2 power supplies?

[buildingacomputer]

My 250W power supply started to show problems. I have a 150W ATX power supply that I saved from an older computer. Can I connect some of the peropherals (hard drive, CD-RW, fans) to the 150W PS and the rest to 250W PS? Could someone explain to me why it must not be done or vice versa?

 

[powerMarkymark]

Bump> for a very good question!

I would like to know the answer as well!


Mark

 

[unsped]

you can, they just need to start up at the same time. or the drives before the motherboard.

the main thing is the bios has to see the drives, so they need to be on before the system boots.

getting atx to turn on manually, is another question.

 

[thomsbrain]

to get an ATX to turn on manually you have to short some of the traces momentarilly, but i don't know which ones. do some searches here on AT for it, look in the archived posts too, because i know it's been discussed before at some point.

 

[Alphazero]

There are some good articles out there about using two power supplies, I'll try to find one or two...

Basically, you have to connect a couple of wires so that the secondary power supply will start up along with the main PSU.

Edit: This could be helpful.

 

[buildingacomputer]

Thank you all for your help. I will go ahead and mod the power supplies.