Which wattage PSU do I need?

[cheekster]

Hi.

Which wattage PSU do I need to power:

Lian Li PC-80B case
AMD Phenom II X4 955BE (OC to 3.6GHz)
ATi Radeon HD4670
Blu-Ray writer
17 x HDD's (most within three times IcyDocks 3 bay x 5 drives)

Was planning on purchasing a 650w Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro but read in a review that if running a quad-core and more than four HDD's, they recommended something with a higher wattage!

Thanks.

Cheekster.

[s_kinton]

I cant imagine you'd need more than 650w. I ran my Q6600 and QX6700 on a 535w Enermax with top of the range vga cards.

HDDs dont really use up that much wattage - are you sure 17 is correct and not a typo? You might want to think about consolidating your drives...

[cheekster]

No typo, 16 x 1.5TB HDD's and a 500GB boot drive. Difficult to consolidate when the only larger ones currently available are 2TB and they cost more than double what 1.5TB drives cost!

Cheekster.

[kalniel]

About 450W? Depends if you're starting them all up at once or can stagger them.

[cheekster]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Just ordered a Be Quiet! 650w Dark Power Pro from Scan, just to be on the safe side and gives me options if I wish to change any of the components including the gfx card in the future. Was £15 more than the next model down (550w).

Cheekster.

[Pob255]

Hard drives don't use a varst amount of power, however 17 of them will stack up

650w should cover you, I'd look for a single 12v rail psu for choise, simply because most multi-rail psu's tend to focus on pci-e and eps (as normally these are the two biggest power draws) and will often stick all the Sata&molex on one single rail.
Normally that's not an issue but with that many hdd's on a single limited rail you may hit issues.

As this is a less than common situation, you may want to consider asking on the Corsair section of this forum and asking their advice. (if you don't object to Corsair PSU's)

EDIT: Depends on HDD but 6 disks per 100w is a good safe estimate, not including other components.