I found some older hardware and I want to use it as a nas. My idea is to mount the hardware inside the case that houses my gaming pc and use the existing psu with this: http://www.phanteks.com/PH-PWSPR.html
Has anyone used something similar?
I don't like the idea. When the PSU decides to shut off, both machines go down.
All PSUs may go down eventually either powering one or two systems. Now the real question is if a contraption like this somehow reduces the lifespan of a PSU...
Awesome idea, I think. Saving on space, too.
Brings up some concerns, however -
- Make sure you've got adequate cooling for both systems and adequate chassis airflow
- Possibly use a different drive cage (or different color cords) for each system, to keep maintenance and upgrades simple and not frustrating
- Triple-check you've got the wattage in that one PSU
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Looking at the specs this is kinda' scary
Output Max Wattage
452W (system 1 + system 2 combined, gpu power consumption excluded)
So both better be pretty low on the power consumption side.
Total wattage of the two systems is around 425 watt. The main PC is a skylake i5 6600 with a gtx 960 and the secondary server system will be an old i3 2100 with 5x3,5 inch hdds
30w isn't much margin for errors or hardware that goes out of spec because of age, heat, or usage, the thing is I'm sure you can pull 5-600w through it temporarily in short bursts without any ill effects, but running that close to it's max is bound to generate extra heat in the case and shorten it's lifespan, I'd rather see it have a total output of 1000w and only pull half that through it for a good long life of your components. I'd also expect that the 450w rating is in place to protect the splitter, if it's just a dumb device (no circuitry, just splitting up and adding connectors) then it will fall back to it's design (wire gauge used inside) and the ability of your PSU to handle the load, if it is a semi-smart device (has internal circuitry for current limitations, filtering, and monitoring load) then exceeding it's capacity will greatly shorten it's life and potentially put your components at risk when the device fails....depending on how it fails.
Depending on the setup, you might want to use a PicoPSU to power the 2nd system if it's small. PicoPSU is a DC to DC power supply. Very small and efficient. The only thing is that if the power goes off on the primary system, the PicoPSU would lose power. You could wire in a battery and an OpenUPS to keep the 2nd system up during reboots or power outages.
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You're not running your GPU power through this splitter. It is explicitly for the motherboard power connections.
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Doesn't matter. GPU has to get power somehow.
Yeah I get that.......but still the margin of error is 30W (OP said his expected draw would be 425w and the device is rated at 452w), it wants you to use a 600w or higher so if you have a single high power draw GPU or a second one your really going to need a pretty big PSU to have a margin of error or you will be close to the capacity of the 600w PSU, you never want to use electronics at anything very close to it's rated capacity, I don't think anyone here if asked what PSU to use in a system that as the expected current draw of 600w would recommend anything less than a 750-800w PSU, and it would be foolish to use a 600w PSU in that scenario.
All I'm saying is not that his PSU wouldn't handle the load but that his expected load vs the max load the splitter allows for (452w) is too close in my opinion, but hey 30w is 30w as long as everything stays in spec and the splitter itself is a high enough quality item to actually meet it's advertised spec it's all good.
Well those are valid points. Besides an additional 250-350 watt 80+ PSU costs around the same as the splitter and the extra cables.
Take into consideration if you split an equal load in parallell the required power to feed the input will basically be fourfolded. Everything is fine tho if the fuse and psu can handle the currents.
Well my current psu is the Corsair CS550M so I will probably have to sell it and purchase another. This will probably set me back more than I want to spend.
Another solution could be to return the old i3 setup and go cheap Atom+mobo combo with the second build.
The third solution that I can think is to ditch the secondary system, get an i7 6700 and go with an unraid setup.
It would be a shame though because I did get the i3 2100 + mobo+ 16 gigs of ram for 100 euros.
That 425W estimate HAD to include the GTX 960 and hard drives, which wouldn't be counted. Both the i5-6600 and i3-2100 are 65W parts. You can find reviews of dual system setups that use this splitter (and the Phanteks case it was originally designed with in mind) with much beefier hardware. I certainly wouldn't use it with a 550W PSU, but regardless OPs system is not going to be pulling 425W through this splitter.
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I will likely be dual psu for my 1 motherboard shortly. 2 kilowatt psu's are too darn expensive.
Fully loaded the board will look about as follows..
2 - 300 watt xeon phi's
2 - 200 watt video cards and late 2 more 300 watt xeon phi's when I retire the board to server only.
2 - 115 watt e5 xeons 2670
1230
stack of ssds, 128GB eec ram maybe another 100 watts.
1330 - assuminge I want the draw under 80% of the rating puts me at 1596
1530 - 1836.
Currently running a 1 kilowatt psu. I will just ad another 1 kilowatt supply rather than eat the price of a 1600 kilowatt psu or worse a 2k server psu plus the chassis to hold it.
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