Will 150W be enough

[praetorian]

Hey guys,

Am new here so take it easy on me

I'm gunna be building a system from an Abit KT7-RAID board with 512mb SDRAM with a 1.4ghz Athlon (not AXIA) to run inside a modified Sun UltraSPARC 5 box. Additional hardware will be a WD 80gb HD and a Panasonic DVD-RAM drive for network backups

Now the Sparc only has a height inside of roughly 6cm so this is limiting me on the powersupply. I have been offered a PSU that is 4cm high but is only 150W.

My question to your goodselves is: will a 150W PSU be enough to power all of this. There is going to be no kind of GFX card as its not needed, as it is going to be run as a server with a "sleeper" appearance.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address
Thanx peeps

[joshwa]

i doubt it personally. the athlon 1.4ghz probably uses about 60-70watts of power on it's own... but i suppose it's possible...

[praetorian]

Originally posted by www.josh.org.uk
i doubt it personally. the athlon 1.4ghz probably uses about 60-70watts of power on it's own... but i suppose it's possible...

Fair enough. I thought that it also wouldn't work Do you know any where on the net (preferably in the UK but not essential as I don't mind paying the shipping) that sells 300W 1U PSUs then for a "reasonable" price?!? I've come across one that was about £30-£40 quid but I lost the link which completely gutted me

[3Dfx]

150w?? u ****ing me?

250w mimimum, b4 things start falling off... imo

[praetorian]

Fair enough,

I'm going for the 300W 1U PSU that I just found for $60. Hopefully they will ship to the UK

[joshwa]

cool let us know how it goes on, pics would be cool

[pmk24]

got a link to that psu ?

[praetorian]

Well I cannot take credit for the work though thats the thing.

One gentleman has already undertaken this project before and I am merely using his work as a template for my own creation. However he used this specification

Motherboard: Chaintech 7NIF2-SUMMIT NFORCE2/IGP
Sound: Onboard 4 Channel
Graphics: Onboard NF2 (GF4 MX equivalent)
Processor: XP1700+ (currently running at XP2100)
HSF: Thermaltake Volcano 10+ Slim
RAM: 512M Crucial PC2700
HD: Maxtor 40G
CD-RW: HP 9100 8x CD burner.

Tis a shame that I don't still have the link on my machine here, as all I have are the saved HTML file and associated images

Will turn out good though cause people will start wondering why I have a sparc box on my desk at work. Plus the sysadmin will throw a fit for "apparently" putting a Solaris machine onto the network Good job that he has a good sense of humour, cause I wind him up all the time.

*EDIT*
Hopefully I hope to include a 2 line display somewhere on the chassis to give information as its going to be headless with only remote control software (VNC etc) working on it

[leon]

As already said, Not sure about 150w for what you want mate.

But I have to disagree with the 250W min statement. Happily running 2 machines with less than that PSU wise and with a higher spec than praetorian asked about. From my experience the quality is more important than the quantity.

[fondie]

i think it would be quite a close call at 150W, certainly not too far off though, it it possible to try it first?

160W powers this lot http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?threadid=2129

though i believe the Athlon uses more power than a 1.8 p4 ? you might like to check out the specs for them both.

[praetorian]

@Fondie: Unfortunately no its not possible to test the PSU I think to be honest, its better to get the 300W as then I'm practically assured that it is going to work

@pmk24: you have a PM Wasn't sure about the rules about posting links to companies websites so its better to be safe than sorry

@www.josh.org.uk: I can provide pictures of what he achieved when he done the project, but I would feel slightly awful if I posted pictures of my version especially since I'm "ripping" somebody elses idea with just bits of my own stuck on. I can however provide images of mine when it is complete if wanted.

[pmk24]

i think athlons do require more power then p4's but i run this rig

Processor: 2.66 P4
Mobo: Gigabyte 845GE mATX
Memory: 512mb Twinmos 2700ddr
Case : YY A102 PSU: 200w mATX
Video: ASUS V8420 Deluxe GF4 Ti 4200 128mb
HDD: Maxtor Dx740 80Gb
Cdrom: Lite-on 16x DVD
Soundcard: Creative 5.1 Live!
Keyboard: Apple Pro USB
Mouse: Microsoft USb optical pro
Monitor: Mitsubishi Dimond Pro 750 Sb 1280*1024 85mhz
OS: Windows Xp SP1
Extras: Matrix orbital Blue LCD

on a 200w psu fine, very stable has weeks uptime

[Theo]

I run:
Asus A7N266VMSE
Athlon XP2000
1Gig Generic PC2700
Asus V9120 GF4 8x Magic 64MB
Pioneer 16x Slot DVD
Creative 5.1 Live!
Chieftech Wireless keyboard and mouse
30GB Maxtor 5400rpm 2MB cache master
40GB Maxtor 5400rpm 2MB cache slave
In a Casetek TinyTower with 200W psu.

All runs completely fine, works lovely as a divx/dvd player

[Trickle]

>i think athlons do require more power then p4's but i run this rig

This is true when comapiring clock for clock, but when you compair like system speed to like system speed, you generally tend to find the top of the pile P4 using more power than a similar real world AMD chip - though its close.

Also, why cant you set the system up on the 150W PSU with the AMD chip running at 500Mhz then up the speed and see what happens?

[praetorian]

Thats always a possibility Trickle, but at least if I went for the 300w it would allow me some upgradability plus I wouldn't have just put £30 (not a lot but hey every penny counts) down the drain on a PSU that couldn't power any kind of future enhancements

[XTR]

Shuttle PSU that comes with the top of the range Shuttle systems, such as the SN45G, SG61G2, etc.. is capable of running 2 HD's, 1 CD/DVD writer, mega fast ram, mega fast cpu's, so i'd imagine if ya can get a "decent" low watt PSU such as what is used in a shuttle SFF PC, then it would run the specification you gave.