SUGO 05 + PicoPSU?

[k1wi]

Hoping for a bit of advice here,

I'm looking at building a SFF computer, because I want something I can throw into my carry on luggage. As I fly between a couple of places quite regularly. Therefore size is critical, but I also want it to be pretty powerful (I have access to screens at my destinations). I've picked the SUGO 05 for my chassis because it's only ~10l, and/but* it comes with a max 450W PSU.

I know there are a lot of folks running the 450W SUGO with OC/d CPUs and cards as powerful as the 680 without any problems, but I'm wanting to play it safe. Mainly as I'm an avid folder and we all know how hard that pushes the GPU. I got a 570 HD SC on special from a previous build that I'm aiming to bring over, for which the minimum recommended PSU is 550W...

My real question, and reason for the thread, is that I was wondering if it's possible to add a pico-PSU for an extra 120W? I thought to get a bit of extra juice into the box I could make the smallest of mods and add a picoPSU to the mix (for one thing the power pack could be thrown into my checked luggage). That way I'm giving it extra juice but only adding a minimal amount of gear into the chassis.

How to configure it is pretty mind boggling - as there are a quite few different options to power the system.

1. Get a dual power supply adapter and power the 24pin from both power sources. The 450W PSU could provide the 8pin to the mobo as well as power the GPU, as the Pico PSU wouldn't be able to power both the CPU & chipset (77W+ chipset for IB) and provide the wattage required by the PCI-e slot (75W IIRC). On the plus side if I'm not pushing the system/GPU I should be able to run it without the pico PSU if desired?

Only thing I am not sure of is whether this configuration would utilise the pico-PSU enough and instead rely on the 450W PSU to give the mobo half it's power along with all the other components? If I was wanting to make the pico-psu optional then I'd have to run all the fans/ssds off the 450W PSU as well.

2. The alternative is to configure the PSUs separately - the PicoPSU for the motherboard and fans, SSD slim line DVD etc, 450W for the extra 8pin and for the GPU. Is this possible or does it lead to dodgy frequencies from the two different power sources? Not sure whether I'll end up going down this route as now that I think about it, I kinda like the idea of running the Pico as an optional boost!

A downside to my plans is that the 570 HD SC GPU I have spare for this build has a mid-card fan, so dumps half its heat into a (regular) case. I had thought of doing a little modding to route the front of the card's exhaust out the front of the case, but wonder whether this would cause the front intake to suck in this exhaust heat... Perhaps I can fashion a 45 degree shroud to channel the exhaust out a modded front side corner at an angle to both the side (GPU) intake and front intake.

Depending on the difficulty I'm probably going to see how difficult/time consuming it is to swap between an all-in-one watercooling set up when I am at my primary residence and a stock air cooling set up when I'm in the air. From what I've read that might be a bridge too far as even the all-in-one's look pretty tricky in such a small case...

Appologies for the lengthy post, I'll keep my musing to this length at the moment!

*450W being pretty good for a case this small, but is still on the low side for my liking.

 

[fr500]

Way too much of a hassle IMHO.

I had to leave the DVD but it was a lot better after that. I have the same card (had a 570 HD DS but the noise was unbearable), It's easier to get a Silverston ST50F-P and get it all replaced.

You just need to drill 2 holes for the PSU and bend the PSU tab, that's all that there is to it and the PSU is cheaper than the PICOPSU+brick

 

[k1wi]

Thank you for your reply - I hadn't considered a 'small' ATX PSU and I do like your build. Does your GPU put half it's exhaust back into the case and does that affect case temperatures?

The extra ~inch in width of the PSU doesn't look like it gets in the way of the GPU, which is a bit surprising. I can see you only just manage to squeeze the h50 underneath it. I'm looking at the Antec 620, which hopefully is a little lower? I wonder whether it'd be possible to fit a viable low profile air-cooling option for when I'm flying (I'm not sure what the TSA thinks of watercooling-on-planes, but I'm not gonna be the one to find out!). The lowest I've seen is about 1.5cm taller than the H50.

I have done some extra looking and for the same price as the ST50F-P I can get the 120W picopsu, the brick and the dual power supply adapter (570W) or for an extra $10 go up to 160W (610W). The higher the Pico the less utilisation I think I'd have configuring it for 'optional use' though, unless I can find a way to have it boost some of the GPU.

The ST60F-P, for the equvilent wattage looks a little too large and is heavier again so is out of the equation. Atleast with a power brick I can throw the weight into my checked luggage. I'm not sure that the extra 50w is worth the price of a whole new PSU, but it being modular certainly looks for a much cleaner case without having to mod the PSU. If the S5 came with the ST45SF-G I'd purchase that model in a heartbeat.

 

[bAMtan2]

You are out of your tree. Get a power measurement device and learn how much power these things really need. That 450w will be sufficient by some margin.

 

[WiSK]

Plugging two PSUs into a system is not advised without using a special multi-PSU adapter board.

The GTX 570 HD has two 6-pin PCIe sockets. PCIe connectors are designed for max 75W (6.25 amps) and the card also can get another 75W from the motherboard. So that's 225W total that the card can draw. Add 80W from the IB chip, that's 305W. Plenty of headroom. I doubt the rest of your rig takes the remaining 145W. Moreover, the ST45SF has been torture tested to be able provide over 550W on the 12V at regular room temps. http://vr-zone.com/articles/vr-zone...-sst-st45sf-450w-sfx-psu-reviewed/8805-2.html

So why do manufacturers recommend that their 15-20 amp card needs a 550W power supply? Firstly, they are talking about total system usage - and they can't know which CPU you have or how many HDD and case fans etc. Secondly, it's because many people still have cheap or old PSUs which have much of the rated output on the 3.3V and 5V lines only. Often the 12V rails are not capable of reaching the total wattage. So GPU companies need to cover themselves against people who don't realise their PSU is from an old fashioned design.

TL;DR: even when folding, the ST45SF is fine for any overclocked SB/IB + overclocked GTX570.

The amusing thing is that the ST50F-P actually has less on the 12V rail than the ST45SF

 

[fr500]

Thank you for your reply - I hadn't considered a 'small' ATX PSU and I do like your build. Does your GPU put half it's exhaust back into the case and does that affect case temperatures?

I changed the card for the one you have, the noise was unbearable on this one. The SG05 doesn't really have issues with non external exhaust cards because of it's small size, there is nowhere else for the heat to go but... outside upwards. Mine heats up to 84c while in Battlefield 3 but it's behind the TV inside a cabinet with little ventilation.

The extra ~inch in width of the PSU doesn't look like it gets in the way of the GPU, which is a bit surprising. I can see you only just manage to squeeze the h50 underneath it. I'm looking at the Antec 620, which hopefully is a little lower? I wonder whether it'd be possible to fit a viable low profile air-cooling option for when I'm flying (I'm not sure what the TSA thinks of watercooling-on-planes, but I'm not gonna be the one to find out!). The lowest I've seen is about 1.5cm taller than the H50.

Yes well my build is quite older (2/3 years going strong), the H60 would be an easier fit. With the PSU mod finding a good air cooler won't be easy, best bet I guess is to keep the stock 450w and Silvestone NT06-e or something alike

I have done some extra looking and for the same price as the ST50F-P I can get the 120W picopsu, the brick and the dual power supply adapter (570W) or for an extra $10 go up to 160W (610W). The higher the Pico the less utilisation I think I'd have configuring it for 'optional use' though, unless I can find a way to have it boost some of the GPU.


The ST60F-P, for the equvilent wattage looks a little too large and is heavier again so is out of the equation. Atleast with a power brick I can throw the weight into my checked luggage. I'm not sure that the extra 50w is worth the price of a whole new PSU, but it being modular certainly looks for a much cleaner case without having to mod the PSU. If the S5 came with the ST45SF-G I'd purchase that model in a heartbeat.

Even if dual psu works and even if it's in the same price ballpark you have one issue. Fitting all the cables inside an SG05.

 

[fr500]

The amusing thing is that the ST50F-P actually has less on the 12V rail than the ST45SF

Oh snap!... but well, I decided to use the ST50F-P because the first ST45SF batches had that noise issue... I don't like noise

 

[bAMtan2]

Plugging two PSUs into a system is not advised without using a special multi-PSU adapter board.

The GTX 570 HD has two 6-pin PCIe sockets. PCIe connectors are designed for max 75W (6.25 amps) and the card also can get another 75W from the motherboard. So that's 225W total that the card can draw. Add 80W from the IB chip, that's 305W. Plenty of headroom. I doubt the rest of your rig takes the remaining 145W. Moreover, the ST45SF has been torture tested to be able provide over 550W on the 12V at regular room temps. http://vr-zone.com/articles/vr-zone...-sst-st45sf-450w-sfx-psu-reviewed/8805-2.html

So why do manufacturers recommend that their 15-20 amp card needs a 550W power supply? Firstly, they are talking about total system usage - and they can't know which CPU you have or how many HDD and case fans etc. Secondly, it's because many people still have cheap or old PSUs which have much of the rated output on the 3.3V and 5V lines only. Often the 12V rails are not capable of reaching the total wattage. So GPU companies need to cover themselves against people who don't realise their PSU is from an old fashioned design.

TL;DR: even when folding, the ST45SF is fine for any overclocked SB/IB + overclocked GTX570.

The amusing thing is that the ST50F-P actually has less on the 12V rail than the ST45SF

Brilliant post. Like it was taken right from my head

 

[k1wi]

Thank you everyone for your replies.

At this stage I'll build the box and monitor it with a kill-a-watt as I build up the power on it, seeing as I wont have access to a spare PSU when I'm building it. I'm still open to the idea of an additional pico-psu, but will test the system before pressing go on that. It certainly looks doable with little in the way of space required in the box.

The one thing I notice about the torture test in your link is that that 586W was measured at the socket, which I take to be at the wall, therefore it is measuring the input power not the output power? By my maths that would mean they only loaded the PSU to ~470W output, only 20W above the stated rating.

Still more than enough headroom for the 145W minus peripheries & overclocking.

 

[WiSK]

You're right, they measured from the socket. The 586 watts measurement was when the unit switched itself off with the overcurrent protection.

 

[k1wi]

Ah, that's less impressive than my original reading of it where I thought it was able to produce that output! But it is good to know that its overcurrent protection is solid at ~480W output (assuming 82% efficiency). I'd rather an overcurrent protection induced shutdown than a destroyed computer

 

[WiSK]

Well, although I think you're crazy for the pico-psu idea. If you do it, then use something like this multi-psu adapter: http://www.add2psu.com/