Hey all, I building a computer at the mo which will have a seperate 12V supply as well as an ATX psu - this is going to be for an internal amplifier, (several) fans and lighting and a pic control circuit. I have chosen to use a transformer based (ie not switch mode) PSU mainly for cheapness and ease; the transformer is a standard style 60VA output (square not torroidal, about 7cm cubed). Can this be placed close to a motherboard and perhaps more significantly a HDD or will radiated magnetic fields be a problem? Ideally, I'd like to have this about 1cm (!) from HDD end and 2cm above PCI slots on mobo (space is tight!). Would this be okay, or am i just plain mad ?
depends entirely on the quality of the sheilding of each components, and on the make of HDD, if its a Maxtor or Fujitsu, odds are not very high, as these manifactures have the noterity of skimping on costs releated to relaiablility.
at the moment it is a seagate series 5 (30Gb\5400, has a 'Seashield' cover). The transformer is unshielded. what i might do is test it with an old 1.6Gb hdd or something for a few hours; if it does damage i spose the loss will not be as great. Do you think it will affect mobo' at all though? My guess is it certainly wouldn't cause long term damage, but if this is wrong please let me know before i bust it!
i can't say it won't, in an idel world it wouldn't! As for testing with an HDD get some cluster verification software (even more devistating than a low level format). Some BIOS'es used to have them built in but very very few now (non scsi ones) doo. That would be a great way of finding any read/write errors.
You know it will be running at 60hz so you could make a faraday cage specificly ment for 60 hz (50hz if you are in the UK.)
