Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[Cantbecanit]

Absolutely correct, most rigs will run fun on a good quality 350w psu, but there's always the need for a little headroom so I always recommend anything post 2008 to have a 500w unit as it's hard deck, dual video cards call for a bit more.

XFX have a range of PSU's now that iirc have only one rail but this is supposed to mean a cleaner supply to everything, easy rail iirc, psu itself is Seasonic so it should be a good unit.

[Marc_]

While this post is a good idea it's also a copyright violation. The original is at http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=91 which states "Copyright Huddy's World" at the bottom of the page.

[MrMatthew]

Thanks for the link Marc, Cantbecanit also posted this link in his original post.  

[Cantbecanit]

I found it on a very small website I visit and it's been up there for a good few years, as you can see I've not tried to take credit for it, and I started off with who wrote it and how to find the author, if the author isn't happy about this then it can be removed if they so wish but imo the fact no facts have been changed, nor the credit for it changed if I was the author I'd be feeling quite warm that my work found it's way from nowhere to one of the biggest HW manufacturer's sites and especially as links to me are all over it.

Matt, if it is going to cause problems do please have it removed, iirc Vegan has been writing his own one up so his could replace this if he says it's ok.

Marc, thx for bringing it to our attention, the intent is to help people which is what Huds was trying to achieve with this anyway, I'll see if I can contact him and get full permission.

Well sent an e.mail and it came back not able to deliver so I guess it's going to have to come down so I'll request it's removal.

I've deleted the content, a mod will remove the rest later.

[AlanM]

Thanks, everyone.

The link is fine, but it's true that posting the entirety of someone else's article on another site, even with proper attribution, is not good practice.

We'll leave the link up, and since the content has been removed, we're in good shape.

[Marc_]

Thank you guys. The link is fine though can the original post on this thread be updated to link to both http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/index.php?view=article&id=91 and the Vegan Fanatic pages? The huddysworld version has more information about how to measure and test the power supply while Vegan Fanatic has great information on the history and details each of the connectors.  As it is, it looks like Huddy's has several good power-supply related articles.

• http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/index.php?view=article&id=91 is the original article that had been copied here and is about testing the PSU.
• http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/index.php?view=article&id=92 is about using a multi-meter
• http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/index.php?view=article&id=93 is about the PSU connectors
• http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/index.php?view=article&id=336 is about multi-rail PSUs.

As it is, how relevant do you people think PSU issues are to modern hard disks? In my experiance, a SATA disk uses less than ten watts. A cold start spin-up may nail you for 2 to 3 amps (24 to 36 watts) for a few seconds but that's easily in the range of even a low-end power supply.

[jgalvez]

Hi i wish to know if the power supply can break the hard disk attached to it, it's possible that problem?

Thanks

Jose

[Cantbecanit]

Any bad psu can break a HDD Jose, but the risk is limited if you buy a known good brand one, grey and black no name psu's are the ones that normally give trouble and drop their rating pretty soon, i.e a 500w that in 6 mths can only push 200w out, or a 500w that is a 200w psu that the advertising has done magic tricks on, The better ones are Corsair,Antec,OCZ,Silverstone and possibly Thermaltake, a psu when it fails will spike all the PC components and thats when you get blown things on MB's and HDD's as the voltage protection stops when the psu blows, hth.

[Cantbecanit]

Ok, I just got an e.mail back from Huddy saying he has no objections to the full article being re-posted as long as he is quite rightly accredited for it, as the full link is still in reply number 1 in this thread I guess that is good enough tbh, but if you are reading Paul, many thx for your blessings on the matter.

[fzabkar]

The original links appear to be dead. I can't remember the original article, but I'm wondering if this is it?

http://www.huddysworld.co.uk/index.php/techie-talk/techie-talk-hardware/91-hoe-to-check-if-your-psu-...

I like VeganFanatic's article, but since I'm too old to be a gamer, I find it difficult to understand (or accept) the wattage recommendations in respect of certain graphics cards. In fact I'm currently involved in a thread where hardcore gamers are insisting that a relatively ordinary system with a 19W Radeon card requires a 550W PSU, even though the owner had been using a 350W PSU without any apparent issues, and despite the fact that both AMD and the card manufacturer recommend 400W and 350W, respectively.

The irony is that the owner is asking whether his system will support an additional Seagate Barracuda HDD which consumes a maximum of 24W during spinup, yet no gamer is apparently bothered by such a minor addition, preferring to focus on the 19W graphics card. Instead they have referred me to an online PSU calculator (http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp), yet when I use it to confirm that the actual system power at 90% full load is only 182W, and that a 350W PSU provides a 92% design margin, they tell me to ignore it!?

BTW, in the "EXTREME VIDEO CARD POWER REQUIREMENTS" section of VeganFanatic's article, the first two URLs (8800 GTX and GTX 280) link to the wrong GPUs.

Here is another useful PSU site (its author "used to design embedded electronics"):
http://www.playtool.com/pages/home/index.html