain Power Supply Adapter

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Legit Reviews has just posted a quickie one page review of the Add2PSU daisy chain PSU adapter today. For comparison purposes and more info on the Add2PSU, you can see our article on "The Black Art of Dual PSUs in Your Enthusiast PC" here.

To try out the Add2PSU I pulled two Corsair HX620W power supplies that I retired from the test bench early last year since they were unable to handle the power demands of some of the crazy computer hardware that I benchmark and overclock around here. I hooked the two 620W power supplies together with the Add2PSU adapter and sure enough both power supplies kicked on like there were siamese twins. The Add2PSU worked fine and I ended up with a total of 1240 Watts of power by using this simple device, which is plenty power for most enthusiast PCs that you could build today.
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Might be a silly question, but I always had wondered if it would cause problems daisy-chaining two different PSU's, say one 750W and an 850W?
 
Johnny_Utah said:
Might be a silly question, but I always had wondered if it would cause problems daisy-chaining two different PSU's, say one 750W and an 850W?
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No question is a silly question, its only silly if you come here and pretend you know it all. Any answers out their.
 
So when are we going to start to see people starting homes on fire because their computer overloads the wall outlet? :p Kind of a good solution for a 2nd psu I guess..glad I dont need that much power yet.
 
I suppose it makes sense if you have a 650W around and want to upgrade to an SLI rig. However, I would just spend the extra 100 bucks (on top of the money for another 650W) and get a 1000 or 1200 and be safe.
 
It's not risky at all to run two psu's in one pc. All the adapter does is use a ground and signal wire which activates the other psu to turn on. The only down side in using two psu's is that you just doubled your chances of having your pc down due to a bad psu failing. The upside to this is its cheaper generally to buy 2 lower wattage psu's and daisy chain them than to buy a more expensive psu. As far as overloading a circuit, this can be done with one or more psu's depending how much of a load is already on it.

A good example of this is I have 2 corsair AX1200's psu's plugged into 1 Heavy duty 10 gauge extension cord on a dedicated 20 amp circuit. I'm pulling a solid 18.5-19.5 amps on that circuit. I had to make sure the extension cord could handle the wattage as well as the circuit its plugged into.

Volts * Amps = Watts
 
Anyone know how to do the reverse. I mean share my 1000W PSU between 2 computers?
 
Bedlam said:
So when are we going to start to see people starting homes on fire because their computer overloads the wall outlet? :p Kind of a good solution for a 2nd psu I guess..glad I dont need that much power yet.
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Psst. That's exactly what circuit breakers are designed to prevent.

Also.

The total capacity of the power supply for its internal voltage (eg, 12v * 18A = 216Watts) is not the same at the draw from the socket being that you need a lot less amperage to get 216 watts from 120v. (1.8A)

Power Supplies also do not continually draw at maximum from the outlet. They draw what is needed based on load.

I would argue that using multiple power supplies at ~50% load each is safer than using one at 100% since you're not stressing each of the individual power supplies as much.
 
SpeedyVV said:
Anyone know how to do the reverse. I mean share my 1000W PSU between 2 computers?
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The best answer is: Don't. You'd be a dumbass for trying.

1000W doesn't mean 1000Watts to divide equally amongst everything. I'll bet you still only have about 120-200 Watts on the 5v and 3.3v rails and would be just about sufficient for one motherboard... and a fantastic way to fry it if you were to split it to two.

Learn those spec ratings on the side of the power supply itself. More wattage total wattage is not always better. Especially if you have one of those multi-rail power supplies that were designed by an idiot... leaving you with an overloaded 12v1 and a 12v2 you can't use at all.
 
techrat said:
The best answer is: Don't. You'd be a dumbass for trying.

1000W doesn't mean 1000Watts to divide equally amongst everything. I'll bet you still only have about 120-200 Watts on the 5v and 3.3v rails and would be just about sufficient for one motherboard... and a fantastic way to fry it if you were to split it to two.
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200W is plenty for several motherboards, man. 12V wouldn't be an issue as most PSUs of that rating can dump all of their output onto 12V, with the minor rails using DC-DC off the 12V.
 
Honeslty, IMHO it's pretty dumb to EVER use 2 psu's in a system as a permanent solution. There will ALWAYS be small differences in voltage on the lines (ie PSU1 12v rail is actually 12.04v and the other one is 12.1v) this will cause a reasonable amount of current to flow between the power supplies. Depending on how you wire it up this current may even flow THROUGH your computer parts, potentially in places not designed to handle much current at all (eg SATA cables/etc if a HD is powered from a diff psu than the mobo you could end up with a ground loop and it will cause current to flow along the ground line in the SATA cable, and a SATA controller is NOT going to be able to take more than a few hundred mA before it dies. There are MANY other scenarios that this can happen). This can EASILY lead to damage of the components in the computer and the power supplies themselves.

With that being said, I have used dual PSU's several times as temporary solutions in a pinch and have not damaged anything yet. I still dont think it's a good idea though.
 
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