[ KB ] Power Supplies in Tandem

Post by **Derek** » Sun Feb 16, 2003 12:23 pm

Have a huge system filled with hard drives, peltiers, and case fans all sucking from the same power supply? Check this out:

The picture speaks for itself (literally). What you see there are the instructions detailing the wires you need to connect together in order to have both power supplies turn on at the same time (via the power button on your case).

One power supply goes to the motherboard, and the other supply feeds the rest of your peripherals. Since you've connected the wires above, once PSU 1 is activated, PSU 2 will automatically switch on.

The idea first came to mind when building a super cooled BP6 with water cooling equipment and peltiers. One power supply just didn't cut it, so a second PSU was added and spliced so that it turned on with the first.

Thank Tim

onelegdis · Post by **onelegdis** » Fri May 16, 2003 6:26 pm

Outstanding, just what the doctor ordered!

InactiveX · Post by **InactiveX** » Sat May 17, 2003 11:05 am

I used to have 2 PSU on my BP6, but the secondary PSU was an AT supply, activated by a 12V/250V relay switch connected to one of the primary PSU's 12V lines.

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Sat May 17, 2003 9:33 pm

i have a smiliar setup

an atx and an AT, i just have the power switch of the AT mounted in one of the bay covers

works for me since i never turn the computer off

DJ_Spray · Post by **DJ_Spray** » Mon May 19, 2003 5:08 am

Have dual ATX (300W) for a couple of years now, runs great.!!

I have for the moment 'only' a 480W on my dual Athlon 2200 board, but will maybe move to dual too (cause I've crashed the PSU twice in 6 months already, to many devices connected)

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Mon May 19, 2003 3:28 pm

too many devices?

sounds alot like me

what you got in yours?

i have every connector i can (except the hpt) filled with drives

i have a total of... 2 IDE hdd's 1 ide zip drive, 2 floppies, a 48x cdrom a 48x24x48x burner 3 SCSI cards, a nic, a sound card, a video card (will attempt dual monitors again eventually) and a pci usb card

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Mon May 19, 2003 7:02 pm

kuun wrote:too many devices?

sounds alot like me

what you got in yours?

i have every connector i can (except the hpt) filled with drives

i have a total of... 2 IDE hdd's 1 ide zip drive, 2 floppies, a 48x cdrom a 48x24x48x burner 3 SCSI cards, a nic, a sound card, a video card (will attempt dual monitors again eventually) and a pci usb card

Why don't you have that last slot filled?

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Mon May 19, 2003 8:06 pm

what last slot?

the agp?

DJ_Spray · Post by **DJ_Spray** » Tue May 20, 2003 2:12 am

I can't say exactly what I had, now it has changed since I upgraded to my dual Athlon system. What I can tell you is I had a total of 10fans that could run, all PCI and an ISA slots used, 3HDD, CDR and DVD.
Cards where like SCSI, Firewire, Sound, NIC, Second VGA....

put a second PSU, it will run much better.
I plugged all the IDEs and fans on the second psu, and that's much better.!!

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Tue May 20, 2003 3:14 pm

i would love a dual athlon system

DJ_Spray · Post by **DJ_Spray** » Thu May 22, 2003 2:22 am

That's pretty cool, true....

know that you can use normal XP processors and run them SMP (big price difference between XP and MP processors...)

anyway, I'm still very happy with the BP6 on my second machine.. (out of 10 at home

)

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Thu May 22, 2003 8:38 pm

10?!

sheesh

i want a fleet of computers

i have another bp6 that needs capacitors replaced

and i have 2 slot a cpu's no boards >:| and a duron and gonna get a board soon for it

also i want to buy a k6-2 350 socket 7 with 100mhz fsb

but.. i'd have to buy HDD's for al lof them

vgoraz · Post by **vgoraz** » Fri May 23, 2003 2:33 am

i have 5 computers at home and 2 laptops also here at home. these computers are gettin g rather useless sadly so really only my bp6 runs. i occasionally turn on my p3-500. the other computers are so old and useless i dont even feel like running seti on them (though yeah they could). i used to have all of them running last year, made alot of noise, but it did keep things nice and warm in my dorm room.
it also tripped the power to my entire apartment building a few times. guess 4 wall outlets just cannot run 10 computers (counting my roomates) 24/7 while trying to do other things.
one laptop by the way is slightly larger than my moms sewing machine and has 2 floppy drives build into it along with a mini screen. its pretty damn old school. if i had something that could write so big floppy disks (which actually are floppy) i would make a quick boot disk thingy and get the machine up and running
anyways this post is to long. so goodbye

DJ_Spray · Post by **DJ_Spray** » Fri May 23, 2003 3:50 am

Well, I have 10PCs because we are 5 in the family, we have a firewall, a DHCP/DNS/HTTP/POP server, each our own computer, 2 laptops, and some extra pcs for friends that want to surf at the same time.
The smallest pc is a P166MMX@250 (the firewall), then it's K6 400s, Duron800s, Athlon1Ghz, BP6 w/2x500 and my A7M266-D w/2x2200 Athlon...

BTW, I have 2Athlon boards, but look for 133bus processors (non XP)

kuun · Post by **kuun** » Fri May 23, 2003 3:08 pm

ok,

Vgoraz, would you want to get rid of some of those computers?

i am looking at making a NAT/Firewall machine and having several others running web servers and FTPs and such (i'm a music video and mp3 freak

Kuun

Post by **Derek** » Fri May 23, 2003 3:27 pm

vgoraz, you've got a lot of computer power there! I hope you're crunchin' SETI work units for our team!

What are the specs for some of the comps?

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 12:34 pm

You know, once I have connected two 200W atx PSU's just by cutting all the ATX wires and connecting them paralell (I did not find ATX split cable anywhere - I know they are to find on some places on the net) - it worked great and my 3.3V line was stable, until one of them died - I saw it through the 3.3V line dropping back to old low values

So I use both PSUs' power top power the mobo also - It was like having one BIG 400W PSU... hehehe