Recommended Power Supply Size?

[raidwannabe]

Computer Specs:

MSI K9N SLI PLATINUM
AMD ATHLON X2
6 - MAXTOR 500GB SATA
1 - Western Digital WD2500 (250GB IDE)
MAD DOG 16X DVD BURNER
ATI 9250 PCI (Going to buy a ATI AIW PCI-Express)
1 - 1GB DDR2 RAM
ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED CPU COOLER

I have the 6 500GB drives setup in a Raid 5 configuration. What size power supply should I get? I'm guessing a 750W, but I'm not sure. Currently, I have a 400W power supply, and it's not enough to power everything. (The computer gets to Window's "Setup is inspecting your configuration....", the DVD drives spins, then nothing else happens.)

[pam123]

Journeysystems power supply calculator is presently being updated ( also it's a holiday ) but you could go by in few days and type in your specs to get a good idea of what you'll need : http://www.journeysystems.com/?powercalc

[blue60007]

Here's another:
http://www.extreme.outervision.com/p...ulatorlite.jsp

I think as long as you don't add a high end video card something in the 550W range would work. Make sure you've got enough SATA power connectors to go around on whatever you choose.

[Cricket]

For 7 hard drives I think I would go with a 650 watt PSU just to be safe. Getting 7 hard drives to spin up at start up is going to put a huge load on the power supply.

Cricket

[TwoRails]

We're back to the "quality" issue. I ran 6 drives for a long time with an Antec 400W unit but that was with a low powered video card (AIW 9800 Pro). I didn't go up to a 550W Antec until I added 2 more drives and a AIW 800 AGP.

[Mr.Ferrari]

You could probably drop down the needed wattage if you go with a single rail powersupply. Seeing as how a big draw on start up is from your hard drives, putting them all mixed with other components on a dual rail powersupply would leave plenty of power available to lets say your CPU, but would starve the hard drives.

With a single rail, this would not be an issue.

I would say a good 500-600w should do the trick.

[blue60007]

What about this? It's got 8 SATA plugs so I figure it'll be able to handle 8 drives since they put 8 plugs on.

[raidwannabe]

Thanks guys.

I went ahead and got a AOPEN 700w PSU, because I plan to add 6 more 500s (or 750s) next year, and a Highpoint Rocketraid 2340, once the prices drop some.

[Mr.Ferrari]

Thats ok. And if you have any problems with it overloading the rails again, take a PCI-Express to 4pin molex adapter (from there use a molex to sata) and draw the power from the pci-e cable. This will shift the power draw to another 12v rail.

[mainiac]

The Xclio psu I have works for me. Look at my Signature.