Silent PSU for 20 x 3.5" HDD fileserver

C

cv643d

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 21, 2002
Messages
360
I have 20 3.5" green hard drives in my Lian Li fileserver case.

Hard drives are not raided and go to sleep (not spinning) in 30 seconds and stay down until used (Ubuntu server).

Typically 2-4 drives are running at the same time when used, the only time every hard drive is spinning at the same time is at boot.

System consumes little power otherwise, 30 watt, and is very quiet when 3.5" drives sleep.

Since I have an old V-case from Lian Li where the PSU is at the bottom, do you think I could get a silent no fan 500 W PSU for this system. It is going to be located in sleeping room and act as heater server computer is idle.
 
I am not so sure. The problem is at power up (you still will have to do it from time to time - upgrade and maintenance, power outages...)

Since these are 3.5" HDs they place a higher requirements on the 12V line. This start up current can be 2-3 Amps (for a few seconds)

Worst case - 20 HDs x 3 amps x 12V is 720 Watts from the 12V line.

You will need a single 12V rail PSU and then check the BIOS of the controllers that you are using to see if you can implement a staggered spin-up.
So you can try at boot time to have:
1. first are the MB hard drives since the MB with this option are almost nonexistent now.
2. delay 10-15 sec for the HD attached to the first HBA controller
3. delay another 10-15s for the HDs attached to the second HBA.

And this little gadget http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16882715001 is very useful in these situations. These are often for sale and from meritline too...
 
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