Dell T20 PSU how many drives

[Grinas]

Hey,

A dell t20 or a Lenovo ts140 were recommended to me here on the forum. So i went out an purchased a Lenovo TS140. After nearly a month of waiting for it. I decided to open a claim to get my money back. I seen a cheap Dell t20 in the meantime and purchased this. To my surprise the 2 of them arrived on the same day. The seller of the Lenovo miswrote my address.

All in all I cant complain. I decided to use the Dell for the FreeNas build as it had 4 build in 3'5 HDD trays and 2 build in 2'5" HDD trays. When the Lenovo had only 2 3'5 HDD trays. I decided to turn the Lenovo into a hackintosh and it was a pretty easy process.
Anyways I will be writing up a guide in the next few days about the pros and cons of each.

My question is. How many Drives can the Dell T20 PSU take? As far as I know it is a 290 watt PSU.

I have a SAS card in the machine that allows me to have an additional 4 drives and there was a Sata power splitter in the machine that adds an additional 2/3 Sata power connections. I cant remember exactly the number of extra connections it adds. I will check later and add. With the SAS card every 2 drives need 1 Sata power connection

If i was to buy another SAS card and another Sata power splitter would the PSU be able to take it.

My current setup is
Boot Drive = 2 * 32GB sandisk cuzer USB 3.0 (nice and small so don’t have to worry about them getting knocked out or damaged)
Pools:
main Pool = VDev with 3 * 2TB drives
secondary Pool = VDev with 2 * 1TB drives
And an 120GB SSD for VM's and jails etc.

 

[ethereal]

this is a good guide - https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

When you read that guide, you'll see that a 290W PSU is a good match for four 3.5" drives plus all the related components. Also, keep in mind that drive cooling is only just adequate in the T20, particularly for the lower bays, so adding more drives is asking for cooling problems. I would argue that if you want to put more than four 3.5" drives in your FreeNAS, you shouldn't buy a server designed to hold four 3.5" drives.

 

[Linkman]

Just to emphasize what Robert said above, the lower two drives in the T20 run warm even when not stressed, higher than 42 C degrees in my personal experience (with ambient temps of 24 C degrees). I added a case fan directly behind the lower drive cage which lowered temps to only a few degrees above ambient. (I have no HDDs in the upper bays, just an SSD, so can't speak to the cooling there).

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

higher than 42 C degrees

You can improve on that if you replace the vented PCI slot blanking plates with solid plates.

I have no HDDs in the upper bays

They run a few degrees cooler than the lower bays in mine.