PSU for 24 HDDs

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bao__zhe

Weaksauce
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Apr 18, 2012
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I am currently using a 900W PSU from a SuperMicro SuperWorkstation 5037A-i in a NORCO RPC-4224 Case. The specs are as follows:

Code: 
AC Voltage 	    100-240 V, 50-60 Hz, 10-6 Amp
+5V Standby 	    3 Amp
+12V1 	    25 Amp
+12V2 	    25 Amp
+12V3 	    25 Amp
+12V4 	    25 Amp
+5V 	    25 Amp
+3.3V 	    25 Amp
-12V 	    0.5 Amp

reproduced from http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/tower/5037/sys-5037a-i.cfm

The motherboard is SM X9SRA (from the same SM system) and the CPU is E5-1650.

I'm wondering if this is good for 24 HDDs especially considering the start-up power draw of the HDDs. I'm currently running 11-12 HDDs and it seems good so far. If it's not good would you recommend a PSU good for many HDDs?

I believe the NORCO back plane does not support staggered start-up of HDDs? Is there any cheap way to make a staggered start-up setup?

In addition, how to RMA bad SAS back planes for the NORCO RPC-4224? It seems if i connect more than 3 back planes the computer cannot power up. I can't find contact information on the NORCO website.
 
I use a 650W supply at work for a similar # of drives on each of my raid servers. Typical load is under 300W with all 20 plus 7200 RPM drives active.

With that said spinup for the disks in these servers does not happen often. I would say 1 or 2 times per year on average.
 
drescherjm said:
I use a 650W supply at work for a similar # of drives on each of my raid servers. Typical load is under 300W with all 20 plus 7200 RPM drives active.
Click to expand...

I'm more concerned about startup of the HDDs. Are your HDDs booting up at exactly the same time?
 
These are all 7200 RPM SATA drives (Hitachi 7k3000s, WDC Black, Seagate Constellation ES.3, Toshiba 3.5" HDD MK.002TSKB) on now mostly on LSI SAS HBAs. The power supplies we are using are mostly Antec 650W supplies. I did have a 1KW supply on one server but it was removed because of the length and replaced with a 650W unit.

I did not setup a delayed spinup although I am unsure if the lsi cards do that by default. Again the power does not go down often for us..
 
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I have about 40 drives. Peak power at startup is ~620W, and stable (normal) at ~250W. My PSU is 850W Seasonic. I think you're good to go with the 900W PSU.
 
In the SE3016 the PSU is a 450-500W for 16 drives, all starting concurrently.
 
Thanks for the replies! Seems the PSU is good to go now.

Any suggestion where to look for backplane replacement?
 
Do note that hi-end desktop PSUs deliver most of their amps on the 12V rail due to graphics card requirements, while hard disks pull a significant part of their power from the 5V rail. So it's not only about total wattage.
 
Isn't the motor still +12V for 3.5 inch drives? That would be where the spinup power is.
 
I use a solid 600W to run system and 24 drives in Norco 4224, no issues. Idle usage is about 160W.
 
zrav said:
Do note that hi-end desktop PSUs deliver most of their amps on the 12V rail due to graphics card requirements, while hard disks pull a significant part of their power from the 5V rail. So it's not only about total wattage.
Click to expand...

well i thought about it when i posted this that's why i listed the spec. but it seems no one is mentioning it so i assume it should be fine. oh well.
 
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