Power Supply problems?

[JesusDa3rd]

Okay, I've gotten old and have become stupid and useless in this field seeing as my career has taken a totally unrelated path. These days my computer is basically used as a huge storehouse for media. I have 10 hard drives, various models, and have had a variety of problems when installing the last few. For example, having to take out a bunch of my PCI cards just to get it to boot after installing my last 1TB HD and similar problems after recently upgrading my sound card. Basically I need a solid power supply to power all the HDs, and to handle future upgrades (it's coming to the point of probably just throwing away the couple 200GBs and getting a couple 1.5TBs once they get all the kinks out of the Seagates or wutever). My system's not overclocked or anything like that and has an old ass ATI, otherwise sorry I can't tell you what's in there cuz I'm out of town and built it like ~4 years ago. I know companies like OCZ make some great power supplies for gamers with overclocked systems and crazy video card setups, but I have nothing like that. All I need is a computer for basic work and personal stuff which will also function as a huge server for all my music n such. I would greatly appreciate any responses. Thanks!

 

[mpilchfamily]

Well you need to get a ruff calculation of what your system needs power wise. Seams that the HDDs are going to be the main draw of the power. The video card shouldn't need more then what it can get from the motherboard. Unless it has additional connectors on it for power. So you need to figure the system will draw about 10A not including the HDDs. Now you factor in about 2A to 3A for each HDD and you'll know what you need. So you will need a good PSU that can offer about 30A or more on the 12V rails. So any good quality 500W PSU or better will do. Just be sure not to have more then 6 HDDs on a single line of the PSU.

 

[RebateMonger]

Are you using a large quantity of IDE drives? If so, your problem is likely because IDE drives don't have "staggered spin-up". They all start up at once. Some SATA drives, on a suitable controller or BIOS, can stagger the startups so that they don't all draw their initial (large) startup current at the same time.