two power supply's?

[sevenbeansalad]

I have been seeing that 400watt power supply's are reccomended now for higher processors. If I had 2 power supplys (one ~300watt~for motherboard cpu and maybe some of the drives) and one for the fans and accessories would that eliminate the need for a 400+ watt power supply?

Thanks,
Christopher

[crossedup]

dont see why not, not sure how to turn other one on though, never tried it

[sevenbeansalad]

I am going to use an at power supply so that I do not have to have a motherboard to turn it on.

[crossedup]

sounds good, didnt think about that. where you going to mount it? not in case i hope :eek:

[sevenbeansalad]

Think it would fit in this case?

[Giblet Plus!]

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88976

[Tweb]

I use 2 power supplies, 450 w pluged into the board an the other, 250 w, runs all but the CPU fan. The 250 w PS has it's own on/off button.

[Imperion1]

Its quite possible and rather easy to do. I use to run 2 powersupplies in my old full tower. Just need to jump pins 14 and 15 on the atx connector, using a wire. Or, what I did was to use a couple of wires with a push button switch in the middle so I could turn the ps on and off.

[lito pospos]

Hot-swappable Redundant Power Supply

http://www.technoland.com/ps2_at_atx.htm

[zybch]

I believe that running 2 PSs into the same PC is not really a safe thing to do. Especially if one is a normal AT supply. There are all kinds of differences, not least of all that an AT power supply would have been designed to much lower tolerances than a newer ATX.

I really believe that you'd better off just spending a few extra bucks and getting a 420W PS, the thermal take ones are very nice. Lots of connectors, 2 ball bearing fans, very quiet, reasonably priced.

In the end its your money. I know though, that I'd prefer to spend $75-80 on a 420W new ps, than to have to spend several hundreds in a new mobo, hdd, video card etc when they stuff up because of the differences in power ammount/quality that they will have to try to put up with.

[killer_teddy]

Yeah but the second is only goiung to be used for fans and stuff.
It wouldn't have to be AT, ATX works by shorting the green pin(pin 14) to a ground with a switch or something.

[sevenbeansalad]

Not long ago I bought a 300watt Antec thinking it would be enough for a while. Then my uncle came over and told me that 400watt+ is reccomended for up to date computers. Putting another power supply is not going to cost me anything as I already have the 300watt Antec and I have some AT's sitting around that I can not do anything else with.


I guess eventually I will have to upgrade power supplys because of the 3.3/5v rails will not be high enough. But by that time we might have to buy something besides ATX.

I attached a more recent picture.