Spyderturbo007 Posted October 20, 2014 Share Posted October 20, 2014 I currently looking at building a new server, so I'll want to expand with additional drives. I started a new thread with questions about the other components as well because I didn't want to clutter up this thread. If you have a few minutes to take a look, I would really appreciate your input. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=35879.0 Quote Link to comment
cirkator Posted December 16, 2014 Share Posted December 16, 2014 Hi, I need some help and suggestions for a new PSU please. I want to upgrade my Server with 4 X-Case 5-in-3 Harddisk Caddies. Each unit takes 2 Molex plugs. So I either buy Y-Splitters or try the below mentioned method. I have 10 HDDs at the moment and one SSD. I am ultimately looking at 20 HDDs in the end, so please bear in mind that the PSU should have enough power for 20 HDDs + 1 SSD + about 4 CaseFans (120mm) A modular PSU would make cablemanagement a lot easier and as user Squid pointed out in another thread, he asked antec for just the Molex modular cables and they mailed him the cables free of charge. That would of course be very sweet, since i will never use the sata power cables and GPU power cable. Suggestions? My Serverparts are in my signature Quote Link to comment
crowdx42 Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 Just a comment on this thread. I had the antec 620w PSU listed in this thread and also the Corsair CM 650 PSU. Both were fine with 5 - 6 drives. Once both PSUs had extra drives added I started getting errors on my drives. I changed both PSUs for HX750 and a HX850 (both refurbished) , this resulted in stable systems. So even though the math would indicate that the original PSUs should easily handle 8 drives in either machine they obviously had issues. Both PSUs were less than a year old, the Antec was actually brand new. My rule of thumb is if I add an extra drive and I start to get errors following doing full pre-clears with no errors, I start to look at the cables and then the PSU. Quote Link to comment
cirkator Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 Nobody can recommend me any PSUs? Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 Nobody can recommend me any PSUs? Is this not enough? Why? Quote Link to comment
cirkator Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 It's definitely a nice list, but it was last edited in April 2011. I figured times and recommendations have changed since :-) Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 Well, it covers green drives and standard drives. Power consumption of those didn't change dramatically and 1[A] is still 1[A] on PSU side. Maybe the PSU models are not up-to-date any more but check the listed vendors products for their recent builds. Watch out for the "single rail" and the recommended [A] in the OP. Quote Link to comment
cirkator Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 So after researching, I decided that I want to buy a Corsair HX Series. I am not yet sure if it should be the 750i or the 850i. I could get both of them for literally the same price, so that doesnt matter. I was doing some math but i would really like a second opinion. 24 Sata-Ports at 2 Ampere each = 48 Ampere (The 4TB Reds actually peak at 1.75 Ampere, but i want to calculate conservatively) 2 AOC-SASLP-MV8 Cards ~ 6 Ampere (Cant find any official numbers, read in another thread here that the M1015 draw 3 Amp, so i just guessed here) MB + CPU ~ 3 Ampere (Again, I am only guessing, was mentioned in this other thread) Fans ~ 1 Ampere Total of 58 Ampere. The 750W has 62.5 Ampere on the 12V Rail while the 850W 70.8 Ampere. While i would rather go with the 750W in terms of efficiency, the 850W has more headroom. Are my calculations correct or realistic? Which PSU would you recommend? Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 You will be fine if the majority of your drives are reds and green drives. I would go for the 750W PSU. Quote Link to comment
cirkator Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 Thank you, I just purchased the HX750i. Quote Link to comment
mrmarkfr Posted January 19, 2015 Share Posted January 19, 2015 managed to pick up an HX650 today, never used, the guy bought it for bitcoin mining, never got around to using it. Paid $70CDN for it, saved about $50 before taxes Quote Link to comment
Chugiak Posted January 24, 2015 Share Posted January 24, 2015 I suspect that most of the time your system will be at idle or maybe spinning a couple of drives. So your power draw will be what, something in the 50 w to 100 w range? Let's call it 75 w. That's at 10% of max load for the 750 w PSU, and 8.8% for the 850 w unit. Efficiency is gonna be respectable for both, somewhere around 87%. http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80PlusPowerSuppliesDetail.aspx?id=25&type=2 (scroll to the bottom for the two units) In this case the extra head room of the HX 850i isn't costing you anything. And if you bought the HX1000i model you'd be saving money! Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Efficiency is gonna be respectable for both, somewhere around 87%. Do you have a source, as a qualitative example, how the 0-20% relation is? I'm not sure if you can simply extrapolate it (linear). Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Efficiency is gonna be respectable for both, somewhere around 87%. Do you have a source, as a qualitative example, how the 0-20% relation is? I'm not sure if you can simply extrapolate it (linear). The Plug Load Solutions link he provided for Corsair has charts for virtually all 80+ certified PSU's: http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80PlusPowerSupplies.aspx The Platinum spec requires a 10% efficiency rating; and for many lesser certification levels these are provided as well -- you can see them in the charts. Note, however, that there are no figures for efficiency at even lower power consumption -- and the efficiency does drop rather sharply at exceptionally low levels. However ... even if it drops 10-20%, when you're drawing very little power, that equates to a fairly low "waste". e.g. if you're only drawing 30w [Perhaps a 600w unit running at 5% load], then even a 70% efficient unit would only be drawing about 43w from the wall, compared to 38w if it was running at 80% efficiency -- a "waste" of 5 watts. A 750w unit running at 30w [Not an unrealistic idle figure with modern Haswell systems] would be running at 4% load, but I'd expect an 80+ Gold or Platinum unit to still be running at 70% efficiency, even at that low a load. Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 I scrolled down to the HX650 where 10% values were not available. Didn't even notice the 10% headline...thanks. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 I scrolled down to the HX650 where 10% values were not available. Didn't even notice the 10% headline...thanks. I do wish they would publish actual efficiency numbers for both 5% and 10% loads, given the much more efficient systems that are available these days. But the simple fact is that any high-quality 80+ Gold or better PSU unit is probably "efficient enough" at any load above 5% of its rated capacity. Quote Link to comment
Chugiak Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 I don't have anything other than those PlugLoad numbers and reports. I do estimate the 10% Load efficiency when none is reported by comparing the dropoff of similar units, which depending on brand and series runs around 5% to 10% when comparing 10% Load efficiency to 50% Load efficiency. For back of the envelope calculations that's probably accurate enough. I agree that it would be really helpful from a Total Cost of Ownership standpoint to know what a given PSU efficiency will be when the system is in a low-power idle state. Using a lower-bound like gary suggests should give a worst-case efficiency. I suspect that the simple reality is for unRAID and other systems that don't make use of a discrete GPU, the PSU chosen is overpowered by hundreds of watts. There is some small but measurable savings to be had by sizing your PSU smaller so that it runs at a more efficient load rating, but with power draws so small it almost becomes moot. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Agree -- most UnRAID systems have power supplies that provide FAR more power than the system will ever draw ... EXCEPT during drive spinups. The problem is simply that you need to have enough current capacity to handle ALL of the drives spinning up at once. If UnRAID supported staggered spinup, we could use FAR less powerful power supplies. It's equally true, however, that as long as you're using high-efficiency 80+ Gold or Platinum units, even the very low current (2-5%) draws are likely still no worse than 65% or so efficient ... and with very low current draw, the lost energy is small enough that it doesn't matter. Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 If UnRAID supported staggered spinup This could be possibly managed in software, but the initial, cold power-on when no OS is controlling the drive spin is the major problem. I think that power supplies should be built to deliver a "bust current" for a brief period of time. But the overall saving is probably not worth it. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Yes, the initial power-on surge would be an issue unless your drives were connected through a controller that had staggered spin-up ... and this is typically a feature of higher-end RAID controllers that aren't likely to be used with most UnRAID systems. Quote Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 this is typically a feature of higher-end RAID controllers I'm not sure if that is the case. I used this discussion to read up on staggered-spin-up. Found this, somewhat lenghty but informative, thread. As far as I understand now, either that mentioned P11 has to be left open or some setting on the drives has to be done to keep them spun down by default. If a controller/HBA can spin down a drive, I would expect it can spin it up also. Given, those drives "boot into standby" - meaning they are running but not spinning. In the end it means the OS is in control of drive spin. Quote Link to comment
wizard84 Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 i'm choosing the psu for my system i'm seeing two models - SS-460FL2 - SSR-650RM my environment will be System: Supermicro - X10SL7-F CPU: Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1241 v3 @ 3.50GHz Memory: 16 GB HDD: 4 x Seagate ST4000DM000 (initial setup) - 1 x HDD Cache (i have to buy the disks). what do you suggest? the noise will be important but not mandatory Quote Link to comment
RubberBroke Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Hi, After lurking here for about a year I'm finally in the final stages of my server design and purchases Operating Environment: Antec 1200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129100&cm_re=antec_twelve_hundred-_-11-129-100-_-Product Rosewill 4x3 Hotswap x 4 (Specifically for 2.5 HDD support and better pricing) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132037&cm_re=rosewill_hotswap-_-16-132-037-_-Product Mobo - Intel DH55TC (Old HTPC repurposed) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121394 CPU - Intel Core i5-650 (Old HTPC repurposed) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115220 SATA Controller - Supermicro SAS2LP-MV8 x 1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5EM2JS7184&cm_re=supermicro_sas2lp-_-16-101-792-_-Product SATA Controller - Monoprice SATA2 Serial ATA II PCI-Express RAID Controller Card (Silicon Image SIL3132) x 2 http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2530&seq=1&format=2 HDD - WD 4TB Red x 1 (Parity) HDD - WD 3TB Green x 4 HDD - WD 4TB Green x 4 HDD - WD 500GB x 6 (Laptop 2.5 Drives) SSD - Samsung EVO 500GB x 1 (Cache) So my question is whether the Corsair CX600 will be enough ? as I have an option to get it cheap at the moment. (Used) Corsair CX600 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028&cm_re=cx600-_-17-139-028-_-Product Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 So my question is whether the Corsair CX600 will be enough ? as I have an option to get it cheap at the moment. (Used) Yes & No While 600 watts should be enough for 9 3.5" drives plus a half dozen laptop units, I do NOT recommend the CX series supplies. It will probably work, but I've seen many cases where there were issues with CX series units on the Core series CPUs. Corsair is a good brand, but I only recommend the TX series and above units (TX, HX, AX, etc.). One other thought on your proposed build: You're planning to use 6 laptop drives with a total storage capacity of 3TB ... I'd suggest you simply add an additional 3 or 4 TB drive instead. Much more power efficient; saves 5 SATA ports (probably eliminates the need for the 2 extra SIL3132 cards; and your system will have MUCH better parity check and drive rebuild speeds. Quote Link to comment
RubberBroke Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 So my question is whether the Corsair CX600 will be enough ? as I have an option to get it cheap at the moment. (Used) Yes & No While 600 watts should be enough for 9 3.5" drives plus a half dozen laptop units, I do NOT recommend the CX series supplies. It will probably work, but I've seen many cases where there were issues with CX series units on the Core series CPUs. Corsair is a good brand, but I only recommend the TX series and above units (TX, HX, AX, etc.). One other thought on your proposed build: You're planning to use 6 laptop drives with a total storage capacity of 3TB ... I'd suggest you simply add an additional 3 or 4 TB drive instead. Much more power efficient; saves 5 SATA ports (probably eliminates the need for the 2 extra SIL3132 cards; and your system will have MUCH better parity check and drive rebuild speeds. Thanks for the quick reply Garycase. On your advice I will not be buying the CX600 or the SIL3132 cards. Now thinking Seasonic but I've read a lot of horror stories of sub quality cables and extreme noise on Newegg. In the end I'll probably go Corsair or Antec maybe. Since I'm configuring the server to eventually hold 14 Green + 1 Red + 1 SSD should I get a 750 Watt or should I just stick with the 600 Watts ? The laptop drives have been extracted from Trancend USB Cases and will be sitting around doing nothing once my server is up and running so I figured I'd just use them in the interim. Will have to see where else they can be used. Quote Link to comment
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