PSU

tazzzZ

Ok well tbh i dont really need to ask this but i just wanna see wat ya think.

I'm getting 2 more 250gb wd blue drives to add to my current system which has 2 already in there in raid. now i think im gonna be cutting it close in terms of power and was just wondering befor i actually do wat u think.

Current Spec:

i7 920 @ 3.4ghz
6gb 1333 ram
sapphire 5870
2x wd 250gb blue
xfi titanium
Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant Power Supply

also is there the same sort of % gains from single drive to 2xraid 0 as there is for 2x raid 0 to 4x raid 0??

TheRiddler

Why do you want to get 2 more 250gb HDD when you can get 1Tb HDDs for beans these days?

tazzzZ

because i already have 2....... and its not about storage its about speed. I have 4tb external storage anyway.

Solitaire

You shouldn't be cutting it that close at all really... HDDs draw only a small amount of power each but can draw several amps for a split second when spinning up from off/idle. Thus their max power consumption is plotted against a system's peak power usage rather than continuous. Continuous power usage should fall far short of the PSUs capacity anyway as they become increasingly inefficient (and hot!) past the 50% load point.

Seeing as you have something like 52A to play with I don't think you're in much danger here; even if we were really cynical about the CPU and GPU and said their peak (not continuous!) full-load consumption was 15A each (much higher than normal, which would be 8-12A on a bad day!) given the OC and then said the 4 HDDs would take ~10A peak and the other system components 5A that's only 45A - and to have all those conditions together would be very, very statistically unlikely! By comparison even with the CPU and GPU fully loaded and all HDDs operating the continuous rating would be more like 12+8+2+3 = 25A, nicely in the 50% load region for the TX650

tazzzZ

spot on m8. ta for that. I'm not too bad with the basics and that but when it gets down to the nitty gritty of voltages and amps and **** i aint got a clue.

Thanks again.

Oh and any idea of a rough guestimate on the increase in preformance?

tazzzZ

all done. working perfectly however performance gains arent really worth the upgrade from 2x raid. i went from 160mb ave write to 200mb ave write. agh well u can never have enough space i guess!

Anti

Should have gone with ssd's if you wanted raw performance.

tazzzZ

i didnt have mental money to spend. tbh i already had the 2 drives and i just wanted to push it a little further and get decent storage for the price.

basically spent 160 on all 4 of the drives delivered!

Solitaire

Fool For just a little more you could have had 4 Samsung F3 500GB drives! Just one is good, four of those in RAID5 would be obscene! :eek:

djrlittleton

dont want to be a thread stealer but how do you callculate the size of the psu needed as you add compontents, cards, drives etc?

Anti

There are a few apps online, but i find looking at the amperage on each rail of the psu easier.

tazzzZ

see i might have gone for the f3's but thing is i already had 2 of those drives from a yr ago so i went with the cheap upgrade. 80 just for the 2 drives. prob should have gone with raid 5 but tbh i really know sweet fa bout raid other than raid 0, 1 and 10. tbh any further upgrades will prob be ssd's but not for a good long time. tbh system is beefy enough without it.

Venom

Solitaire wrote: »

Fool For just a little more you could have had 4 Samsung F3 500GB drives! Just one is good, four of those in RAID5 would be obscene! :eek:

Now now play nice

Also the F3 1TB is faster than the 500GB and only a tad more costly