Am I the only person ghetto rigging 2 PSUs 24/7?

[afireinside]

I haven't seen anyone else do this and I'm having some issues. I come home from school, turn my monitor on, check my PMs on IRC, and realize firefox is gone. Odd maybe I had closed it. I load firefox and my computer slows to a halt and shuts off. I had to turn my computer on WITHOUT the video card PSU on then shut it off and turn on the jump started PSU to run. And when I got back into windows my volume had dropped from 36% to 12%, not that it probably means anything. Anyone know why this would happen? It's kind of scaring me.

[Disposibleteen]

Can i ask why you run 2 PSUs when you have an OCZ 520 watt unit, is that not enough to hold your rig up?

[Gnome]

virus scan ?

[afireinside]

Can i ask why you run 2 PSUs when you have an OCZ 520 watt unit, is that not enough to hold your rig up?

I'm running a 2.8ghz dual core, 2 hdds, x-fi, vmodded OCed SLI, and fans that draw 1 amp each. Just a 520 watt PSU causes instability not to mention it smells like BBQ and will probably explode. You won't understand the amount of power this kind of setup draws until you own it. I thought a single PSU would be fine as well but it's not.

How would a virus prevent my computer from booting without some PSU trickery?

[Ator]

I bet one of those PC Power and Cooling 1000W PSU's will solve all of your problems. :)

[bullet2urbrain]

strange cuz im running the following with no power issues.

x2 dual core (1.5vcore -+) 4 HDD ( 1 raptor 2 250gig 1 100gig) 2 optical drives
6 fans (5 80mm 1 120mm) and a watercooling setup.. and a GTX.. no problems here on an Antec TPII 550w.

i have however ran 2 PSU's at one time.. i had a crap ThermalTake PSU that didnt power a Barton Rig i had at one time.

[D_o_S]

I haven't seen anyone else do this and I'm having some issues. I come home from school, turn my monitor on, check my PMs on IRC, and realize firefox is gone. Odd maybe I had closed it. I load firefox and my computer slows to a halt and shuts off. I had to turn my computer on WITHOUT the video card PSU on then shut it off and turn on the jump started PSU to run. And when I got back into windows my volume had dropped from 36% to 12%, not that it probably means anything. Anyone know why this would happen? It's kind of scaring me.

How are you running your PSUs? Like 1 PSU powers mobo and stuff and the other powers your GPUs? I don't think that's very good... if you have 2 PSUs like this, their earths are not joined (at the PSUs) which will cause an equalizing current to flow between your GPU and mobo.... I can't really explain in that well in English, but I think that you should look into this...

Or is it I that am missing something ? :stick:

[afireinside]

Question is what clocks and exact voltage on CPU? At 2.8ghz 1.65v the power draw is HIGH. GT SLI takes a ton more power. And how much power do your fans draw? My controller is probably drawing 4amps or so off 12v. My GT's are vmodded as well.

I have no idea if it's safe or not DOS lol want to buy me an 850 watt PC P&C?

[bullet2urbrain]

my exact CPU Voltage is
1.48Vcore. right now the exact CPU is 250 * 10
2.83 Vdimm

all the fans are running ~2,000 RPM's minus the 120mm which is 500rpms.

if you have a more precise way to measure the current draw from the fans i'd be more than happy to investigate it for you.

[Dj_iNSULIN]

owkay, I got even 3 psu's installed on my system. it is certainly no problem to use one extra power supply.
http://users.telenet.be/jpsollie/DSC00174.JPG
and guess what, I have an enermax noisetaker build-in. still I need 2 psu's to power up the graphic cards
*edit: the noisetaker is a 600W version

[drunkenmaster]

when i ran two psu's( thermaltake 680W and the ocz520W). that rig has 6800gt's sli'd clocked really high, 2gigs mem , ath 64, single core but at 2.9Ghz(pre dual core release), 8 hard drives and like 10 fans(all quiet).

the only reason i ran two psu's is i bought the TT one but the first batch had incorrect pci-e power connectors so i couldn't run it in sli, coolermaster stacker case came with a dual psu jumper cable which worked pretty well. i only had to keep power on for the 2nd psu(the tt) then everything turned on fine when i hit power button which was connected to mobo which had the ocz connected to it.

quite frankly it was overkill, it worked on the 680W fine but was a pain with all the convertors(two molex's per pci-e adaptor) with all the hard drives wasn't working and the TT uses a dedicated 12 v line on the pci-e lines(i think). i was returning the psu, thought i'd see if i could clock higher, could be about 4Mhz on the gpu's, nothing extra cpu/mem.

also worked fine, all that lot on the 520W OCZ. as far as i recall the 7800gt's should be using a touch less power than the 6800gt's.#

get a 600W fps/ocz psu if you feel you need the power.

[afireinside]

Found my problem. I moved my case to my window and I was moving a fan wire when it pushed the molex off my intake fan into the case and it shut off. The 12v pin was sticking out of the molex and shorting. All is good now :)

[Calderbrae]

How are you running your PSUs? Like 1 PSU powers mobo and stuff and the other powers your GPUs? I don't think that's very good... if you have 2 PSUs like this, their earths are not joined (at the PSUs) which will cause an equalizing current to flow between your GPU and mobo.... I can't really explain in that well in English, but I think that you should look into this...

Or is it I that am missing something ? :stick:


That type of circumstance does not occur in this configuration. That only occurs when 2 or more power sources are forcing current in opposing directions on the same bus/wire. If you are referring to the fact that the cards are plugged into the motherboard ports and receiving some power and a different power supply is plugged into the onmboard PCI-E plugs, that is seperate circuitry to begin with, so wouldnt matter.


@ afireinside - Thats good to hear man. I have had things like that happen to me before.

[afireinside]

Well I was having some oddities and decided to DL NOD32 and run a virus scan. Weather bug and three java based virsuses... No more firefox crashing for me and power has been 100% stable! Got new toys coming for the weekend and some ORB destruction :D