PSU voltage figures

[Posicat]

Two things that I noticed, which probably arn't relevant to your
initial question.

1) The voltage after Molex-A seems to be lower than AT Molex-A, this
could indicate a bad connection at the Molex-A connector.

2) All of your drives are connected to one extension from the power
supply except one. It might be better overall to divide the load
between two lines, at least asthetically.

Finally, my advice. If you think you're overloading a powersupply,
you probably are. Powersupplies are happier if they're being used far
less than their rated maximum, they run cooler and last longer.
Depending on how much case space you have, you might add a second
power supply to run some of the drives from, thus reducing the load on
the power supply.

The advice on wattage that was posted is correct, ignore this number.
Look at the rated amperage out of the various voltages and compare
them to what's being used by the drives. Not all power supplies are
built equally, and some might put more amperage on the 12v lines,
while others are more biased towards the 5v lines.

 

[Last Boy Scout]

With a computer Power Supply the different voltage lines all have a
different number of Watts. To get the total wattage for a power supply
they add these different lines up to come up with a total number of
Watts. Sometimes the combined wattage is less than what the
manufacturer says it is suppose to be rated at. So with this in mind if
you add up the wattage of all of the devices, including fans and leds
and lights, and external USB Power. Plus the motherboard uses some
power, the CPU uses power, Also AGP video cards and PCI Devices like a
sound card or tv tuner card. Besides that the Motherboard uses some
power to monitor USB/PS2 for the Keyboard and the Mouse to turn the
compuer on when there is some activity for a Power On Device Activity Event.

As an example a high-end video card and a powerful procesor can use up
over 200 watts of power by themselves. A server may use up to about a
600 watt power supply or 2 power supplies with a redundant backup or
even more. If lots of storage is needed there can be some advantage to
using large capacity drives, so fewer are used. Of cours some servers
use 4 or 5 Drives to make a Raid Array for maximum speed. Sometimes to
use even more storage, and external Drive Case with a RAID Array
attached on a SCSI Channel. In this manner you can add storage attached
to its own power supply. We have one of these at work.

No one can answer your question unless we know the total sum of your
parts or a parts list. Without knowing your power supply voltage, your
processor, video card, and other components it is hard to say.

 

[larrymoencurly]

240mm 155mm 155mm
PSU-X=========MOLEX-A=============MOLEX-B==============SMALL-CONNECTOR-C
hard-drive-1 E-MOLEX-1 unused
12.01 & 4.95 || 11.98 & 4.91
| |
| |
140mm | | 140mm
| |
| |
E-MOLEX-2 E-MOLEX-3
hard-drive-3 hard-drive-4
11.98 & 4.91 11.98 & 4.91
|
|
| 140mm
|
E-MOLEX-4
hard-drive-5
11.98 & 4.91


240mm 155mm
PSU-Y=========MOLEX-D=============SMALL-CONNECTOR-E
hard-drive-5 floppy
12.02 & 4.97 12.01 & 4.97



240mm 155mm
PSU-Z=========MOLEX-F=============MOLEX-G
hard-drive-6 CD-RW
12.02 & 4.97 12.02 & 4.97



So, is my PSU is getting into trouble?

Why does it work at all because all this should be too much for a 250W PSU?

In fact, why does it work quite well?

I'm no expert, but I'd say that unless the PSU is running really hot,
it's probably fine, which wouldn't be surprising because Fortron is
known for making really good, conservatively-rated PSUs, and most
computers don't draw that much power anyway. For example, one person
had a dual XP2600+ CPU mobo, Radeon 9700 graphics, DVD and CD drives,
a pair of 7200 RPM HDs, and a pair of 10,000 RPM HDs, and his maximum
power reading at the AC outlet never went above 400W, meaning that the
PSU probably never put out more than about 300W.