Connecting more than one power supply

lcvieira_br

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Hi, all. First timer, please be gentle... d8^) Thanks!
I firstly search the forum for something related to the question below, but this forum has a huge amount o'data, did not find any at a first, surface search; if there is any other thread about this, please point me to it, OK? Thanks again!
I have a Gigabyte 78LMT-S2 Mboard - 8GB RAM, AMD Semprom 145 - running FreeNAS 9.2.1.3 (will upgrade it soon) with 6 X 3TB Seagate HD - 4 are ZFS arranged, 2 are striped - working smoothly & fine, powered by a Dr. Hank PH-850B PS. I also have 4 X 2TB HD - Seagate as well, will stripe them, too - and I would like to connect these too to the existing rig (my own cloud storage system). I have already bought a 4 X RAID/SATA PCI controller for connecting them to the 78LMT-S2, but I am not comfortable keeping the single PH-850B to handle the task of power requirements alone. So, my questions are:
1 – any single PS replacement that would do the job? OR
2 – any safe way to connect another PS in parallel with the existing one, just for powering the extra 4 HD's (or, if applicable, re-manage the HD's amongst the PS pair)? OR MAYBE
3 – I should simply build a second, complete DIY NAS and forget about the 2 upper options?
Yep, I know... there are better solutions, but hey! It is a DIY cloud with a/some DIY NAS, I should be proud of building it, right? So it must work without fuming itself... There are some 18 TB data spread amongst 10 hard disks, cannot afford loosing it! Thanks for any help!
(In time: forgive me for any misspelled word or any worse crime against the language... I'm a native Portuguese speaker, English is my second language along with Fortran, C++, TCL/TK, Focal...)
 
Solution
The PH-850B is not a recognised brand. Seems to be Chinese. I'd replace it anyway. It looks ATX sized, so any will fit. Maybe your Spanish id better than mine - http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-580892295-fonte-dr-hank-ph-850b-850w-reais-_JM

Drives use about 10W each. So its no biggie having them all. Your PC probably draws 300W all up. But you really need to post your complete and detailed build to get a better idea. Maybe you got a fx8320 and a R9 290. Who knows? Provide more info please.
The PH-850B is not a recognised brand. Seems to be Chinese. I'd replace it anyway. It looks ATX sized, so any will fit. Maybe your Spanish id better than mine - http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-580892295-fonte-dr-hank-ph-850b-850w-reais-_JM

Drives use about 10W each. So its no biggie having them all. Your PC probably draws 300W all up. But you really need to post your complete and detailed build to get a better idea. Maybe you got a fx8320 and a R9 290. Who knows? Provide more info please.
 
Solution

lcvieira_br

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Hi. Thanks for your interest!
I checked the Seagate HD specs, they list 5Vcc/.28A and 12Vcc/.32A, which give about 5.3 Watt 'apiece', but we know these values are probably best measurings under some privilege environment, I'll gladly take your 10W each, thanks!
Your link points to a Brazilian page of the "mercado livre", kinda 'south-American' e-bay, thanks. And you are correct, this is the PH-850B I am using, a 850W PS sold by Dr. Hank (http://www.dr-hank.com/home_es/mostra_produto9a4a-PH-500B.php), which is a somehow common 'brand' in Brazil. I had a PH-700B, but I replaced it recently. I cannot tell you for sure about the actual current consumption in each Vcc output (+3.3, +5, +12) but the specs table printed in the PS states:
3.3V - 26A (85.8 w)
5.0V - 33A (165.0 w)
12V1 - 25A (300.0 w)
12V2 - 26A (312.0 w)
Of course, these are probably nominal values (better not be peak values...).
The link for the 78LMT-S2 MB manual is this one. I tried to find the power requirements in it, but I did not succeed.
I took a picture of the AMD processor label, you can check it here. It is a single core, 2.8GHz with 1.0MB cache. Just a humble one, I guess the NAS would not need anything stronger than that.
I hope the additional data suffices. If not, please, let me know.
Cheers and thanks again.
 
Post your complete and detailed build. As I said "Your PC probably draws 300W all up. But you really need to post your complete and detailed build to get a better idea. Maybe you got a fx8320 and a R9 290. Who knows? Provide more info please." Without it, I can't recommend a power supply.
 

lcvieira_br

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HI, all! As I said, thanks for your patience with the new guy...
Let's see if now I get it:
Mainboard: Gigabyte 78LMT-S2
Processor: AMD Sempron 145
Memory banks: 2 X Kingston 4GB
As for the remaining power eaters, 6 X 3TB Seagate HD + 4 x 2 TB Seagate HD, and I'll take these as 100W average power demanding.
My main doubt mostly goes for the whole "mainboard + processor + memory + application" power consumption. The mainboard + processor + memory simply connected and powered will need less power with no application running than if there are continuous tasks performed by processor itself. And as the FreeNAS specs recomend a minimum amount of 8GB RAM for optimal performance (even more if deduplication is in the tasks list), I'd not be surprised if a non-negligible amount of amps are added to the quiet set when running such tasks. But anyway, I neither found the quiet consumption data for the mainboard as it is...
Thanks again.
 

lcvieira_br

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In time: I'm using all on-board resources, no extra cards connected to the mboard. External devices are only a keyboard and a monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 550S) through an Encore KVM switch (two input ports).
 

lcvieira_br

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Thank you all, guys. I think now I have all intel I need for this task. Your input data will surely allow me to go for an applicable, reliable solution.
Vic 40, the PH-850B has four regular SATA power connectors (one mesh each pair) and three regular IDE connectors (all in another, single mesh). I am already using two single-IDE-single-SATA power adapters to connect two of the six 3TB HD's, but I intend to add four extra SATA power connectors by VERY COMMITED & CAREFULLY soldering them to the existing meshes. I have been doing it for a while and I know the most important points are both 1) isolation and 2) best soldering techniques. I am an electrical engineer and electronic technician, but I surely know these references alone are not enough. Matter of fact, I've been using soldering irons for more than 40 years now.
Thank you all again. I think it is not fair choosing a better answer amongst the ones you provided but I am not quite sure if it is a good policy to leave it like that.
Cheers.
 

lcvieira_br

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Hi, USAFRet.
Thanks for your warning. Is there any article(s) I can read about this particular PB-850B PS performance evaluation? Or, even better, with comparisons to other models? Can you point me to any address at the WWW? I'd appreciate that.
Cheers.
 

lcvieira_br

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Well, this is for keeping... Pictures, themselves, "explain" it, too. Very important, concise info. Thanks, USAFRet.
I searched @ the PS Tier List but I did not find any mentioning to the PS I am using. Any chance that it is so too "damned" bad it is not worth evaluating? I have three PB-700B (running for no less then 2 years) and a recently-bought PB-850B, running for about two months. I must confess these are somehow common here. I have indeed found some references to other ones I have seen around here, amongst the "get rid o'them"/"replace ASAP": Eagle Tech, Q-Tec, WinTech. I can tell you for sure that every four-to-six months I check all coolers and dissipators for accumulated dust, and at least once a year I check all thermal paste in each CPU I have (19 so far). Chances are these primary precautions might have saved my poor desktops...
Thank you very much! Enlightening, indeed!
 

Vic 40

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What about this one? You can't use this?




A bit of a high estimate don't you think? With 10 hdd's +a 45watt tdp cpu+ motherboard,i guess it's maybe half of that.

 

lcvieira_br

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Hi, Vic 40. Yep, you are correct. After all of the discussion above, I'll keep the PH-850B I am already using at least til I find a 'sanctioned' replacement. In the meantime, I'll try some measurements related to average/nominal current consumption, I mean, connecting and disconnecting some ghost loads while recording current and voltage waveforms with a DSM, and also checking the temperature @ the switching components. I'll buy a second unit for this task and later I'll make the results public.
Thanks again!