Farmer question on PSU

what do you farmer use on your home farm for PSU?? don't tell me all yours are PC Power&Cooling unit! there gotta be some good decent PSU for us farmer without putting a dent on the wallet.... even for powering Presler....

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=437851

LandShark said:

what do you farmer use on your home farm for PSU?? don't tell me all yours are PC Power&Cooling unit! there gotta be some good decent PSU for us farmer without putting a dent on the wallet.... even for powering Presler....

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=437851

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Oh no, not me! Enermax or Antec. I've been buying these lately. They have the modular cable system...only plug in what ya need

ihrsetrdr said:

Oh no, not me! Enermax or Antec. I've been buying these lately. They have the modular cable system...only plug in what ya need

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but that's a dual rail with each at "just" 20A..... I've heard some bad thing on dual rail PSU for o/c'ed Presler as they might not deliver enough juicy on a single rail.....

i use ocz 420 powerstreams for the most part on the dual cores. Haven't tried anything weaker since i don't want to risk instability or having to reduce OC.

I have a couple of ocz 520 powerstreams ... i am in the process of testing that i only need a 420 on my 920/p5wd2 rig. (mucking about with my rack a bit first so all my rigs don't crash when i work on 1 of them!).

Will have an answer later today.

There may be other good ones ...i have a zalman 400 running one of the 830D's on a p5ld2. The zalman is about the same price as the ocz 420 ... so since i expect to be buying another one this week to get my homeless 830 going again. That is why i am doing the test ... to save nearly $50 cdn on that new psu.

I had read a while back about reliability (breakage) problems with newer antecs so i didn't buy any and can't really comment from experience. I do have a couple of antecs ... a 480 true blue i got used with some 478 stuff.
They do seem to be a bit cheaper than the ocz's but not enough for me to want to bother experimenting with them.

I am also assuming that you have very minimal video card ... i think that is one main reason why 520 sized psu's are needed. My 8mb ati rage pci vid cards don't add much load. The only other things psu's have to drive on my caseless farm rigs is 1 sata hdd and 1 fan on the hsf, and a tiny fan on the NB.

I guess I'm not much help, I'm just a moderate OCer...I hate having to run for the fire extinguisher when an OC goes too far!

ihrsetrdr said:

I guess I'm not much help, I'm just a moderate OCer...I hate having to run for the fire extinguisher when an OC goes too far!

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It is helpful to have lots of different experience points from different people tho ... experence on what doesn't work is as helpful as what does work.

And i find it helps to post what I think, cuz this will let others 'enhance' my understanding.

Fortrons have been muchly good referenced as good value/perf, but no good local supply for me and i have been building 1 at a time, not a bunch at a time like LS is now. So I have no experience with them.

I've been using an Enermax 430w ps.

it's been good, stable, cheap.

all the rails are good except for the +12v one.

It runs 11.8x volts.

but for a mild OC, it's fine.

I even replaced it with a 680W one, & the +12v rail is still low. (rated22A)

I had forgotten about the low 12v issue with dual rail psu's. Been a long time since I've done any serious OC's.

The Fortron PSU's certainly have a good reputation, especially for the money.

Thats one of the things i like about the 420/520 powerstreams ... they have adjustable pots (and even little idiot lites on them) so i can adjust the rails.

Now if my hands (and brain) were more nimble, rather than relying on asus probe to 'measure' my rails, i would be using one of my multimeters ... but knowing me and my memory and eyesight, i would probably fry the mobo just trying to measure stuff.

Ok, i have been running the ocz 420 on the p5wd2 and 920 for a few hours now ... no problems.

I was thinking of trying a cheap 365 w enermax i have on a 478 into it to see if it will run but i know the 12v rail is low on it ... so instead i am going to try to get my w/c onto the 920 to see if i can keep up with joe!

what's the 12v reading for the PowerStream420 under dual QMD on your 920/P5WD2 Pete??

it is reading 12.25 with asus probeII. the idiot light on the psu is green.

I have lost track of which rig i had this 420 on when i set it last to be just over 12 v with the pot on the psu.

it has been running 6hrs now dual folding with no probs.

i have fsp 300w, hec 350w, thermaltake 480w, and a cheap 360w generic psu.

I prefer them to be cooled outside the case. Hot air isn't their good friend

My dedicated folder will (once RAM arrives) be using an 550W Antec, since the cheap generic 300W I had lying around has a 12v rail @ 11.4v (with no load AT ALL, not even plugged into mobo). I'll be getting a 400w Fortron ($43 shipped) for it though, since I need that Antec PSU for my next gaming rig, and I'll be using a 400w Fortron for all my folding rigs from now on (maybe a 450-500w if I get any Preslers).