[SOLVED] 2 power supplies on one computer

Wesmacc

Honorable
Aug 28, 2014
10
1
10,515
I have a pretty good system but unfortunately my video card is causing troubles hogging the juice. It is an RX570 / 8gig with an 8 pin connector only.

Now a couple things I've done may make some of you scream but that's not the question. lol

I have to use a bridge since my existing power supply does not have an 8 or a 6+2 which is kind of odd, it's only 3 years old but.....

The bridge works fine., I read through all the warnings, made sure it was a quality cable and for 2 years since the new GPU it is good except for occasional sluggish video, usb3 being dropped and raised and the odd drive just hanging for a few seconds. It IS a power situation, I've gone through everything it is just too many toys on one power supply.

So here is the question. I have a second NEW 500w power supply that I intend to use as power for the video card. As before I have read through warnings and instructions so this will not be a problem [I say before blowing up the neighbourhood lol]

Question - The second power pak does not run. Power is good, 6+2 is good, computer after being put back to old system is running perfect other than too many toys. So what is the power pack missing? Does it need to be connected to a motherboard? I can pop my old computer beside the new one and use it but I'd really like to go 6+2 and retire the bridge, I understand bridge cables are fixes and not permanent fix.

Yes, i can afford to buy a nice 750watt pak and take it to my neighbourhood computer guy but the combination of reduced hours at work and Corona shutting everything down leads me to needing to do a fix for a couple months.

This box has a bottom power pak with the cables threaded through the back side and is way beyond my skill level. I can change an old upper pp but not this one.

So in English the question is - Why does my power pak not fire up, is it expecting a mother board or something else. It is on, power bar is active, tried different power cables.

Thx
Guys
 
Solution
The terms you use are adding a lot of confusion. You don't have an all in one. You have a prebuilt. And your bridge is called an adapter. So the other psu isn't receiving the turn on signal. You can plug it in and short pin 14, but honestly you need one good psu. The prices on them are horrible right now. But you won't have any headaches once you get a good one in there.

Spec TDP for the 570 is around 120W. The 580 is 150W. And the 590 is 180. Different models of course might go over this. But as above the 570 isn't really a power hog. My old 7950 was a 225W part. A quality 450-550W will have no issue running a 570.
I have a pretty good system but unfortunately my video card is causing troubles hogging the juice. It is an RX570 / 8gig with an 8 pin connector only.

Now a couple things I've done may make some of you scream but that's not the question. lol

I have to use a bridge since my existing power supply does not have an 8 or a 6+2 which is kind of odd, it's only 3 years old but.....

The bridge works fine., I read through all the warnings, made sure it was a quality cable and for 2 years since the new GPU it is good except for occasional sluggish video, usb3 being dropped and raised and the odd drive just hanging for a few seconds. It IS a power situation, I've gone through everything it is just too many toys on one power supply.

So here is the question. I have a second NEW 500w power supply that I intend to use as power for the video card. As before I have read through warnings and instructions so this will not be a problem [I say before blowing up the neighbourhood lol]

Question - The second power pak does not run. Power is good, 6+2 is good, computer after being put back to old system is running perfect other than too many toys. So what is the power pack missing? Does it need to be connected to a motherboard? I can pop my old computer beside the new one and use it but I'd really like to go 6+2 and retire the bridge, I understand bridge cables are fixes and not permanent fix.

Yes, i can afford to buy a nice 750watt pak and take it to my neighbourhood computer guy but the combination of reduced hours at work and Corona shutting everything down leads me to needing to do a fix for a couple months.

This box has a bottom power pak with the cables threaded through the back side and is way beyond my skill level. I can change an old upper pp but not this one.

So in English the question is - Why does my power pak not fire up, is it expecting a mother board or something else. It is on, power bar is active, tried different power cables.

Thx
Guys
Buy the 750w psu it will be your best option
 

4745454b

Titan
Moderator
Yes. It needs to be connected to the motherboard. The case power switch plugs into the board, it's the board that then tells the PSU to turn on via the 24pin ATX bundle. If you are only plugging the PSU into the wall and then the PSU into the GPU that is 100% the problem.

The other issue you have is the low end PSUs you seem to be using. I don't care if it's 3yrs or 6mo. Any PSU being used these days with a GPU should have a 6+2pin plug. I'm glad your new 500W has them. (Yes it should have 2 of them.) You don't say what your 3yo PSU is or your "new" 500W PSU is but I suspect neither of them should be used on the system you are running. Yes Corona is going on. But you can and should take hard steps needed to lower your power issue until you get a real PSU.
 
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Yes. It needs to be connected to the motherboard. The case power switch plugs into the board, it's the board that then tells the PSU to turn on via the 24pin ATX bundle. If you are only plugging the PSU into the wall and then the PSU into the GPU that is 100% the problem.

The other issue you have is the low end PSUs you seem to be using. I don't care if it's 3yrs or 6mo. Any PSU being used these days with a GPU should have a 6+2pin plug. I'm glad your new 500W has them. (Yes it should have 2 of them.) You don't say what your 3yo PSU is or your "new" 500W PSU is but I suspect neither of them should be used on the system you are running. Yes Corona is going on. But you can and should take hard steps needed to lower your power issue until you get a real PSU.
Not really he can get a dual psu switch that allows for two psu's on one system i did it for a while with my old system when i was basically in the same boat he is
 

Wesmacc

Honorable
Aug 28, 2014
10
1
10,515
Appreciate the replies folks... power supply is great... until the RX, man it is a beast on power. lol

The problem when you buy an all-in-one is something gives to get the price, usually an underwhelming powerpak. That's why the new one is being built box out. Got 16gig ram, rx vid, half a dozen in and out hard drives and so on so buying a modern box and a big power pak and if the budget afford a i7 and move the rest over.

This is just a stop gap... i couldn't even buy this power pak is a city of 5 million [Toronto] had to go online and it took 4 days to deliver it. New Egg's warehouse is about a 2 hour walk from me. lol

I just like to see some opinions here, I know the paperclip trick and I'm competent enough to do that but if I didn't like a proper bridge... shorting out two pins is scary.

By BRIDGE I mean a cable built to accept 2x4 pin power cables and produce and 8-pin on the other end.
 

King_V

Illustrious
Ambassador
I don't know what you mean about using a bridge with two PSUs.

What are the brands and exact model numbers of the PSUs you've tried? I suspect they are likely be poor quality units.

The RX 570 is NOT a particularly power hungry GPU. It's about 150W, maybe a little more, of power draw.

Now, Efficiency Rating (Bronze, Gold, etc) ONLY deals with efficiency, and tells you nothing about quality.

Total wattage rating ONLY tells you "claimed" total wattage. It doesn't tell you if most of that is available on the 12V rail (where almost everything is drawn from these days), and also doesn't tell you if it's a good quality unit, or a fire waiting to happen.

What you need is a good quality PSU. The first link in my sig is a good guide to picking a high quality unit. Yes, prices are elevated due to the pandemic, and yes, that means you'll have to replace the PSU in your case (unless it's an unusual PC case, standard PSUs are relatively straightforward to replace).


EDIT: oh, wait, this is for an all-in-one PC? ie: the components are literally built into the monitor? That's a completely different amount of mayhem entirely, but then I'm wondering how the heck the RX 570 is in there?
 

Wesmacc

Honorable
Aug 28, 2014
10
1
10,515
I don't know what you mean about using a bridge with two PSUs.

What are the brands and exact model numbers of the PSUs you've tried? I suspect they are likely be poor quality units.

The RX 570 is NOT a particularly power hungry GPU. It's about 150W, maybe a little more, of power draw.

Now, Efficiency Rating (Bronze, Gold, etc) ONLY deals with efficiency, and tells you nothing about quality.

Total wattage rating ONLY tells you "claimed" total wattage. It doesn't tell you if most of that is available on the 12V rail (where almost everything is drawn from these days), and also doesn't tell you if it's a good quality unit, or a fire waiting to happen.

What you need is a good quality PSU. The first link in my sig is a good guide to picking a high quality unit. Yes, prices are elevated due to the pandemic, and yes, that means you'll have to replace the PSU in your case (unless it's an unusual PC case, standard PSUs are relatively straightforward to replace).


EDIT: oh, wait, this is for an all-in-one PC? ie: the components are literally built into the monitor? That's a completely different amount of mayhem entirely, but then I'm wondering how the heck the RX 570 is in there?
Just read your first line, so before getting 5 messages saying don't use 2 PSU on 1 GPU, I didn't. lol

The existing system uses the bridge on ONE PSU.
 

Wesmacc

Honorable
Aug 28, 2014
10
1
10,515
Yep, lol, your messsage popped up just when I was finished typing mine before I hit send. Hence my edit, although I didn't catch the bridge part, but I'm not sure I interpreted correctly what you meant by all-in-one...

All-In-One means to me a pre built system not one of the monitor things.

Full system for $799 including everything etc. Often comes with a decent CPU [I have a 6 core 3200],keyboard, mouse,dvd, ssd for booting and a 2-4 tb HD. This one came with a decent little 2 gig vid card too but like I said they get you somewhere... it was under RAM'd which is fine, i have RAM and under powered. In hindsight that is the one segment I wish I'd played closer attention to.

PSU is blocked from reading by eye, by the side panel but I believe it is 450 which is reasonable but I'm playing high end games so the vid card is working it's backside off.

As always appreciate the opinions. Asking outside of Tom's tends to get you 25 really weird suggestion. lolo
 

4745454b

Titan
Moderator
The terms you use are adding a lot of confusion. You don't have an all in one. You have a prebuilt. And your bridge is called an adapter. So the other psu isn't receiving the turn on signal. You can plug it in and short pin 14, but honestly you need one good psu. The prices on them are horrible right now. But you won't have any headaches once you get a good one in there.

Spec TDP for the 570 is around 120W. The 580 is 150W. And the 590 is 180. Different models of course might go over this. But as above the 570 isn't really a power hog. My old 7950 was a 225W part. A quality 450-550W will have no issue running a 570.
 
Solution

Wesmacc

Honorable
Aug 28, 2014
10
1
10,515
The terms you use are adding a lot of confusion. You don't have an all in one. You have a prebuilt. And your bridge is called an adapter. So the other psu isn't receiving the turn on signal. You can plug it in and short pin 14, but honestly you need one good psu. The prices on them are horrible right now. But you won't have any headaches once you get a good one in there.

Spec TDP for the 570 is around 120W. The 580 is 150W. And the 590 is 180. Different models of course might go over this. But as above the 570 isn't really a power hog. My old 7950 was a 225W part. A quality 450-550W will have no issue running a 570.
Thanks for the response.

The bag the wire came in says 'bridge adapter', hence my terminology. And i couldn't remember the prebuilt name... hey fighting dragons takes all your attention but yes it is the better term.

It won't have trouble running it unless... lol here we go, you have 6 HD's, 3 SSDs ,a wireless adapter through the usb3, a couple other usb3 items and playing a game that is very graphics intense... hence the twin fans on the gpu working their butts off. Yes... overkill on the drives but remember whoever dies with the most cr4p wins... and I'm still in second.

But my main reason for the question was to hear the pin answer without prompting for it. Usually when I have a question I can find a thread here and see a sensible answer. Your answer confirmed my research, I will think on the pin crossing but likely do it to buy a couple months and then slowly build a real base system.

Thanks to all. I concur the correct answer is fix the current system but not an option today.
 
I don't know what you mean about using a bridge with two PSUs.

What are the brands and exact model numbers of the PSUs you've tried? I suspect they are likely be poor quality units.

The RX 570 is NOT a particularly power hungry GPU. It's about 150W, maybe a little more, of power draw.

Now, Efficiency Rating (Bronze, Gold, etc) ONLY deals with efficiency, and tells you nothing about quality.

Total wattage rating ONLY tells you "claimed" total wattage. It doesn't tell you if most of that is available on the 12V rail (where almost everything is drawn from these days), and also doesn't tell you if it's a good quality unit, or a fire waiting to happen.

What you need is a good quality PSU. The first link in my sig is a good guide to picking a high quality unit. Yes, prices are elevated due to the pandemic, and yes, that means you'll have to replace the PSU in your case (unless it's an unusual PC case, standard PSUs are relatively straightforward to replace).


EDIT: oh, wait, this is for an all-in-one PC? ie: the components are literally built into the monitor? That's a completely different amount of mayhem entirely, but then I'm wondering how the heck the RX 570 is in there?
This is what im talking about by a dual psu bridge basically.
 
Thanks for the response.

The bag the wire came in says 'bridge adapter', hence my terminology. And i couldn't remember the prebuilt name... hey fighting dragons takes all your attention but yes it is the better term.

It won't have trouble running it unless... lol here we go, you have 6 HD's, 3 SSDs ,a wireless adapter through the usb3, a couple other usb3 items and playing a game that is very graphics intense... hence the twin fans on the gpu working their butts off. Yes... overkill on the drives but remember whoever dies with the most cr4p wins... and I'm still in second.

But my main reason for the question was to hear the pin answer without prompting for it. Usually when I have a question I can find a thread here and see a sensible answer. Your answer confirmed my research, I will think on the pin crossing but likely do it to buy a couple months and then slowly build a real base system.

Thanks to all. I concur the correct answer is fix the current system but not an option today.
Because it's a bridge not a adapter it bridges two psu together