Hey im just wondering what i should be looking at for power supplys, ill describe my setup;

Asus am2 m2n-sli delux
Athlon 64bit x2 4200+ (was runnign at 2.4 but ive brought it back down to 2.2 because it would run sometimes for weeks on end ok then a few days of complete instability, ill have to stick with normal speeds for now till i can work that out)
2gigs OCZ 667mhz
2x BFG7800gt-oc
heres the kicker tho--- im running 8~9 (up to 9 at one time but normally 8) hard drives, all WD 7200rpm of various sizes


when running the 9th hard drive ive come across increased instability in the system.. it will always start up and run for a bit but under heavy load the system locks up completly frozen and unresponcive i have to restart it manually
im not sure if the stability is a power issue or not, i dont have the exact readings but with the addition of that last hard drive i recall the monitoring software had a pretty big dip on some of the rails (i havent taken a multi meter to it.. this was almost 2 weeks ago so i forget just how low they went i just remember noting they were lowerd )


my power supply is the antec SP-500 500W power supply
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=26500

I would look at something large, man 8 to 9 drives I dunno personally if that was my setup I wouldn't run anything under 850 Watts but thats just me.

Nah, 600 Watts (Ish) More or less.

OCZ Gamestream 600 Watt
Hiper 580 Watt
Fortron 600 Watt
Silverstone 600 Watt
Tagan 600 Watt
Enermax noisetaker 600 Watt
Seasonic 600 watt

I could go on but you get the point.

Edit: I would go with what bosco said if your building a new rig soon or adding more.

not just you bosco lol... i'd want a pcp&c 750w bare minimum... 850W+ if it's not made by pcp&c or zippy

that said, i think the smartpower 500 came out during the crap era of antec psus... about the same time as the neopower 480 which turned out to be less than stellar...

for the sake of comparison, i'm using 4 less harddrives than you, but roughly the same other hardware, and i measured 536W AC which works out to be 402W DC @ 75% efficiency... i think harddrives use about 25W "at load" so add on 4x25 and you'd be over the combined positive rail power of 480W

the other issue is because the psu is a dual-rail system, you may well be overloading one of the rails: only a wimpy 17A/19A

So what you are telling me is you need a big huge PS for reviewing

so give me some good brand names/ model numbers i should look at, ps im in canada(east) so if anyone knows good stores in canada that would definatly be a plus.... none of the stores around here really sell high end .

everyone loves big huge psus, except Ste who likes small ones hehe

In my post I Listed alot of them. All you have to do is find one with the wattage you decide on and post it here for more opinions. Or buy it then W/e.

How much are you willing (or can afford) to spend?
Do you want to be able to carry it over to a new/upgraded build?

I just know that and I qoute, "the ones I posted are ""sufficent"" "

from those, i would go for the OCZ, Enermax or Silverstone. That would be my preference. 600W should be enough!

I'd probably go with a 700+ watt power supply just to make sure. Not having enough power sucks...

Just to be safe, wait for the 2KW PSU to come out, then you *may* be able to run your setup