Power budgeting

[wyldfire]

I have a bunch of 15kRPM drives and I'm worried I'll need to use a beefier power supply than the one I have. Does anyone have reasonable estimates for what I should budget for motherboard/GPU/disks/etc?

 

[Dangman]

What PSU do you have now? Also what are the specs of your PC?
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[wyldfire]

Sorry, this is a new system, I'm trying to spec what kind of PSU to buy.

Phenom 9950
Asus M3A32-MVP DELUXE
2x2GB DDR2 1066
GTX 280
4x15k.5 RPM disks

 

[venm11]

See if there's an option to stagger or delay the spin-up for these drives. Probably on the raid controller, if that's what you're using. If you can avoid them spoolin' up all at once, you might be safe.

 

[Dangman]

A quality 550W PSU with at least 40A total on the +12V rail will be enough for that setup. Make sure that PSU is rated somwhere around 45C to 50C, at continuous load, made by a reputable manufacturer and find a proper review of it. By proper review, I mean the kind of PSU tests done by HardOCP.com and JonnyGURU.com.

Oh and read this FAQ if you want to know a bit more what I'm talking about:
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1036

 

[wyldfire]

ok, that's good info. I also just found this power supply calculator which seems reasonable.

 

[wyldfire]

See if there's an option to stagger or delay the spin-up for these drives. Probably on the raid controller, if that's what you're using. If you can avoid them spoolin' up all at once, you might be safe.

Yeah, that's enabled by default on this controller IIRC. Good tip, though.