1 PSU, 2 Motherboards.

[09FireDragon]

Would an addapter like this work, for powering 2 PC's (Link)

 

Despite it been better to just have two power supplies and assuming the motherboard doesnt require any additional power other than this (No 4pin etc), would it work. Or would they interfere with each other / side affects.

 

More curiosity than anything else.

[Himommies]

Im not a electrical engineer and all that but I imagin you'll have voltage problems.Also I think that thing is meant to be used backwars with 2 psus

[W-L]

4 minutes ago, 09FireDragon said:

Would an addapter like this work, for powering 2 PC's (Link)

Despite it been better to just have two power supplies and assuming the motherboard doesnt require any additional power other than this (No 4pin etc), would it work. Or would they interfere with each other / side affects.

More curiosity than anything else.

I assume you are wanting a stream PC in the same build?

 

Phanteks made a case specially for this and designed a power distribution/splitter for this to allow one PSU to power two systems, where it splits it over to the needed system that is on.

http://www.phanteks.com/PH-PWSPR.html

[mariushm]

Technically it would work, but it would have been good to have the PS_ON wire controlled by only one computer. Not sure if that cable links the wire to both computers.

 

The problem with that splitter is that it just splits the power to two computers. Each wire and contact in the connector can transfer a limited amount of current, up to around 6-8A per wire/contact (well, in theory you can push it to 10-12a but it wouldn't be safe).  The 24pin atx connector has a lot of wires for 3.3v (4 orange wires) and 5v (5 red wires and the purple 5v standby) but only two 12v wires (the yellow ones)... so the most a connector can safely transfer is 12v x 12-18A = ~150-200 watts. 

Basically, motherboards take 12v from the atx connector to power the pci-e slots (so if you have a video card, it may take up to 50-60 watts from that connector), and some motherboards also power the fans from this 12v input (around 5w) and some also use dc-dc converters to convert 12v power into 3.3v or lower voltages for onboard sound, network and so on... so there goes around 5-10 watts usually and few also use power from this connector to power the ram sticks (usually less than 10-15 watts) ... basically a single computer could use up to 100 watts from those 2 yellow wires in the atx connector which can safely carry around 150-200 watts.

 

 

If the two computers don't have standalone video cards but only onboard graphics, those would be powered from separate cpu power connector so you'd probably be fine with such a splitter.

A better splitter would have used an  additiona pci-e 6pin or 8pin connector to give each of those atx connectors independent 12v wires and not overload the source connector.

[09FireDragon]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Technically it would work, but it would have been good to have the PS_ON wire controlled by only one computer. Not sure if that cable links the wire to both computers.

 

The problem with that splitter is that it just splits the power to two computers. Each wire and contact in the connector can transfer a limited amount of current, up to around 6-8A per wire/contact (well, in theory you can push it to 10-12a but it wouldn't be safe).  The 24pin atx connector has a lot of wires for 3.3v (4 orange wires) and 5v (5 red wires and the purple 5v standby) but only two 12v wires (the yellow ones)... so the most a connector can safely transfer is 12v x 12-18A = ~150-200 watts. 

Basically, motherboards take 12v from the atx connector to power the pci-e slots (so if you have a video card, it may take up to 50-60 watts from that connector), and some motherboards also power the fans from this 12v input (around 5w) and some also use dc-dc converters to convert 12v power into 3.3v or lower voltages for onboard sound, network and so on... so there goes around 5-10 watts usually ... basically a single computer could use up to 100 watts from those 2 yellow wires in the atx connector which can safely carry around 150-200 watts.

 

 

If the two computers don't have standalone video cards but only onboard graphics, those would be powered from separate cpu power connector so you'd probably be fine with such a splitter.

A better splitter would have used an  additiona pci-e 6pin or 8pin connector to give each of those atx connectors independent 12v wires and not overload the source connector.

Thanks for your help.

 

With the idea i have, one of the PC's will have a graphics card, and would draw quite a bit of power. (i5 with a GTX 1060) however the second is only a dual core atom with no graphics card. I would be supprised if at load, it drew more than 35W. Most of which would likely be coming through the 4 pin connector anyway.

 

My main concern is whether 2 motherboards hooked up to the same PSU, would in some way cause damage to each other.

[MARDOX]

I came across a problem building a Parallel computing system in this way. When i went to shutdown one board the PSU would turn off totally. It looks like the Motherboards talk to their PSU. So you will need to disable this function to prevent the power being cut off to all your boards what for example a Reboot on just one board. 

 

Personally I was able to put 5 motherboards per PSU using 950 W PSUs. I had a mess of wires though.