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Two Power Supplies in One PC?

Was having some issues with my current set of power supplies in my PC at home. None of them are able to support the GeForce GTX 280 that was lent to me by Asus a couple of weeks ago.

thermaltake psuI got an extra Dynamo Pro 600w and a CoolerMaster 550w Real Power SLI but none of the two are able to carry the juice needed by the Asus GTX 280 on the system.

My idea is to combine the two PSUs to effectively harness about 1,000w of power for the rig (instead of buying another Gigabyte Odin 1200w, which costs pretty expensive). Anybody here has done that? One power supply will run the motherboard and the peripherals while the other PSU will solely power the graphics card.

My concern now is voltage fluctuations between the two PSU might fry the board or some other parts.asus geforce gtx280

Incidentally, I found this Power Supply Calculator from eXtreme . I plugged in my rig specifications and it says I only need 377watts. Now that’s odd.

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Avatar for Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

21 Responses

  1. Avatar for 4 foot t5 grow 4 foot t5 grow says:

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  2. Avatar for avelina de guzman avelina de guzman says:

    who is the philippines supplier of dynamo power supply?

  3. Avatar for Aaron Aaron says:

    im curious about using 2 psu on 1 rig,but my main concern is i need power up my 2xGTX295..can i simply uses 1 psu for mobo,another for 2xGTX295?is that possible?can it make any damages?

  4. Avatar for Anubis Anubis says:

    I already did this and used a relay to rig another power supply to the CPU. I’m not too sure about just buying a jumper plug and then hooking it up directly. I’ve gone that route before and it didn’t take long till the slave PSU died. Right now I’m powering a P5NSLI with 3 SATA HDDs, 2 IDE HDDs + DVD, a 9600GT and a lot of case fans… And I mean a lot.

  5. Avatar for ian ian says:

    You could look for a y cable like this: http://www.ultraproducts.com/product_details.php?cPath=12&pPath=584&productID=584

    Ayus to Sir, pero trigger lang po ng power good yung secondary power socket.

    You can DIY na lang po.

  6. Avatar for Rayland Rayland says:

    You could look for a y cable like this: http://www.ultraproducts.com/product_details.php?cPath=12&pPath=584&productID=584

  7. Avatar for vaughn vaughn says:

    the coolermaster real power 550w should be enough (barely)to handle a quadcore rig + gtx285. you should try running it that way first. if that psu as good as its been advertised..the worst that could possible happen while stress testing is your pc shutting down, if that happens then you should probably get a 600-700w psu (there are a lot of decent ones from corsair & silverstone @ around 6k). hotwiring your dynamo with your cm 550w would be more dangerous..a know a couple of guys whose rigs got fried by dynamo PSUs.

  8. Avatar for chris chris says:

    how about the power consumption?btw nice infos.

  9. Avatar for vance vance says:

    this is common. some video card will not work on a sub par PSU, remember that 600W doesn’t mean the true power output is 600W!

  10. Avatar for Robert Nelson Robert Nelson says:

    Personally I would go for a less power intensive Video Card(I realize the one being talked about is on loan)or a new Motherboard. Seems strange that if you have a 600 watt PSU and you only need 377 watts that it doesn’t work.

    Barring that contact ASUS and explain the problem to them.

  11. Avatar for information information says:

    Corsair’s price is just too much for a regular noypi. hehe..

  12. Avatar for jhay jhay says:

    I’ve always used PSU from Corsair, the price is well worth the money.

  13. Avatar for jun jun says:

    using two power supplies in one pc is old news.

    on another note, just get a nice psu with a high efficiency ratio, certified 80 plus. a good brand that comes to mind is corsair. the corsair hx620 can definitely run the gtx 280

  14. Avatar for jojo jojo says:

    video cards should be more power efficient also

  15. Avatar for Jay Soriano Jay Soriano says:

    @Snow

    i think Sir Abe can harness the power of the SUN! hehe..

  16. Avatar for ace ace says:

    The total power consume by a PSU is just the power consumed by the PC components plus the loss power depending on the PSU’s efficiency.

  17. Avatar for Snow Snow says:

    I’m not very techie but an additional power supply in one pc is interesting.

    Pero teka,

    hindi ba magastos ito sa kuryente?

  18. Avatar for vance vance says:

    It is doable but very hard. Secondly the Dynamo is not a good brand it is closely related to Acbel and such. So no wonder it won’t run your GTX 280! second cooler master is really good brand but 550W is not enough.

    Suggestion go with a Gigabyte Odin 700 to 800 Watts, it is about 8K. you can get one in TipidPc, brand new. that is enough for a GTX 280. No need to go overboard to 1.2K watts. kahit nga 1000 Watts gagana na! exage na yung 1.2K. even a SLied GTX 280 will run on very good 1K watt PSU.

  19. Avatar for drew drew says:

    o nga no? bat hndi ko un na isip.. hmm.. that’s a nice idea! i’ll try that sir. hehehehe

  20. Avatar for ace ace says:

    Although your rig will only consume 377 watts based on the calculation, you’ll also need to factor in the current that the components will draw.Each rails in the PSU (if more than one) can only support a specific amount of current. If the PSU have multiple rails, it is setup such that one rail is dedicated to CPU, chipset power while the others are for PCI peripherals and other components. Even if one rail’s (for the CPU for example) power and current is not totally consumed, it can’t be used for the other peripherals (for the CPU only). In any case, the current and power needed by the components must be both met by the PSU rails that supplies it. For better information regarding this, there’s a thread in TipidPC detailing the power and current consumption of most video cards as well as a thread explaining PSU calculations. You can also ask tips from there.

  21. Avatar for Synapse Synapse says:

    very interesting

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