Combining Standard Power Supplies to Redundant Power Supplies

[ckoeber]

Hello,

I am attempting to build a fairly reliable system and I would like to have redundant power supplies but all of the redundant power supplies available either will not fit standard cases or are not powerful enough (I am looking for greater than 800W). I have two Cool Master 1000W PSU's and they fit a standard two-PSU case. My question is, how can I combine these power supplies such that I can achieve increased reliability in a system?

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your time.

Regards,
Chris. K.

 

[yomamafor1]

It is generally not recommended to modify the PSU, unless you REALLY know what you're doing.

What you can do is purchase a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) to protect against surge, and power outs. It won't protect against PSU failure, but the chance of that happening is also really small.

 

[RetiredChief]

As long as you do not put the output in parallel you are OK. It is not the same as placing two 12 volt car batteries in parallel.

If the outputs are not Exactly equal, the PSU with the sligtly lower output becomes a load for the one with sligtly higher Eout.

Example - You can have PSU1 +12V go to PCIe of GPU 1 and PSU2 +12 V go to PCI-e of 2nd GPU card.

You do not want to put +12 for PSU1 to 1st 6 pin PCIe connector and +12 for PSU2 to the 2nd PCIe 6 pin connector on the same Graphics card (ie ATI X4870)

Myself, Just go with a Large Quality PSU. Find Max load Power and double it ( depending on +12 V rails may go 3X). Need a cheap watt meter from Newegg. May be surprised how low total Power is.

 

[Mondoman]

yo is right. Get a good-quality power-conditioning UPS and a good quality PS (such as PC Power & Cooling).