Power Supply Rating Upgrade

Well, I've tried about 3 different power supply rating calculators, and I have had everywhere from 500W to 900W and I'm trying to figure out if anyone would have a better "guess".

I just bought a Dell Vostro 410 (Intel 33 MB/Intel Quad Core Q6600) 2GB DDR2 RAM and I am slamming 10 total hard drives (7200) (9 add) into it using 6 onboard SATA and an internal IDE RAID card. I also have a Firewire card (PCI), studio card (PCI), and a PCI x16 video card (ATI).

Anyone have a good guess what power supply I should actually have in this system to support everything? Any good brands that i don't have to worry about?

Also is there any rating for cooling fans besides the dimensions (cooling ability, noise)?

 

Welcome to MGs!! Man, that is some 'monster' you're building!! As for cooling and power, well, I'd take to your local ice plant for cooling and hook it up directly to your cities power source!!:-D Sorry, that was an ill-fated attempt at humor!! Anyhow, as for the PSU, there are alot of brand names out there that will give honest power, dependability and efficiency , Like Antec, OCZ, Thermaltake and others. Don't risk that machine with an off-brand PSU with questionable specs. You'd probably live to regret that. As for wattage, in my opinion, I wouldn't go less than 750w, but even more if you could afford it. Even 1000w wouldn't be out of the question, though that one may be a bit of 'overkill.' My problem is that I'd much rather have too much, than not enough.
As for fan 'ratings,' I don't know of any particular rating system, other than the lower the db, the quieter and the higher the CFM the faster it will move air in your system and more likely the noiser it will be. Trying to find a happy medium with what you're building may be a bit of a problem! However, I haven't built a machine in about a year, so there may be fans out there that can give you the best of both CFM, noise, and great cooling. Have you ever considered 'liquid cooling?' Good luck and if you need some links to some GOOD PSUs, I'd be glad to post some for you!!!

 

I have seen power supplies that are designed to power optical drives and hard drives only. They have a bunch of 4 pin molex connectors, and the PSU would fit in to one of the drive bays where a CD drive would go. They only power the hard drives and supply no electricity to anything else in the system. In theory, you can plug in any device with a 4 pin molex plug. From what I remember, there's a cable that runs down to where a PCI card would be, and there's a bracket that holds a power cord and socket, and you'd plug in a power cable from the wall/surge protector. I Googled a little bit and couldn't find 'em, but I know I've seen 'em before. With that many drives, it would be ideal to power them with their own PSU.

(I've also seen similar power supplies just for video cards in 2x or 3x or 4x SLI and/or CrossFire)

 

Could this be what you're reffering to dlb? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000X6USQM It supports 12 SATA drives, but the rest of the specs were Greek to me!! It seems to me that something like what you're talking about was mentioned in a post about a few months ago about a PSU fitting into a drive bay but, of course, I couldn't find it. But I agree, with that many HDDs, that would be a good option.