Make sure your Power Supply is up to the task!

[ke6guj]

Make sure that your Power Supply is up to the task!!

I had a 450W power supply in my Sage server and it ran just fine, even with a Raid 5 card running 5 300GB HD's. However, I just swapped out the Sempron 2500+ CPU/MB combo with a Sempron 3100+ combo so I could add in gigabit NIC and firewire on the MB, and the 3100+ is 64-bit capable as well. I also swapped in 6800 video card instead of the 5200 I had.

I did a repair install of XP and all went well for a couple hours before I started getting some wierd lockups of Sage. Then I had one of the HD's in the Raid go offline. I could get the Raid to rebuild itself, but within a day or so, the same drive would go offline again. I figured I had a HD going bad so I picked up a new one so I could swap out the bad drive in the Raid and do an RMA. Swapped out the "bad" HD with the new one, rebuilt the Raid and had the same problems.

The weird lockups of Sage got worse. I even went ahead and blew out the primary HD and rebuild WinXP from scratch. I thought it may be related to the repair installation I did earlier, It didn't help my problems with lockups, but it needed to be done anyways.

I ended up figuring out that my problems were related to the Raid. If I was recording or watching from the RAID, I could watch on a client or and MVP, not on the server. If I was recording or watching from another drive, then I could watch everywhere. I pulled out the RAID card and its HD's and Sage ran just fine.

I did some research about power supplies and the recommendation seems to be to have at least 22A on the +12v output. I checked out my PS and found out that even though it was a 450W ps, it only had 18A on the +12v rail. and just the RAIDed HD's used 12A. 6A of +12V to run the primary HD, the video card and 5 tuners, and the CPU just was not enough. I think that the combo of using the newer video card and when the Raid spun up, it just killed the +12v rail down to the point that all kinds of problems manifested.

So, I popped in a new 500W ps with 36A on the +12V output, split between two rails, half for the CPU and half for everything else. So far, so good on the new ps being up for the task. I think I'l go with something bigger if I can find a good deal on it, give myself a little more breathing room.

So, basically by upgrading my video card(more power hungry, needs its own power connector) my whole system went to crap. The CPU wattage requirements were basically a wash, I think. But doing the CPU/MB upgrade at the same time as teh video card upgrade cause a lot more troubleshooting issues.

Anyways, very long story short, Make sure that your Power Supply is up to the task!!

[src666]

Absolutely. Most pre-built PC's (non-name brand) come with the weakest power supplies, and buying cases with power supplies is just as bad (or worse). Nothing beats the stability you get when you put a good, strong power supply into your system.

I was running a really nice ThermalTake power supply in my server, but it just couldn't support the system with 8 drives. Replaced it with a SeaSonic 600 watt, and it runs like a champ. Plus, the SeaSonic is 84-86% efficient, as opposed to ~60% with the normal craptastic supplies. Worth every penny.

[blade]

As you found out it's not so much about the wattage as it is amps. A cheap 500-600w may not be able to deliver as many amps as a quality 300-350w PS. Not to mention I usually have very little faith in the manufacturer's ratings they slap on their PS.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by src666

Absolutely. Most pre-built PC's (non-name brand) come with the weakest power supplies, and buying cases with power supplies is just as bad (or worse). Nothing beats the stability you get when you put a good, strong power supply into your system.

I was running a really nice ThermalTake power supply in my server, but it just couldn't support the system with 8 drives. Replaced it with a SeaSonic 600 watt, and it runs like a champ. Plus, the SeaSonic is 84-86% efficient, as opposed to ~60% with the normal craptastic supplies. Worth every penny.

Word.
I was foolish e-nuff to think that the PS that came with my new very cool looking HTPC case was powerful enough to do the job. I went though 3 weeks of hell of weird lockups,rebooting, superfast play-backs of hour long shows in 20 seconds Doing full XP reinstalls,replacing ram and hard drives trying to fix it. At my wits end and thinking about going back to Replaytv, I thought about replacing the 3 week old PS....................It was the Power Supply


Edit: Because my boss walked by and I had to cut my post short and look like I was doing what I'm being paid for.

[dagar]

<Seasonic plug>

Get a Seasonic PSU ... they're high efficiency (~80%), made well (and right here in the US of A), and they're darn near silent (even to my virgin ears.)

</Seasonic plug>

[aperry]

Totally agree on the Seasonic power supplies. I have the 430W version, and it powers my 3 PVR-500's, DVD burner, 3 hard drives, 9600XT video card, and everything else just fine. And does it with almost no noise.

[davin]

Yes, Seasonics rule! Using a 380W in my GeForce6150 box with 2 HDs and 2 PVR-150s.