Just when do you need a 720W PS ...

[willy]

Enermax was showing off a demo system that had :

- two Intel Xeon 5150 processors
- SuperMicro X7DA8 MB
- Sapphire X1950Pro Dual
- 18 Seagate 7200.10 250GB drives

running off their Infinity 720W power supply.

Pic ... http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=3007

[ShadowVlican]

wow.... 18 drives.... wow.... :O

[board123]

720W sound right for that kind of system.

[importpsycho]

what's with the two loops on NB cooler heatpipe?

[KorruptioN]

It all depends on whether all those drives were configured for staggered startup. This means starting them up one after the other, instead of all at once.

[SKYMTL]

Nothing special at all. I wish Enermax would stop showing things like this because people get the wrong idea. At CeBit 2007 they had almost the same setup running off their 1KW Galaxy (well, they had a pair of 8800GTX cards) and they were set for staggered startup.

Even if these 16 drives weren't set to staggered startup this still isn't anything special.

Each Seagate 250GB drive draws about 15W on startup. Multiply that by 16 and those drives are only drawing 240W from the PSU. Remember, that is on STARTUP when the graphics card is NOT drawing full power.

[CompWizrd]

Enermax was showing off a demo system that had :

- two Intel Xeon 5150 processors
- SuperMicro X7DA8 MB
- Sapphire X1950Pro Dual
- 18 Seagate 7200.10 250GB drives

running off their Infinity 720W power supply.

Pic ... http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=3007
I have a system at the office that runs:

two opteron 265's
tyan thunder k8-we
3ware 9550SX-16ML
15 Maxtor Maxline III
Supermicro 932T-R760
5 gb memory

It uses a 760W power supply that has 3 ~240W modules(don't remember the exact wattage), and the UPS is currently reporting it's pulling 66% load.. 660 VA, or about 470 watts from the wall.

With that enermax system having dual video cards compared to my onboard video system, I wouldn't be surprised if it needs that extra wattage, especially iwth a safety margin for down the road when you want to upgrade.

The other dual opteron 265 at the office has 2 gb ram, 2 raptors, 2 300gb Seagates, and a 9550SX-4LP, and it draws about 37% load.. those extra hard drives add up.