Antec Earthwatts 380W Fileserver

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cameron122000

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Jul 31, 2008
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I'm currently running my fileserver with 4 hard drives (1 100GB IDE for the OS, 3x 500GB SATA 7200 RPM in RAID 5 for storage). I was wondering, what is the maximum amount of hard drives I can put onto this power supply (safely)?

Parts List:
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
AMD 64 X2 4800+ 2.5Ghz
4x 1GB DDR2 800 RAM
100GB IDE Hard Drive (OS)
3x 500GB SATA 7200 RPM Hard Drive (RAID 5 Storage)

I'm also thinking of underclocking and undervolting the CPU, which will free up a little more power for use elsewhere. Any thoughts?
 
With your system, I'd say you could probably handle at least 25-30 HDs. Hard drives typically use at most 10W of power each, so assuming ~100-150W maximum load for the rest of your components (which is probably more than it would actually be), this is probably fairly accurate.

Basically, you really don't have to worry about maxing out your PSU with HDs.
 
Hard Drives use between 7-11w at IDLE, and can spike up into the 20's of watts during spinup...

But, I agree, with an Earthwatts 380 you could probably get a 6 drive array going on with absolutely no problem/
 
Okay sounds good. I just didn't want to go ahead and buy more hard drives and have them die because I didn't know if the power supply could handle all of the drives.
 
Zero82z said:
With your system, I'd say you could probably handle at least 25-30 HDs. Hard drives typically use at most 10W of power each, so assuming ~100-150W maximum load for the rest of your components (which is probably more than it would actually be), this is probably fairly accurate.

Basically, you really don't have to worry about maxing out your PSU with HDs.
Click to expand...

You'd be hard pressed to power 25-30 HDD's in the OP's rig with an EA380. A realistic figure would between 8-15, and even then it depends on the drives power requirements which typically range from 12W-36W during spinup.
 
If you check my sig, you'll see the specs for my Linux file server. The EA380 powers all 5 drives plus the system just fine. Then again my system draws power from the +5V and +3.3V and barely touches the +12V rail at all leaving plenty of power left for hard drives.

So the max number of drives considering your system might be around 7 or so. No way in hell could it power 20 drives let alone 25 to 30 considering the startup draw. Might be possible with staggered spinup though...

But anyway you're safe for at least 7 drives.

Hmm, I have an extra five drives lying around, might just hook those up to the server just to see what happens...
 
Staggered spin up is a catch 22. You have to buy a RAID card that can support it, and it's usually cheaper to buy a bigger PSU then it is to buy a higher end RAID card. That and I don't think that every hard drive out there supports staggered spin up.
 
I checked up on the Western Digital site (my 3x 500GB are WD 5000AAKS), and they say that the drives use about 8.77W during read/write. So I'm going to just assume that when they say read/write, they mean full power consumption, and i'll round up to 9W. And if my current parts excluding hard drives really only takes up 150W, I'd be (theoretically) able to power up to around 20 drives.

But really I'm only looking for around 10-11 drives. But from what you are all telling me, I should only go up to around 7 or 8?
 
cameron122000 said:
I checked up on the Western Digital site (my 3x 500GB are WD 5000AAKS), and they say that the drives use about 8.77W during read/write. So I'm going to just assume that when they say read/write, they mean full power consumption, and i'll round up to 9W. And if my current parts excluding hard drives really only takes up 150W, I'd be (theoretically) able to power up to around 20 drives.

But really I'm only looking for around 10-11 drives. But from what you are all telling me, I should only go up to around 7 or 8?
Click to expand...

WD doesn't list the spinup wattage for 5000AAKS, but FWIW the 750GB uses 25.4W.
 
So assuming that your current server sans hard drives takes up 150W of power (at max load for the GPU and CPU), roughly up to 9 drives (including the four you already have) can be used with the EA380, assuming that all 9 drives have the same spinup wattage of 25.4W.
 
Okay well I've been searching around for the spinup wattage of the 5000AAKS drives and according to multiple sites, they say it's got a max spinup wattage of 9.50W, which seems kind of low to me as you were all saying it would be in the 20-25W range.

Danny Bui:
Thanks. :)
 
I have an X2 [email protected] running full load with a WD 250 gig SATA drive, WD 120 gig PATA drive and two Seagate 160 gig 7200.7 PATA drives on an EA380. I haven't hooked up the Kill A Watt to that system but it has no trouble with those drives and I wouldn't have a problem hooking up a few more at least.

My other system with an EA380 has a [email protected] running full load and a PATA hard drive of some sort. It should have plenty of extra power for extra drives as well. I wouldn't worry too much. More than likely you'd probably run out of SATA ports before you ran into a problem with the PSU.

 
cameron122000 said:
Okay well I've been searching around for the spinup wattage of the 5000AAKS drives and according to multiple sites, they say it's got a max spinup wattage of 9.50W, which seems kind of low to me as you were all saying it would be in the 20-25W range.
Click to expand...

Those sites that you're referring to are quoting the read/write power usage. While the spinup may not be 25W like it's big brother 7500AAKS, I can pretty much guarantee that it is more than 9.5W, and more along the lines of ~20W.
 
My fileserver is uses unRaid and this is a common topic on the unRaid forums. There, the popular opinion is ~25w per hard drive for spin up. I'd run 12 drives with an Antec Earthwatts 380 without hesitation with the OP's configuration.
 
JRS said:
My fileserver is uses unRaid and this is a common topic on the unRaid forums. There, the popular opinion is ~25w per hard drive for spin up. I'd run 12 drives with an Antec Earthwatts 380 without hesitation with the OP's configuration.
Click to expand...

unRAID looks like a very interesting project. 12 drives at 25W for each would put the hard drives at a total wattage of 300W. Wouldn't that be cutting the 380W mark close?

EDIT:
I found out the power consumption for my other components. Total wattage comes out to be around 130-140W. That leaves about 240W for hard drives. 25W for each drive would give me 9-10 drives, but if each drive is pulling around 20W, I'll be able to get in 12.
 
It's honestly going to be 25w... Maybe even more. This is the reason certain highend raid cards have staggered spinup.
 
Subject
What is the WD5000AAKS power consumption during spinup? I've searched the knowledge base/FAQ and the power requirements for spinup are not listed. The 7500AAKS is 25.4W, is it going to be similar? Thanks.

Response (Brad S.) 09/30/2008 09:36 AM
Dear JOHN,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.

The spin up power will be the same, 25.4W.

Sincerely,
Brad S.
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com
 
Thanks for asking, device manager!

So now we know what's the startup wattage of the WD5000AAKS is. So my origninal estimate wasn't too far off: 9 drives it is! A 10th drive could be fitted in BUT it would put undue stress on the PSU as well force it to run at 100% load. Then again 9 drives plus your system would probably put that PSU at 100% load...
 
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