Ran out of drive power connectors on my Sparkle PSU

[thirdlegstump]

Anyone know of a solid PSU with 10 or more connectors? I need to add another drive to my box. I think my 300W Sparkle only has 7 or so and they're all used up. Don't want to pay out the ass though.

 

[Quasmo]

get a splitter. even though it sounds like you need a more powerful PSU. especially if you're using the 12V rail. How many of those plugs are used for actual drives. HDD and CD/DVD?

 

[thirdlegstump]

6 of them. 4 on HDD's, 2 on opticals. I hear splitting is bad though often resulting in corrupt drives. Otherwise this rig has been running ultra solid for the past 2 years under heavy abuse.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: deathkoba
6 of them. 4 on HDD's, 2 on opticals. I hear splitting is bad though often resulting in corrupt drives. Otherwise this rig has been running ultra solid for the past 2 years under heavy abuse.

I think that the problem is not the splitting itself, but people trying to run an all-out fileserver on a no-name low-watt power supply.
I have an Antec Truepower 430W for my "fileserver," which has 5 hard drives, an optical drive, a floppy drive, a Radeon 9500, and a fanbus - all of those need power connectors (not the same kinds, but power connectors nonetheless). The only problems I've had with it were of my own doing - overclocking too far. My ntoskrnl.exe got corrupted once; luckily I was able to copy a good version of the file to the Windows folder from the repair console.
But there's really not any problem with it. MBM5 reports low voltages on all the rails - a voltmeter made a liar out of it.

MBM said this:
3.3V: 3.15 - 3.23V
+5V: 4.84 - 4.87V
+12V: 11.49 - 11.55V

A multimeter says:
3.3V: 3.31V
+5V: 4.98
+12V: 11.99V


For the record, I can't remember if I used splitters or not in the computer. It doesn't seem to matter anyway. All's well with it.

My recommendation to you - yes, seek a more powerful supply if you have trouble. The time you're most likely to have any though is at bootup, when all the drives try to spin up at the same time, which will draw the most power. I don't know what Sparkle's reputation is as far as power supplies; I think they're supposed to be alright though. Just not sure if a 300W supply can handle that many drives.

 

[thirdlegstump]

Yea it's actually perfectly stable, never a problem so I'm not having power problems. I just need more connectors but I think it's time to give this one a break so I'm looking for an new one.

 

[epsilon9090]

I love my tru480, even though i only have 1hdd and 2 opticals, its rocks!

 

[Viper96720]

Use splitter for the opticals.