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I bought a supermicro chassis a few years ago with a 650W PSU for a personal lab I built. Everything has been just fine so far, but now that I'm looking into some GPU based work, I'm finding that I might be under powered.

I contacted supermicro's sales team to see if there's a compatible PSU that can give me at least 700W, hopefully 800W, unfortunately they informed me that 650W is the max for the case I have (CSE-833T-650B if you're wondering).

4x 7k RPM HDDs
2X E5620 Xeons
6 DIMMs ECC RAM
Radeon HD 5990 with 1 EPS12v and 6pin PCIE power

The other problem I see is my PSU only has one EPS12v connector and a P4 connector. I currently have a P4 to EPS12v adapter to connect both EPS12v connectors on the motherboard. Would it be too much to fill both motherboard EPS12v with a Y adapter from the PSU's EPS12v plug, and then fill the Radeon's power with a P4 to PCIE 6+2 pin Y adapter (meaning convert 4 pin to 6 pin, and then split to a 6 pin and an 8pin).

My questions are these:

  • Is monitoring the 12v rails levels is good enough to check for overload?
  • Is my spaghetti mess of adapters and weak PSU a potential $8,000 nightmare?
  • Is anyone aware of a supermicro chassis compatible brand of PSU for my case?
  • Is there a way I can actually drop in a redundant system into my case that someone has experience with?
  • Any suggestions beyond what I've considered are welcome!
ACiD GRiM
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Yes, you are too low and your connectors are another problem. I would not feel comfortable with that. Between the 5990 and the Xeons you are awfully close to loading the thing totally already.

TomTom
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  • Bummer, the next chassis that could support that is another $899. Thanks for confirming what I was reluctantly coming to. I'll leave this unanswered for a while, hopefully someone can help me with another option. – ACiD GRiM Dec 28 '12 at 06:02
  • Well, what about not using a Rack case? We have some nice micro atx boards here in small cubes, can pull in 2 graphics Cards, hold 64gb ram. 1250 w power supply. More approrpiate for a home lab (they predate our new Office with a Server room). – TomTom Dec 28 '12 at 06:31
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    It's an option, but not the most perfected since I've got my prized lab rack in my closet. Seeing the uniformity lost from removing the rack chassis would not sit well with my CDO (I realize I have more than just computer problems XD) I'm considering just buying an ATX PSU as a supplementary PSU for the radeon until I can afford a new chassis. – ACiD GRiM Dec 28 '12 at 09:02
  • Agree. The main problem, though, is that you REALLY limit yourself with rack equipment and GPU stuff unless you get really expensive ;) I really like my rack machines, but I still keep a couple of the micro atx stuff around for more - hm - "flexible" systems. – TomTom Dec 28 '12 at 09:31