what kind of power supply do i need

FloW · Post by **FloW** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:05 am

i wanna run the bp6 with 2 cpus passiv cooled , 2 * 256mb sdram pc 133, 2 nics and one hdd 60gb.
is 300 watt enough?
maybe i put 2 cooler on the cpus.

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 8:59 am

is it a brand PSU with constant 300W supply or peak power?

I would use GOOD QUALITY at least 400W just in case.
besides depends on video card.

Me myself i am using 525W PSU

FloW · Post by **FloW** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 9:36 am

constant power supply of course. i do not need a video card , only for setting up the server. is more than 3oo watt really required?

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 1:29 pm

no, I mean that for example 525W supplies are rated for the peak 525W power during short periods and 451W on 24/7 rate.... so your 300W if it is a brand one, then you should get 250W on 24/7 regime, right, but if it is no name generic one, so then do not expect more than 200W at best...

BCN · Post by **BCN** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 1:39 pm

when i had 250W supply and 2-3 sticks of ram I had 3V and lover on 3.3V line - so BSODS randomly... added 200W of power more and no problems on the line

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 11:49 am

There are "250W" PSUs that are good enough, and I bet there are "350W"s that aren't.

I've had a 200W Forton-Source and a no-name 250W on my BP6, and the system was stable with both of them. Right now I use the 250W (system setup in the signature).

davd_bob · Post by **davd_bob** » Sun Oct 24, 2004 2:08 pm

I would have no fear of trying whatever PSU you have lying around...if however you are buying one for this pc get at least 500w so you can expand. The PSU will only put out what the system takes. The general attitude of most people in the OC'ing community is to have plenty of extra power available to do whatever is needed. Your intended use will use much less then most of us need.

For passive cooling make sure you:
1) have the PSU blowing out of the case instead of pulling in
2) use 66FSB
3) undervolt CPUs (1.85v or below if possable)
4) have good heat sinks on CPUs
5) watch heat generation on HDs. 7200rpm get warm and unless you are using a HDD fan the heat is pulled into the case.

I suggest you plan about 175W total for the MOBO and CPUS and RAM. Find out what you need for your hdd and whatever cards and fans you will be keep in the case, of course your NICs will use a little power.
If you really want to you can find somewhere on the Web how to figure power requirements, but I doubt its worth the effort as PSU ratings are not exactly reliable. Just try a PSU and see if it works.

FloW · Post by **FloW** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 1:37 pm

how fast is the onboard hd controller , can i use new hds and use their full speed and power , what limits does the controller have?

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Thu Nov 11, 2004 3:15 pm

FloW wrote:how fast is the onboard hd controller , can i use new hds and use their full speed and power , what limits does the controller have?

If you are talking about the HPT366 controller, ATA/66 is as good as it gets. You'd be better off with a newer ATA/100/133 PCI controller from Promise or something like that.

FloW · Post by **FloW** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:00 pm

ok,can i boot from the HPT366 controller?
i dont wanna use such a new hd with 7200 and 8mb cache . my dual will run as an router or something similar. i hope my 230watt pwer supply will work fine.

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 6:48 am

FloW wrote:ok,can i boot from the HPT366 controller?

You can (but don't be surprised if you run into trouble). Just have a Hpt366 driver disk if you want to do a fresh Win2K/XP install.

kretslopp · Post by **kretslopp** » Tue May 24, 2005 4:11 pm

I have a PSU of the SFX-standard (40mm shorter).

70W
+5V - 10A
+3.3V - 6A
+12V - 1.5A

These days those currents are ridiculously little.
But it was apparently enough for an AMD K6-2 @ 400Mhz and a Fujitsu PII/III Slot-1 with PIII @ 500Mhz.

But is it enough for a BP6 with 2x400 with one hdd?
I will try it but I'm suspicous. Oc is prolly out of the question.
It has to be a small PSU since I'm building an attaché-case-computer-thingy.

If it doesn't work I'll prolly buy this one:
http://gtek.se/index.php?mode=item&id=1 ... 808efc10e9

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Wed May 25, 2005 2:10 am

kretslopp wrote:I have a PSU of the SFX-standard (40mm shorter).

70W
+5V - 10A
+3.3V - 6A
+12V - 1.5A

These days those currents are ridiculously little.
But it was apparently enough for an AMD K6-2 @ 400Mhz and a Fujitsu PII/III Slot-1 with PIII @ 500Mhz.

But is it enough for a BP6 with 2x400 with one hdd?

Don't even try that, you might wreck the system.

Have a look at the specs of my old FSP 200W PSU:

+5V - 21A
+3.3V - 14A
+12V - 7A

A "70W"-PSU (combined power? or just the "rating"?) will definitely not be enough. According to http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm one Celeron 400 MHz can draw up to 23,7W. So it's already 48W for the two CPUs.

Two numbers for my dual Celeron system (old configuration: BP6, 2x Celeron 366@523, 2x 8cm-CPU-fans@7V, 2x 256MB SDRAM, Matrox G400, Adaptec 2940 SCSI, Soundblaster AWE64, AVM Fritz! PCI, Lifetec TV-Karte 9415, RTL8139D + 3Com 3C905B NICs, Samsung SV1203N (120GB), LiteOn CDRW 31240, 3,5'' Floppy, No-Name 250W PSU (fan @5V). Windows 2000 SP4):

Windows desktop idle: 72 W
Windows Desktop full load: 108 W

HTH,

Wolfram

kretslopp · Post by **kretslopp** » Wed May 25, 2005 1:08 pm

Hey how'bout this one:

Brand: Lead Year Enterprise Co. LTD
Name: Tiger TG-2506-C

Was used in a desktop embedded computer with a Microstar ms-5150 motherboard with a Cyric 6x86-PR200.

Output:

+5V - 10A
+12V - 2.5A

Doesn't mention any +3.3V rail. Thats odd.
In a PDF-file for that computer is a picture of an ATX-connector and the three 3.3V pins are there but on the psu those three places are empty.
So this PSU definitely does not have any 3.3V-rails.
And I suppose the BP6 needs the 3.3V?

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Fri May 27, 2005 5:07 am

kretslopp wrote:Hey how'bout this one:

Brand: Lead Year Enterprise Co. LTD
Name: Tiger TG-2506-C

Was used in a desktop embedded computer with a Microstar ms-5150 motherboard with a Cyric 6x86-PR200.

Output:

+5V - 10A
+12V - 2.5A

Doesn't mention any +3.3V rail. Thats odd.
In a PDF-file for that computer is a picture of an ATX-connector and the three 3.3V pins are there but on the psu those three places are empty.
So this PSU definitely does not have any 3.3V-rails.
And I suppose the BP6 needs the 3.3V?

Yes, it wouldn't work without.

The Fortron Source PSU from your link should be fine.

Jordan · Post by **Jordan** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 12:09 am

I figure this should go here becasue i don't want to make a whole new topic for this. sorry if it does bring up a long dead topic.

I have a sort of wattmeter thing and i tried my BP6 on it. It's built onto an AC inverter for running 120VAC electronics off of car batteries and such. It has a wattage-out display as well..
So when i tried hookign the inverter to a portable battery pack and plugging in my BP6 i got a readout of - get this:

125 WATTS!
It might not be that accurate, but the invertor has a max output of 200 watts, so 125 was the actual amount of power going into the computer!

That's with all motherboard things running including all expansion cards, 5 fans and the 5400 RPM hard drive! The optical drives weren;t running, but for a general system that is good news. Whats more, my PC is overclocked (see sig.)
That's my findings and i hope they help somebody.

PS- even with this low low number, i still put in a second PSU (150 watt) for the fans, HD and CDROM drive). Just because!

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 4:20 am

Jordan wrote:I figure this should go here becasue i don't want to make a whole new topic for this. sorry if it does bring up a long dead topic.

I have a sort of wattmeter thing and i tried my BP6 on it. It's built onto an AC inverter for running 120VAC electronics off of car batteries and such. It has a wattage-out display as well..
So when i tried hookign the inverter to a portable battery pack and plugging in my BP6 i got a readout of - get this:

125 WATTS!
It might not be that accurate, but the invertor has a max output of 200 watts, so 125 was the actual amount of power going into the computer!

That's with all motherboard things running including all expansion cards, 5 fans and the 5400 RPM hard drive! The optical drives weren;t running, but for a general system that is good news. Whats more, my PC is overclocked (see sig.)
That's my findings and i hope they help somebody.

PS- even with this low low number, i still put in a second PSU (150 watt) for the fans, HD and CDROM drive). Just because!

Nice. But the problem with the PSU ratings is that they are almost useless until you know the maximum current it can supply on the different rails.

While modern (K8) systems put the stress on the 12V rail (CPU and video card), older machines need more power on the 3,3 an 5V lines.

The highest wattage I ever measured on my systems was on this machine:

Shuttle AK32A (KT266A), Duron 1600@2288 w. full L2-cache (aka Athlon XP Thoroughbred B) @1,85V, Thermalright TR2-M3, 2x512 MB DDR-RAM, Sapphire Radeon 9800 @412/324, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS, Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 160 GB, Pioneer DVD 214, 3,5-Zoll Floppy,2x8cm-case fans (1x@7V, 1x @12V), Enermax 350W, Windows XP Professional SP1. Display: Iiyama Vision Master 450(19´´)

Windows desktop: 164 W
Windows desktop full load: 233 W
Display: 89 W
Max. wattage incl. display: 324 W

Measured with "Toast". Couldn't get a higher wattage with any 3D-game I checked (like Far Cry oder UT2004).

Compared to my last system:

Abit AV8, Athlon64 Winchester 3000+ / 1800@2300 MHz @1,4V, 8cm-Lüfter@7V, boxed heatsink, 2x 1GB DDR400 double-sided@3,0-3-3-8-2T, Innovision Geforce 6800 GT @400/1100 MHz w. 9cm-fan @7V, Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS, Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 160 GB, Pioneer DVD 214, 3,5-Zoll Floppy, 1x8cm-case fan @7V, Enermax 350W (only the 9cm-fan running), Windows XP Professional SP1.

Display: Iiyama Vision Master 450(19´´ CRT)

Windows desktop (without CnQ!): 94 W
Full load (Far Cry): 168 W
Display: 89 W
Max. wattage incl. display: 257 W

This machine draws the most power with full load on the video card (Far Cry, Level "Pier").