PCA Forums

I need a power supply that will accomidate 7 hard drives and one CD-ROM. Will a 350 W power supply be enough, or should I bump it up to 400 W? I think I heard that one hard drive takes up 20 or 30 watts a peice, but I don't really remember. Thanks in advance.

That many drives I would STRONGLY recommend a 450W PSU.

I have more then that working fine in a 300W

right now, I got 4 harddrives, cdrw, dvd running off a 450w

its the Kingwin 450w (quad fan)
can be had for 65 bucks at KDC

good PSU for a low price

on average, as said above...a solid 300W ps should be ok (antec, etc). the problems, if any, will show up as random crashes or drives disappearing if the ps can't keep up. overclocking will also be limited if you are stressing a smaller ps.

normal use would be ok, but i bet if you are hitting numerous drives at once it will become problematic (i.e. when the system is under load copying from drive to drive...especially if you're using raid).

i'd go 400W+ just to be safe.

Theorically you might be able to get away with a 350

But If i was running that many hardrives id go with a 450 watt min, would hate for a 350 watt to go 'ka boom" and take the mb with it

what are some good companies...besides antec?

I had 5 drives, CD-RW and tape drive on a 350w PSU and it barely made it. Random crashes all the time. I upgraded to an Enermax PSU and it was fine.

My drives where all 10,000RPM UltraSCSI tho, so that probably made a big diffrence as well.

just run dual PS... one for strictly mobo and other for all drives.. then you could get away with a 200 and a 300... or somthing = as small.