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CM Stacker 20pin support, need 24?

M

MonsterZero

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 5, 2005
Messages
145
Well I bought the CoolerMaster stacker case which boasts support for 2 PSU's.. 2 PSU's and a motherboard with 20 pins maybe... :mad:

So I have two 24 pin PSU's and a 24 pin A8N-SLI. Things power up just fine, well except for the secondary power supply, which isn't turned on or off by the boards power switch. That kind of sucks.

How bad is it to 24x2 pin -> 20 pin -> 24 pin
and
How bad is it to have power going to components when the system isn't running.
 
well that is about as clear as mud :p
but I think I get the questions

THEORETICAL SECTION
not actually having seen the wiring harness\ cross over that the Stacker employs
(if you can post pics that would be great, assuming you can see the color of the wires)

Im assuming the means by which the supplies are synch'd is a hardwired job
(as opposed to a relay)
Ive used that before, and ideally its best to not have the supplies concurrently powering components that are connected together

thus PSU #1 handles mobo and attached components, drives (attched via data cables to the mobo) ect
PSU #2 handles Fans,.Pumps, Peltiers, Lights, Fan Buses

Now I have run synch'd PSUs that did power connected components
one handled the mobo and cards the other all the drives (a large RAID array included)
and while that was fine for one mobo it might have been a contributing factor in the death of another, eventually I switched to an N+1 power supply large enough to handle all of it

as far as powering components when the system isnt running
what components?
if the HDDs arent synch'd with the mobo, youll have corruption problems at the very least
but independent components like fans, pumps ect, no issue

as far as the 24 to 20 to 24, I wouldnt advise it, but if you can give me a better description of the device\harness they are using, you might be able to employ it along with the hardwirred tutorial I linked to synch the supplies


REALWORLD SECTION

what supplies? and what components?
considering you mentioned SLi, I would feel comfortable making actual recommendation that have the potential to fry a couple of thousand dollars of components
without a full picture of what your trying to accomplish
 
Here is a pic of the connector, compliments of rage3d.
http://www.rage3d.com/content/reviews/cases/cmstacker/pics/psuconnector.jpg

As I understand it all that connector is doing is allowing you to turn off the two PSU's using the power switch, which through all of my adapters isn't working. (I wrote coolermaster asking about a 24 pin friendly adapter).

My System is as follows
2 Antec Phantom 350W power supplies
Athlon 64 4000
3 74GB Raptors (AID 0)
1 36GB Raptor (OS)
1gig Corsair pc3200XLPro
3 120mm Nexus fans (one for XP-120 on the cpu)
1 80mm Nexus fan
1 Plextor dvd drive
Audigy 2 ZS

I'm using a 6600GT on loan right now but will eventually be getting 2x6800GT's

So let's say the off switch doesn't work and I need to hard power off the second PSU. Sounds like you're recommending the second PSU really be connected to independent components. Sadly that doesn't leave much at all to power. I don't think a single 350W power supply will be enough for the 2 6800GT's in that system, One will run everything I have now I'm pretty sure, I'll go with that until I find a... more definate(safe and stable) solution.

Thanks for the info and help.
 
well you can just follow the hardwiring tutorial to do the same thing they are doing
but youd have to either cut wires and make the contacts or get the tools to attach the wires to the pins in the connectors, there would actually be a small advantage in that there would be less resistance since the actuual power wires arent running through the added connector interface, that would be offset by the hassle of having to reverse the proceedure (which you could likely do in the event of the connecting to the pins) in the event you had to return a supply

those Phantoms are very nice and unique supplies
unlike most other supplies out there they have trimmed all the backward compatible fat off of them (meaning they are pretty competitive with much larger capacity supplies when it comes to the amp distribution of the +12V rails, many 500 watt supplies dont have that many amp on the +12V), they are low on the +5V rail however, which would mean they arent very backward compatible to older boards that would have powered the CPU off that rail

now powering connected components off two supplies might not be as much of an issue as my post makes out but it is an area that Im less confident about
so let me quiz our local electrical engineer about any potential drawbacks and get back to you ;)

BTW fanless supplies can really benefit from those mods I alluded to earlier
read these
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=8450
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=838775
 
In the stacker, the power supplies aren't combined together so you won't be able to make two 300W supplies into a 600W supply, or have redundant PSU's, or anything like that. Doing so requires a lot of extra hardware (ORing mosfets/diodes, power supplies with current sharing capability, etc...) which is complicated and unnecessary.

If you feel the need to hardwire two supplies together, smack yourself, sell the two of them and buy a single high power supply. If smacking yourself didn't work, then make sure you use two identical supplies and trim them so the output voltages are the same, otherwise they won't current share properly. And don't be surprised if the power supplies break into oscillation and blow your computer up :D

Anyway, the stacker's cable just allows both supplies to turn on/off at the same time, there's no hardwiring involved. Assuming that the supplies are similar (or close to the ATX supply spec) then they'll come on more or less simultaneously.

You can't combine them directly, you can only use one supply for your mobo/cpu and one for your drives, fans, waterpumps. Or whatever.

BIG WARNING THOUGH - make sure the ATX+12V connector, 20/24pin ATX connector and any other mobo power connectors come from THE SAME SUPPLY!
 
No, I'm not planning on doing any hardwiring jobs on my PSU's. We'll just clear that up :D

Sounds like I'm fine powering all the drives off one, the mobo and cpu off another.

The one question I would have, not to avoid some of the most power hungry components, is the video cards. I'm definately not knowledgable enough to know how power gets to video cards through their own connectors vs. the power sent through the PCI Express slots and how those might interact with each other.
So would it be safe to have one power supply going to the mobo and another power supply connected to video cards in the PCI express slots?

I'll be honest when I was first setting this system up I did have the secondary power supply connected to the EZ Plug (Asus PCI power thing) while the primary supply was connected to the ATX power connector. In hindsight that was obviously a dangerous thing to do but nothing DID blow up at that moment.

Thanks for all of the help with this issue.
 
In this I again defer to gee
he is our local eletronics engineer and actually builds switch mode power supplies (SMPS)
which is what we all use for our computers
(barring someone in a telco environment reading this)

Ive tried to research the voltage regulation schemes on video cards since it became appearent to me that even with a single ATX12V v2.0 supply, which has dual +12V rails
that one rail would be +12V1 through the mobos VRM (Voltage regulation modual) and then the AGP\PCI-E and the other on +12V2 as a direct connect auxillary
 
There shouldn't be too much harm in doing that... most newer video cards I've seen will display an "oh shit, where the fuck is my power cable?" message on your screen if you don't plug in the power connector.

As for if powering a video card without powering the motherboard will cause any damage, I really don't know... try e-mailing a video card company with that question.
 
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