Using Two Power Supplies

[majerus]

I have done some research and didn't find anything on the topic really. My case has plenty of room, and I was thinking I could add another power supply just for the disks. Has any one done this? Were there issues I am not thinking about? I figured the secondary power supply would would be switched on by splicing pin 11 and 12 to each on the Systemboard power supply. My logic behind this right or wrong is to reduce load on the single power supply, and which in turn I would think should lead to longer life. What do you think ?

 

[jonnn]

Your logic is wrong. A quality PS will last a decade even at full load.

Your approach should be to select a properly sized, single quality unit.

Dual power supplies will only result in decreased efficiency and increased cost.

Dual power supplies are reserved for systems which require uptime/availability in case of PS failure. A home user can afford downtime while a PS is replaced.

 

[majerus]

Fair enough. I will start reading up on quality power supplies, and make a determination as to what I should buy. I still think it would be kinda cool either way.

 

[jonnn]

I wouldn't want to stop you from doing something you think is "cool." but let me again point out that the only purpose of dual supplies is redundancy.

The setup you have described is actually like the polar opposite, with no gain. You'll have two power supplies that depend on each other. If the one powering your disks die, your system is down. If the one powering your board dies, the system is down. It's like RAID 0 vs RAID 1, but with no benefit.

Not to mention the potential for data corruption / pool corruption with such an unusual power failure scenario that is probably not designed for in ZFS or your board.

 

[MtK]

well, not only power down, what about power up?
if you don't have a compatible motherboard that would actually use both PSUs, one of those two "parts" won't even boot up... :)

 

[jgreco]

You can buy a professionally made dual power supply. It will do all the right things. It will be engineered to do the correct things under adverse conditions. Why risk the danger of trying to hack something together? Do you want to end up with a supply that could fry your board? Your drives?

 

[TheSmoker]

You have psus on the market that are platinum grade ( almost 94% efficiency) that are having 1500w. You cannot convince me that you have a system that will put much strain on that kind of psu. Btw i recommend to use corsair 1200ax(i).

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