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Planning to build a small server farm for myself with a couple of low-end quad cores. I wonder if it is possible to hook up something like 3-4 motherboards to the same PSU? And where I can buy the splitters for it? These system won't use more than 200W and I want to power them with a 850W PSU which only cost a tad bit more than a 650W and certainly less than two 450W one.
And is there any thing that need to check before making a system like this?
Yes you can, unfortunately I haven't seen a UK stockist for the splitters.
Plenty in the US though.....although I wonder about how they would work TBH. Might end up frying something.
you would need to be very careful about how the individual rails of the PSU are loaded. Remember that the power rating of a PSU is aggregated across all the power rails, so (for example) the CPU is taking 20 amps at 3 volts (60 Watts) a 240 watt PSU would not drive 4 CPUS simply because it couldn't supply 80 Amps, even though on paper that is 240W.
If you were planning to run multiple mobos off one PSU, you would probably use separate dedicated PSUs for each rail - so you would use a 3V PSU (for example) rated at 80 amps for the CPU supplies, and separate units for hard drives and other peripherals. You may need some decoupling between the boards as well.
I'm not saying that using a single PSU isn't possible, just that it may not be as straightforward as it first seems.
I think a 850W would easily do it. But I'd run it by the numbers. Stick with single rail PSUs too.
http://www.overclock.net/faqs/112866...ply-power.html
Might be useful