Dual PSU's in Parallel Possible ?

[Major]

I have tried several PSU over last few years and NONE have ever impressed me. with this last system build a couple of months ago I went with the topower 520w and seemed to work fine. That is until I started pushing the cpu to its limits. The 3v and 5v rails couldn't cut it, so I switched to the truepower 550w. It was certainly an improvement but once again I have hit a wall, the 5v rail is low @ 4.78 and under load drops below 4.6 when I crank up the cpu vcore.

My question, is it possible to run dual psu's of the same make and wattage in parrallel ? Has anyone seen any posts on this topic or tried this for themselves ?

[IFMU]

Interesting idea. Ive thought about something close to this myself a few times but never really got into checking it out fully.
The duallies Ive been messing with seem to have the same issue Ive noticed. One thing I did do was attach "extra" components on a secondary PSU. Fans, Rom drives... Ive been tempted to see if it would hurt anything to run extra hard drives off of, but never really gotten around to it.

[felix88]

i'll have to look into that. otherwise, you can run just about everything off of a second psu. you'll just have to make them start at the same time, which is easy enough.

by the way, have you ever looked into PC Power and Cooling? they supposedly make the best PSUs.

[Major]

I had thought about doing just that and powering all of my dirves and misc. with a seperate psu. I also tried disconecting everything but essential hardware and it didnt seem to make any difference.

Most of the current draw off the hard drives and cd roms are on the 12v line. Didnt seem to affect the 5v and 3v

I have heard that PC Power and cooling make good psu's. BUT I JUST BOUGHT THIS ONE ! hehe

I learned the hard way how important the PSU is on a dual amd 7m266d mobo.

[GVCryan]

I would just do a mod to adjust your pots. I know the Antecs are hard to mod, but I'm not sure about the topower.

Wiring 2 5v lines together would be hella risky, but possible.

Just cut and splice the atx connector wires together, leading into one final connector terminal.

Ohh, God, now you have my modding gene going again.

[Major]

Got home from work and did a little experiment, I used the spare PSU to supply all of my drives and the R9700, I also used jumpers and connected the 3.3v lines. NO change in bios readings of any of the voltages, 12v,5v,3.3v all stayed the same LOW and Nothing blew up (which would have made it easier to justify a new PSU !hehe)

BUT I was able run my bus a little higher and took the the processor to 2609 with the change (passed 3dmark several times). So it DID help, just confirmed that I need a better PSU.

I looked at the PC Power and Cooling web site and none of the supplies they have listed provide more current on the 5v or the 3.3v lines than the Truepower 550W Im using now. Its rated at 5v @ 40A, 12v @ 24A, and 3.3v @ 32A. Any other suggestions for a good PSU ?

I popped the top on both of the PSU's and neither have any adjustment pots.

Correction: After revisiting the PC Power and Cooling site I did find the MP Supplies have 3.3 @ 45A, do you think that will do it ?

[wdd1040]

I was just thinking that I remember someone doing a dual PSU. IIRC, it was OPP. Or maybe it was Holicho. Either way, they were trying to put like 2.3Vcore and needed the power. I'm sure someone will remember what I'm talking about. :)
Wes

[Nohto]

PC Power and Cooling are supposed to be the best (besides the redundant PSU for servers) made. They aren't cheap though. They also come with adjustable Pots and you can have them modded from the factory to have the pots externally accessible. Usualy if the PSU doesn't have a pot on the inside it is a simple mod of just adding a adj. pot in place of a specific resistor. I have modded 2 of my Enermax PSU's successfully.
Nate

[Major]

I just ordered a PC Power and Cooling 510W @ $199, I'll leave an update when I get it in the system, the guys at PC Power and Cooling are on top of things, I'm very impressed so far with their assistance and knowledge.

[wretcheddawn]

First post...

Okay. I have two power supplies, one of which is going unused at the moment, but i was wondering if i would basically splice the atx connectors from both psu's the p4 connectors and the molex connectors would it work, or would it short out one of the supplies and damage my hardware. I was going to go ahead and test it with a fan by shorting the power pins (14 on atx?) and plugging in a fan and then testing the voltages in BIOS.

Has anyone tried this successfully?

[uOpt]

The problem here is that some devices are sensitive to some current applied earlier than some other current.

I certainly wouldn't run a graphics card off a separate PSU because it might end up getting power through the mainboard and not on the PCIe connector or vice versa and it might hurt it.

Harddrives and optical usually don't take enough power (on a permanent basis) to worry, unless you have 3 DVD burners running permanantly. But of course they make power "dirty" so getting them off the primary PSU might improve borderline (== overclocking) stability.

[JamesAvery22]

Holy three year old thread revival Batman.

You could do all your HDs, optical drives, and fans on the secondary PSU then the mobo and vid cards on the other.

Course this all might be pointless if you are running a P3 setup with 1 HD :D

What are you running?