2 Cases 1 PSU?

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Bigzaj

Weaksauce
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Aug 18, 2010
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I have my server in a Norco 4220, I want to buy another 4220 for an HTPC and use the drive bays for the server. Can I run the power for the backplane of the 2nd case off of the PSU for the first? Can I use the HTPC psu to power the backplane as long as the drives are connected to the server (SAS expander)?
 
The problem you will run into is power requirements not a lack of connectors. If you have a nice beefy PSU in the first norco case, and have controller cards that can do staggered spinup then yes you probably can pull it off. You will want to engineer it with some disconnects of some kind though so you can separate the two cases without having to dismantle everything each time.
 
I'm planning on doing a 1200watt Corsair (to replace the current 850). And connecting via custom molex connectors.

Not sure how much power the drives will consume on bootup though, so I dont know if this would be enough power.

Will the Areca 1880 do staggered spin-up on boot?
 
It's usually in the BIOS. If you enable AHCI, then you can set which hard drives to spin up first and which ones to spin up last, thus staggering it.
 
Why not just build the second the case with HTPC and use its own PSU to power the drives.
Then plug in an HP SAS expander in the HTPC case and connect to the backplanes.

There is really no reason to run power cables from the first case to the second.
 
Yes the Areca 1680 will do staggered spinup.
If you are using a RAID controller it doenst matter what is set in the BIOS
 
nitrobass24 said:
Why not just build the second the case with HTPC and use its own PSU to power the drives.
Then plug in an HP SAS expander in the HTPC case and connect to the backplanes.

There is really no reason to run power cables from the first case to the second.
Click to expand...

My fear with this is reboots/restarts and how it will affect the raid array if the drives power cycle and the raid card doesnt.
 
If the drives power cycle while the RAID card is live, well, the card will see that as an error. And start beeping like hell. Then, when the drives power back up, it'll notice and begin recovery. It would generally be a better plan to power cycle the RAID card FIRST and then the drives.

A software or hardware reset of your HTPC motherboard would not power cycle the drives. It's only a power-off situation that would affect the drives. Assuming you've got the HTPC configured to run 24x7 and not use any power saving or sleep modes that would drop the power.

You could leech power from one case to the other. But you'd want to make sure to be using heavy enough gauge wire (and connectors) to deliver the wattage necessary. If you don't use heavy enough wire for the distance and power the voltage will drop and the wire will overheat. Just make sure whatever connectors you use are designed to handle the load (as in, not just a single drive molex connector).
 
You could probably have a tri-psu setup... ghetto style, but might do what you are looking for...
In the new 4220 you add two psu, one for the htpc and the other as a slave-psu(for the backplane/hdds) to the psu that you have in your current 4220... problem might be space for the two psu and a bit of case-modding...
 
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